Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Getting Open Source to the Dialup Masses

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the those-laurels-are-getting-downright-restless dept.

WillSmith writes "South Africa's Mark Shuttleworth Foundation has a solution to getting open source out to places with low broadband : the "freedom toaster". The idea is simple : a bring-and-burn software kiosk."

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. ubuntu + dialup? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have literally just got back from upgrading my sister in-law's pc from RH 9 to Ubuntu. She just got an iPod and I decided to upgrade the OS before installing gtkpod.

    So there I am all ready to apt-get gtkpod and...

    ...where is the ppp dialer? It's not there. Now I know that ubuntu tries to be lightweight but surely something could come out to make way for a gnome ppp program? Not being able to get on line pretty much ended my quest to get the ipod working.

    It seems to have wvdial so I could probably have got online that way. But that is not going to help the mums and dads, though.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Re:This is a good idea by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I guess it would be overly cynical of me to point out that Ubuntu routinely pushes out several hundred megs of updates every few weeks ... and the installer insists on downloading them if you have a network connection, wanted or not.

    I don't think any distro that practically requires broadband to stay up to date (ie, all of them) is going to cut it for the third world. On the other hand, if you don't have the internet at all, then you don't really need updates do you?