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French Kids Get OSS on USB Sticks
daria42 writes "To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software the Ile-de-France, the political district of greater Paris, will give 175,000 school children and apprentices USB keys loaded with open-source software. With a word-processing program, audio and video playback capabilities, an email client and an IM client, these are essentially computers on a stick. The council touts this as 'represent[ing] for students a tool of freedom and mobility between their school, cybercafes and their home or friends' PCs'." With the prevalence of internet cafes in Europe, that might work better than in the US ... but do you think such a project would work here as well? If so, what software would you want to see loaded up?
http://theopencd.org/programs
Still, it looks pretty exciting. I'd love to have that stuff on the go. If France can break out of the grip of Microsoft, then perhaps the end of the monopoly is near.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
I just looked into something like this for myself and found portableapps.com. You can load up your standard OSS on a USB stick and then use them on any windows computer. I went out and bought the fastest USB stick I could find and loaded a few of my favorites on there (Firefox, 7Zip, OpenOffice and a few others). It's been really helpful to have the software I want when I am in a variety of locked-down university computer labs and I can do things with this software that the other students around me can't like open some obscure types of compressed files, save documents as PDFs, and browse the internet ad-free. Highly recommended if you often use public computers or work on other peoples' machines.
Add a few more things depending on zee size of zee steeck.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Mandriva Flash - A 3D Desktop in your pocket.
From the link:
Core and SoftwareKernel 2.6.17
Glibc 2.4
X.org 7.1
KDE 3.5.4
GCC 4.1
OpenOffice 2.0.3
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6
Flash®Player 7.0.68
RealPlayer® 10.0.8.805
It's just informal slang. "America", in the most literal sense of the word, really refers to an entire hemisphere. "USia" is an explicit reference to the United States of America. (See also "EUia", "CAia", etc.)
I would not force Linux on them, but there is a lot of Windows OSS;
AbiWord first of all.
Gnumeric spreadsheet
VideoLAN Client (VLC)
GAIM multi-protocol IM software
GZIP file compression tool
wxBASIC BASIC Interpeter or similar
Games! This whole list; http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html
I think this would about do it and still fit on a modest USB stick.
What do you think?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Any idea how much space this software all takes, or how large the drives will be? The operation is said to cost about $3.4M, or under $20/student. Some of that will be administrative costs, too. Nonetheless, I'm impressed it can be done for so little.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
What software would I like to see loaded up? Well, here's what's on MY USB stick:
Accesories
Calcute, Converber, Convert, Guillotine, Launchy, Boot Floppy Creator, WinRAR, Rejar, XN Resource Editor, Resource viewer, decompiler & recompiler., Universal Extractor, Allway Sync, pathsync, Batcher, Bulk Rename Utility, DataTool, XpAssociate,
Internet
mIRC, Miranda IM, qm - Quick Mailer, Thunderbird Portable, Opera , read_IE_proxy, VNC server for Win32, VNCViewer, ChrisControl, GreatNews: the intelligent rss reader, FollowMeIP (Show External IP),
File Transfer
Quick 'n Easy FTP Server 3.0, Portable WackGet, FTP Wanderer, HTTP File Server, utorrent,
Scanners
Network Stumbler, Angry IP scanner, MozillaCookiesView, IPNetInfo, HTTP Get Headers, SuperScan 4 Beta 1, SmartSniff, CurrPorts, NetStat Live, trout (Trace Route), WhoisThisDomain,
Uniform Server
Start Main Server, Stop Main Server, Start SlimFTPd, Stop SlimFTPd,
Media
CD / DVD
DvdReMake Pro, DVD Shrink 3.2, IFO-file editor, MuxMan, Windows XP Virtual CD, PowerISO, CDex CD-Ripper, BonkEnc Audio Encoder, Nero InfoTool, DVDINFOPro, Alcohol 120%, Standalone CD/DVD Burner, DeepBurner, EasyDVDBurner,
Graphics / Imaging
IrfanView, XnView, PaintStar, Portable GIMP, Resize, animagic32, Analyzer, LiquidIcon Editor, FSCapture, SnIco Editor, ColorCop, SmartMorph,
Audio
XMPlay, coolplayer, 1by1, Foobar2000, Easy MP3 Alarm Clock, mpTrim, WakeMeUP,
Video
Ant Movie Catalog, VLC Media Player, VLC Media Player - no skins, Media Player Classic, VirtualDub,
Office
Notepad++ : a free (GNU) source code editor, TED Notepad for Windows, UltraEdit-32 Professional Text/Hex Editor, ICEReaderRetail, Foxit Reader Pro, PdftkBuilder, TreePad Lite, Spell Magic, Total Organizer,
OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org, Writer, Calc, Base, Impress , Math , Draw ,
System
pstools, MyUninstaller, Autostart program viewer, Dependency Walker, DiskRecon, DiskImage, PassWordRenew, RegEdit PE, RegScanner, Registry Monitor, TreeSize Professional, ImageExplorer, Tola's patching engine v1.8, AbsoluteShield File Shredder, Removes hard to remove files, WhyReboot,
HD Tools
HDHacker, HDD Temperature Monitor, HDSpeed, HD Tune, Partition Table Doctor 3.0, Partition Table Editor for Windows, PartitionInfo Windows NT Version, Symantec GhostCast Server for Windows, Symantec Ghost Explorer, Symantec Ghost,
Info / Benchmark
Game XP, ClockGen, CPU-Z Application, aida32, everest, USB Browser, Parmavex WinAudit, RightMark Memory Analyzer, ServiWin Service and Driver manager,
Copy / Undelete
ActiveUndelete, Restoration, Unstopable Copier, BadCopy - Disk & CD Data Recovery Utility, raid,
Maintanance / Repair
Windows XP SP2 TCP/IP patch, ClamWin Portable, CCleaner Portable, xp-AntiSpy, Norton WinDoctor, Norton Disk Doctor, Ad-Aware SE, JkDefrag, Disk Analysis and Cleanup Utility, WinsockFix,
Security
TrueCrypt, Keylogger Detector, KeePass Password Safe v1.05, Omziff, Internet Explorer Passwords Viewer, WirelessKeyView, pcANYWHERE password, PasswordsPro, SAMInside, SAMInside, pwdump2,
Windows Shortcuts
edit_lmhosts, System, Add or Remove Programs, Computer Management, Services, Performance, Display, Network Connections, Printers and Faxes, Sounds and Audio Devices,
Games
lwwin, zetrix, rh, Bridging_the_Gap_v1, Process Explorer, My Computer, DSynchronize, DM2, Firefox, x2 - explorer replacement,
And all of it menued under PStart.
Well the french use two different terms
anti-mondialiste and alter-mondialiste
And if about 10 years ago many where "anti" now most (who do care about this sort of thing, and not only about "what's on tv tonight") use alter.
Free software is not "anti" globalization but for an alternative globalisation.
The current trend is toward: cash and capital can travel around the world at the speed of light, but the unwashed masses are requested to stay put in their current cesspol.
And if the capital they need to clean up a little bit their environment can be used more efficiently somewhere else, tought luck, better times are comming (somewhere, sometime, don't hold your breath, or do we don't care).
The alter-globalization stand on Free Software is that it gives more people control on their own environment, and it makes it somewhat harder to fully control the transmission chain from content provider toward end-user.
For instance compare what kind of "permission" you need to develop a game on Linux as compared to a game on an Xbox.
Unfortunatelly the real understanding of the issues at hand is only very partial, and for instance in the current USB tick example, the real "need" is just for a mobile student "work space", this enables the school administrator to freeze the school PC's configuration and removes the need for a shared managed "student storage place".
Adding some free software on a memory stick is really a way to NOT put Linux on the PC.
The discussion goes like this:
- you should not be a slave to a monopoly, nor should you provide a system to students that they cannot really study but only use as a black box.
- ho, hem, ha, heuu, well, its very complicated and difficult, but we are allready doing something, we are ta da.... using Firefox !!!
- Of course you are, but you use it on Windows, and it really doesn' mean mutch by itself
- Well we are also moving toward Open Office (well a little, sometimes, but not for the Accountant he has 20 lines of Excel macro that he doesn't remember how they happen to work, so porting them, you must be kidding..)
- This is still ChickenS.... and you know it.
- Well we will make a big program with Free Software for All
- Ok seems cool
- Hello dear provider, we need 50 000 USB sticks
- Ta daaa...!
- So what ?
- We copied the nice demo CD you gave us last year on the stick
- With the 2 years old versions ?
- Yess isn't it cooool.
- MS sales rep to BG (hello, finally no need for EDGI funds)
(unless the school put out some dough--every OSS system I've used required some shady means of enabling mp3 playback)
Since money is not charged per copy of Linux, they do not include software that requires a payment to be made per copy. MP3 decoders and codecs require a payment. Detailes are here;
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
Once you download a codec or decoder, getting it licensed is a problem.. They won't take your money. From the Q & A;
1) Do you license mp3, mp3PRO and mp3surround software to end users?
No. We license mp3/mp3PRO software and patents to developers and manufacturers of software applications and hardware devices.
They don't want to deal with retail, they want to deal with wholesale. The minimum annual payment is $15,000.
See the minimum royalties on the bottom of this page; http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
every OSS system I've used required some shady means of enabling mp3 playback
It's because they provide no way to properly license it. We've tried.
The truth shall set you free!
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
Maybe if you hadn't been trying for first post, and had spent as much time on your original comment as you did on this one, the original would have been modded like this one was, even though it and this are still far, far off topic. Cry me a fucking river. You know exactly what you did and why you were down-modded.
You can say anything you want on Slashdot and get modded up for it. Just refrain from being an asshole.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> Advertisers who use English words (but not the words of other languages) are fined
Wrong. Advertisers can use English words if they like, but they have to provide a translation for these words somewhere on the ad (often in a footnote in small print).
I work for moka5, and you can do this with our software. The LivePC Engine lets you run virtual machine images (like your favorite distro) from a USB drive on a windows computer. There are some Linux-based LivePCs on our website, and you can easily create your own. It's a free download -- hope you try it out. We can answer any questions you have on our forum or via email.