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Thin Client With OSS for Developing Nations

Posted by Zonk on from the spreading-the-penguin-love dept.

FridayBob writes "The BBC has a story on a new, ultra-thin client that a group of not-for-profit developers, Ndiyo, hope will open up the potential of computing to people in the developing world. Not surprisingly, their system uses open source software. The system runs Ubuntu Linux with a Gnome/KDE deskto and OpenOffice. From the article: 'Licences for software are often a significant part of expenditure for smaller companies which rely on computers. But a recent UK government study, yet to be formally published, has shown that open source software can significantly reduce school budgets dedicated to computing set-ups.'"

1 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. The third world need wireless mesh. by Baldrson · · Score: 5, Informative
    A better solution for the third world is a bootable cdrom image that comes up with a minimal system including:
    1. Wireless mesh software and drivers from widely available and now very cheap 802.11b cards.
    2. A web browser with good javascript/xsl support.

    Such a bootable cdrom (based on Slackware) is already available from LocustWorld.

    Maybe the Ubuntu guys should port it over from Slackware.

    --
    Seastead this.