Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

An Anonymous Coward writes "Out in Oakland, CA a group is taking donated PC's and breathing new life into them with Linux. They turn around and donate the computers to schools, build POVRAY render farms (with MOSIX) and generally promote Linux."

Comments

Cool program

[NoahsMyBro]

That's a pretty neat program - reuses the old tech, trains the unskilled volunteers in an up-and-coming technology (Linux), AND produces more Linux-skilled workers, increasing Linux's mindshare.

Sounds good to me.

Site of actual organization

[DeadSea]

Here is a link directly to the The Alameda County Computer Resource Center who are the folks that are doing the recycling. From their website, they charge $5 to take most computers. Their website has some broken links on the front page. You can probably figure out how to get to their donate page, but the link there is broken. It looks like you would have to bring the computer in to them, they don't have an address posted where you can mail it. (Too bad for us slashdot folks who aren't in CA).

There site navigation is totally borked so here are all the links on the site I could find:
Home
About
Donations
Internships
Press

Re:Site of actual organization

[mateub]

DeadSea wrote:

Too bad for us slashdot folks who aren't in CA

Well, there are other such efforts in the world. In Portland, OR, there is a group called FreeGeek that does the same thing.

There was an earlier Slashdot story that mentioned some other places to donate PC's: this one

adéu,
Mateu

Many groups doing this

[Gibbys Box of Trix]

I thought this sounded familiar... seems there are many groups working in this worthwhile way. Google directory links a few here.

If you don't live in the Oakland area there may be a group near you who you can either volunteer to help, or donate those old PCs gathering dust in the attic.

If you can't find anyone near you, why not go it alone? I installed Linux on an old box and gave it to the neighbours kid, with a bashed up old 15" monitor from the local tip.

Linux and Schools

[kvn299]

As a former educator who worked in a "resource-challenged" school district, I applaud these types of programs. Unfortunately, often schools like the one I worked in would get money thrown at us for certain tech projects, but since there was often no follow-through or training, the money was pretty much wasted, or used for other purposes deemed more important by the school administrators.

It seems this organization not only refurbishes the computer, but also trains people to do it as well. If Linux is ever to get a foothold in schools, it will take a lot more effort than just donating X number of computers with Linux preinstalled. The community will have to invest time in making sure those computers are filling the need and that people on site are trained and commmitted to maintaining them.

Linux and public schools seem like a match made in heaven. Even though Microsoft gives a lot of lipservice (and money, you do have to give them some credit) to supporting schools, it still doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money on Windows licenses. One could make the argument that exposing students to an alternative like Linux will improve their technology skills (they're still gonna get the Windows exposure, no matter what's used in the schools).

Just my 2cents.

Toronto...

[swagr]

We do that
here and
here.

For thos who aren't familiar with Pov-Ray

[docbrown42]

www.povray.org

If you want to see some example of what can be done with Pov-Ray, check out my site at docbrown.net and click on "Portfolios"-"Renderings".

-Ed

Even in Canada

[Greedo]

Reboot.ca and the Linux Volunteer Group have been around for quite a while.

They do good work.

Re:The downside to this

[An Onerous Coward]

Unfortunately, this appears to be exactly what Microsoft is doing. Here's the article summary:

from the must-eat-more-money dept.
razvedchik writes: "As reported in this article in the Portland, OR newspaper, The Oregonian, Microsoft is pressuring 24 school districts in the northwest to agree to their Microsoft School Agreement licensing scheme or undergo an audit in 60 days. Multnomah ESD, which covers the greater Portland area and has around 25,000 computers, has to either decide to accept the license at about $500,000 or undergo the audit which it does not have time to prepare for. Of significant interest is the fact that a significant majority of these schools are experimenting with using Linux. Multnomah ESD has its own thin-client Linux distro called K12LTSP."

Free Geek

[healy]

Portland Oregon has a great non-profit that does this sort of thing as well: Free Geek