Slashdot Mirror
KDE Desktops For 52 Million Students In Brazil
An anonymous reader writes "Mauricio Piacentini writes about a deployment of systems running Linux and KDE in Brazil's schools; some 52 million students are to be served by this initiative. 'What is interesting about this project is that it not only provides infrastructure (computers and net connectivity) but also open content to students in public schools. The software installed on these systems is "Linux Educacional 2.0," a very clean Debian-based distribution, with KDE 3.5, KDE-Edu, KDE-Games, and some tools developed by the project.' The distro comes in Portuguese only at this time." quarterbuck notes that Linux is making other inroads in the BRIC economies (Brazil-Russia-India-China): India and China are getting a custom-designed Ubuntu laptop from Dell, and Russia is making their own Ubuntu laptop this year.
Don't worry it'll soon be over. They're switching away from Windows.
From a selfish perspective, this is great. So long as Linux gains significant adoption somewhere in the world, we will get better hardware support. Much as I like linux, drivers are the main problem.
They could run a non-stripped down full featured distro. Just keep compiz off.
This is very important.
Back when I were in school, we had no other choice than to use Windows. Even back then, I realized the clever tactic of Microsoft - if everyone is taught to use Windows the have plenty of market.
But Microsoft is just too greedy, instead of giving the software away to educators, which, in the en would result in bigger market share, insist on licensing and charging everyone - which in turn makes initiatives like these worthwhile.
The only marketing methods I've been exposed to as admin for a bunch of libraries, is the scare and bribery methods they used on a country-wide level, which resulted in M$ centric solutions being shoved down our throats.
The director of the libraries I've working on, has been told that installing Linux will result in BSA audit. We did, nothing happened, obviously, but all the other libraries are still using Windows servers.
And paying for that, instead of buying books or journals.
This has happened in EU approx 3 years ago.
These press releases would also state how many millions of dollars these contracts are worth to the company supplying the products.
What is even better about this is that not only is there no dollar value in the story to make it worth hearing, but millions and millions of people will be using F/OSS software rather than beginning a life of paying for the privilege of 'using' software.
So the story is about success and growth rather than money and contracts. A positive story. Sure, it's good for Dell monetarily, and Ubuntu too but it's not all about money, profit, and contracts. Just reading it make me feel the world is a bit more free.
(cynicism on) How long before we see stories about MS doing deals to counteract these successes? (cynicism off)
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced today that it will be giving a 80 bajillion dollar technology grant to schools in Brazil.
The grant will include Copies of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office as well as instruction for educators in chair throwing.
I have always said that using Open Source in government schools and other offices makes complete sense. Specially if they are not inside the USA.
My reasoning is that, as a tax payer in say, Brazil. I know that part of my taxes are going into buying whatever I.T. infrastructure is needed for the government (and there are countries and states where the government is *the* most important economy).
Therefore, as a tax payer, I prefer my contribution to go to Open Source projects (say, for example Open Office), which I would be able to use, instead of having to pay the proprietary software (Microsoft Office in this case) and giving that money to other countries (to the USA in such case).
Governments should mandate that all the software that is used in the government must be Open Source. The money with which the software is being bought is the money of all the contributors, and is in their best benefit to put that money in open standards, but most importantly in technology that *they* will be able to use.
Unfortunately, strong forces at the top of the governments impede such thing (at least in my own country) where big corporations push governments with "discrete" bribes in order to make them adopt whatever closed technology they sell.
It seems that the countries that will adopt Open Source as common initiative are the ones where socialism is not seen as such as scary term, akin to communism. And even the word communism does not equate to "Russian soviet slaves". Unlike USA and other countries that are *very* influenced by Capitalism.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Apple is getting the high margin users that want a good desktop experience, and Linux is getting more and more users that need good value deals.
Microsoft is in the middle, giving up market share on both sides.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I assume they're not going to be running the most up to date hardware available. So my question is, why don't they use Xfce instead of KDE?
-Nemo me impune lacessit-
(Lifting pinkie finger to corner of lips, grinning with satisfaction)
"52 million students..."
This is great news!
say what you will, but remember, while these children are not getting the best of linux, they are getting linux experience. Using , linux I've made more friendships and awesome contacts than I ever thought possible. I've had people let me into their homes, knowing very little about me, besides the fact that I was going to help them uninstall microsoft. They knew nothing of linux. Many times linux gave me strange problems with hardware issues. By having them sit with me while I checked the community for help, they saw what I saw: Computer users coming together as a community. This feeling that we shared is now available for 36 million school aged children? No matter what anyone says of the distro, the number of children, or anything else, these children are now given access to the one educational precept that will guide them for the rest of their lives. Each one teach one. The community will only spread with these types of initiatives. Someday, you may see them posting on slashdot, praising that initial step as the reason they went on to higher education. You may see them on IRC, helping one of our own. You may yawn, and this is ill advised. You see, when initiatives such as this arrise, it is up to all of us to collectively stand, and applaud.
Of course, I'm sure it will come with a brand new Russian interweb browsing suite, so that you don't have to wade through all the "junk" out there in the "free" world. Its all about the user experience right?
This summary is a little misleading. According to TFA there will be about 55k labs serving 50mil students. (and i thought labs were crowded at college)
This is definitely a step in the right direction for a developing country, but it doesn't seem to have the large scale plans of say the XO laptop program.
At least its Linux though...wonder if theyll be getting hardy heron anytime soon?
About time. Profiteering should have no place when it comes to a child's access to education. I'm an ICT teacher and we are trying to teach skills and not packages. But it is more than that, you can;t teach kids everything in school and being able to access the skills and tools that you implement in school at home is essential to complement what they are learning in school. After two years of quite severe debate, our school now uses several OSS packages and the kids are given copies of the OpenEducationDisc. Teachers and students can't believe it is free. I now have kids making music, 2D and 3D graphics and actually able to complete written assignments at home as they have something to write with and open word docs with (OOo). For me propriety formats do not have a foot to stand on when you take the home situation into hand. The latest version of the openeducationdisc is here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=203390
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates software to Brazilian schools
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Because MS just cannot NOT do something about it. Without a stranglehold on the OS market, MS just can't compete. And -52 million is quite a dent in the marketshare, methinks, for a country like Brazil.
In any case, interesting times ahead. Pass the popcorn, thnk you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Um. Compiz? You've got to be kidding.
The standard Ubuntu desktop requires 256 MB RAM and ~4 GB of disk space.
Maybe those requirements look ultra-minimal compared to Vista, but it's not exactly what I have in mind when I think of a "low power multi terminal solution".
The Windows Hegemony was primarily a US construct, and now that developing countries want to move forward with technology, but can learn from the disaster of Microsoftcentric OS policies, the nature of computing will move forward at lightning speed in other countries. Microsoft will be attacked not only from within, but from outside, from interests (GPL, Open Source) alien to Microsoft's need to control everything.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
My web domain.
Remember those Mandriva-loaded PCs for nigeria or whatever it is? The one where nigeria also end up buying Windows OS for those?
(I only remember it vaguely, correct me if I'm wrong)
That's good if you're building a new computer. I think timeOday's problem is that (s)he is trying to switch an existing computer from Windows to Linux or from Windows to dual-boot Windows/Linux. In that case, you have to choose software that works with what you have unless you want to have to replace 10 to 50 percent of your hardware.
For those building a new computer, such as the situation of the article, do you recommend particular brands of Linux-compatible desktop or laptop PC hardware?
This is wonderful news. Couple it with the news about the recently discovered oil fields in Brazil (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aBUoYKhu7PWk) and I can see some major economic shifts taking place!
Next up: Microsoft's announcement: 52 million kids in Brazil, the first to try out Microsoft's new extended support version of Windows XP.
In other news, chairs are expected to rain...
Res publica non dominetur
One thing to note is that all these schools that take up linux use KDE as environment of choice. I've heard of a dozen schools and countries that use linux in the classroom now and every single one is KDE. Why not gnome? Why not something else?
I know KDE has Kiosk and some Brazilian educational software, but is that it? I think KDE tries to sell itself as an educational platform as well. But.. why not Gnome? Gnome has huge potential to be in classrooms if they make an educational suite. This would also boost linux adoption. So why not?
care to elaborate why KDE is less usable than Gnome?
At least their technical support calls won't be long distance...
A-Bomb
52 million students in Brazil? That's, like, more than the population of England.
They're ultra-minimal compared to XP, too. I have to have an 8GB virtual disk if I want to do anything other than install WindowsXP with Office, and even then it's pretty tight.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
In Soviet Russia, Linux runs YOU!
On another note, it's good to know that young people are formed to several operating systems, since the more people know, the more people are free.
In Brazil, it's the school that should teach that Windows is not mandatory, as the students probably use Windows at home (when they have enough money to buy a computer).
The future depends less on a single technology, and since there is a globalization process, knowing more platforms is like learning several languages.
Now the children in Brazil can post their own pedo pics in Orkut. Cut out the middle-man, I tells ya.
And there is a reason I call Ubuntu Ubloatu.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
Go for Gnome for ease of use, and host-and-terminals for lower costs. Then I will believe.
Nothing against multihead per se, it is nice but only reaches its full potential when you have central processing in a host.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Wow! Why is this modded "Flamebait"?
:-( I rather liked Warp... well, after I upgraded my system at the time to 8M RAM...
This is how I've felt about Linux for a good little while now. I feel part of a community. I've been using Linux near full-time (on my personal machines - at work I don't usually have the choice...) since '98 or '99. I honestly forget when I made my first Linux-Only machine (not dual-boot, not "testing").
In the 20-ish or so years I was using Microsoft's Operating Systems (DOS 2 or so through XP) I'd never once felt like I was part of a "community". At least no more part of a community than a bunch of strangers that happen to shop at the same supermarket can be considered a "community", anyway.
P.S.
During the 3.1x --> '95 years, I was clinging onto my install of Warp! 3 as tightly as possible, but I had to give in to 95; nothing (a user would use) was being developed.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
52 million students? This number is completely bogus. That's 28% of the *entire* Brazilian population. According to CETIC (http://www.cetic.br/usuarios/tic/2007/rel-geral-01.htm), 76% of the Brazilian households don't have any PCs. I call bullshit on this one.
Russia is building their own Ubuntu Linux laptop?
I can see it now the CCCP laptop.
It is really cool to read news like this. I live in Brazil and last night when filing my taxes I was VERY happy to find that the local internal revenue service now provides a Linux, Mac, and Solaris versions of their tax return software. It ran very well (Java).
Needless to say, I deleted my Windows partition right away and installed the new ubuntu to play with it. It was my last reason to keep windows around. I'm finally free!
PC shipments for the last quarter are up 12% over the same quarter last year, and Windows revenues are down 24% over the same period. Serious changes are happening.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
KDE4 is far from finished and not even really intended to be the successor for 3.5 yet.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
Free software voting in 2008.
Russia is moving to nothing but free software in their schools. This makes an interesting counterpoint to their heavily censored journalism, where the censorship includes murder of journalists. I would not trust the official state distribution but computers that can run one version of free software can run another that's really free. Good for them.
I have to thank all of you nutballs who have called me Twitter. I'd never have known who twitter was much less bother to read his journal otherwise.
Brazilian election link.
Of course they are using 3.5.
3.5 is the version recommended currently for production installations such as this, with 4.1 being ready for general deployment. Very large or more conservative installations will likely not move over until 4.2 (or even later) due to their usual uptake cycles for any new technology.
And perhaps when KDE4 is ready for production and you get over your bitterness, you can post a similarly frank "thank you" to the people in the project who made it possible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exactly. 20e6 is too many systems for the Empire to just let go.
Remember how quick they were to jump on just the quarter-million XO laptops deployed a couple months back.
Now that the install is public, I'll give it three weeks before we hear about the Imperial deal to "upgrade" ALL of these computers to WinBloze(tm)(r)(c).
With his Billness ending his active pursuit of Mammon and turning his attention to not leaving behind the $40 Billion or so he's accumulated, the $2e9 this will co$t is a minor investment to make - in Brazil. It's "software development future" is too valuable to risk its destruction by that viral GPL....
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the number of 825,000 installs is correct, this is a phenomenal opportunity for advancing scientific research in those countries. Assuming a single dual-core processor in each machine, and ~80% idle time per day, that amounts to more than 1.3 million computing hours per day that can be used Wisely if the systems come preconfigured with GRID middleware.
Choose whatever works best for you, but be aware that this is one of the major problem for getting people to switch to Linux.
Can you guys just pick one already, and why can't programs work with all the damn interfaces? WTF is wrong with you people?
People try to break away from the problems of Windows and then right at the start you ask them fucking technical questions that nobody understands? People want to get AWAY from computer problems!
Kill Gnome or kill KDE, whatever. Just pick one and let that be the official GUI for Linux. Standardize the GUI, the way to code for the damn thing (graphics, sound, etc) so that we only see ONE Linux version of programs. You guys are even more pathetic than Microsoft on that one.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is it 'To be cool'? I bet it is... You popular kids and your angsty net slang....
That's funny, since you've been linking to his lame journal for a long time. Well, "long time" for an account with less than 300 posts.
Maybe it's the fact that you write exactly like twitter, right down to the same constant spelling and grammar mistakes. Maybe it's the fact that you show up in the epic sockpuppet threads. Or maybe it's things like these.
But maybe it's just the fact that you are twitter.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Well, thats 52 Million more people to convert to the wonders of GNOME... of course then Emacs once they get comfy... ;-)
While I agree that pointless, unprovoked KDE/linux bashing is useless and even trollish (although if it was Vista bashing he would have been modded funny or insightful...I have a fiery hatred for Vista too, but it's something to think about), you should have the balls to rate this guy flamebait or troll if you're going to mod him down. Modding someone overrated from 1 is a sneaky and underhanded tactic. It quietly hushes the person with no moderation description available at a glance, and it makes good metamoderation impossible, so you make a clean getaway. IMO, it shouldn't be possible to use overrated/underrated until a post is at 2. I've seen this tactic used as blatant censorship before (against myself in one case, I used to have a sig making fun of the rampant abuse of the "overrated" mod).
Yes I realize this is offtopic. Go ahead and mod me offtopic now if you like.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I suppose that the risk is that those using this school system will assume that the crippled KDE installation represents Linux. When they then use their mate's knocked-off copy of WinXP, and find out how much more it can do, they might be very impressed.
In other words, Linux=KDE-- therefore Linux = school headmaster's restriction. Windows=Computing++ therefore Windows is what we want out of school!
Maybe, the answer is to give them all a CD with KUbuntu to take away and put int any computer they find AND give them the root password. That might get them properly interested in Linux, but then heaven (or, much more preferably, a non-mythological think) help the rest of us since who knows what they might do!
A
You are kidding, aren't you? 50 milion is near the entire student population of Brazil.
Rethinking email
Probably because of KDEEdu (sorry, no link, I et it from aptitude).
Rethinking email
Part on and part off topic...
I'd like to lay into the mubobui kesekkei who down-modded Daengbo to "1 -offtopic" from 2 informative. I've SEVERAL friends from Korea who have heard of and not yet even used nor played with Linux.
Probably for the very reason you cited: for the idiot who apparently swiftly took Daengbo down, KOREA, unlike the to-a-good-point-bass-ackwards USA, is highly electronic in purchasing and payment options. It is extremely easy in Korea to make loans and payments to not just creditors, but to just about ANYone who has an account into which funds can be deposited. (Down-modder, can you name more than 25 places in the US where the average consumer has had public electronics payment/purchase options that Koreans and Japanese had? Here, in the bay area, tho we have mag readers for BART, the transit system is ancient compared to Korea and Japan, as goes payments and fare control.)
It's important for readers using Linux devices to be prepared to show off their Linux boxen/rigs in places like Korea any chance they get. Public numbers don't mean anything if they're ultimately only coming from university labs and a few thousand unique homes. We need to target USERS at the lowest level and convince them to exploit the value in/of Linux...
That being said, if a bank or some institution refuses to be browser/OS-agnostic, then why would Koreans flock to or shift in even respectable numbers to Linux?
I REALLY REALLY wish the moderators of this site would take to task those who are modding people off topic. ALL off-topic modding should be subject to moderator review. If the MODERATOR is doing the damage, then Slash should rewrite the code to POINT TO THE DOWNMODDER so that others with compassion can try to come to the rescue of the downmodded person.
Knowing about Korea's internet experience is IMPORTANT to me, and Daengbo (assuming he's Korean and not just some 'merkun with a Korean handle) ought to be given some latitude and restored to informative. I myself only about 2 years ago and several times prior (since 2001) read that Korea is heavily windows-centric on the web. It was depressing then, and if Daengbo is correct, then things are not much better. I REALLY REALLY wish Korea would lessen her dependency on msoft.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Yes, but in 50k labs how much computer time does that actually translate to per student? Im not saying that its not reaching a lot of people, but children that benefit from the XO program are getting a lot more face time with a computer.
That would be like me saying im going to serve my entire town of 100k people with 10 computer labs. Sure anyone could use it and it might benefit everyone, but if no one had access to a computer then can you imagine the demand? there will have to be time limits imposed, which is going to limit the amount of learning that can be done
I call bullshit.
The standard desktop install at my last workplace was built for a 10GB hard drive (we had to DOD-spec sanitize the drives frequently, and the extra time required for our larger hard drives was prohibitive without migrating all our hardware to SATA).
It had a 2GB pagefile. Standard install of XP, standard install of Office 2k3, Roxio CD burning software (which is hugely bloated, but it's what was approved), Visio, and about 20 other applications (one of which was 2GB installed all by itself). It had drivers for 10 different hardware profiles for a unified Ghost image.
We had to make sure we deleted the hotfix uninstall info periodically, but other than that, it fit fine. If XP+Office is bursting the seams of your 8GB partition, you're doing something wrong.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Heh :-) Somewhere I've got a 486sx/20 with Slackware 7 on it and FVWM.
Stick Men
According to local press, the little laptop isn't doing so good. One study in fact (mentioned in Veja news magazine) even found that student's grade got worse, since they became distracted.
The XO laptop was also doing badly because there were not nearly enough qualified teachers. We're talking teachers here that can barely teach with a blackboard and chalk. The international Pisa student evaluation (done in 57 countries) places Brazilian students at the lowest tier in Mathematics proficiency http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/educacao/ult305u351481.shtml (pt_br).
Now, as we all know, even for the lowly Turtle logo, a modicum of Mathematics is necessary for both the student and the teacher.
In this respect, open source (source code) will bring nothing to these students. Maybe for a statistically negligible elite. Well, so be it.
As for the purported 52 mil, the nationwide 2004 school census had the numbers at 8.7 mil for "mid-level" school and 10.7 mil at 17-17 years.
http://br.monografias.com/trabalhos/educacao-pobreza-brasil/educacao-pobreza-brasil2.shtml (pt_br)
This 52 mil is probably self-promotion bullshit from the chronics at this leftist government, who do nothing but lie in general and specifically with numbers. The only real numbers I can see sprouting forth with any substance is the shitload of money the political free-software clique that revolves around the Worker's Party will make in installing Debian for such a huge basis. Hooray!
There's very little being done in terms of educating teachers so as to harness the power of free software in building knowledge (and the GPL is not good for that - BSD systems would really empower people to sell their work instead of giving it for free).
My feeling from young kids I know from public schools is that Linux will produce nothing but rejection in the end, as soon as they realize you can't play those neat video games in it. You know how kids are, they don't care about the GNU toolchain...Their bottom line thinking is: "no fun - then the fuck with it!"
Anyhow, if I sound against the thing, I just want to say I'm not. I just would not believe the hype. We've seen Brazil and Free Software in the headlines before and in terms of concrete achievements, they have delivered very little.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Thanks for the support, but my handle is actually not Korean -- it's Thai. I've lived in Korea for four years now, though, so I have some experience and am not talking out of my ass. I can't even apply for a re-entry visa online, a task that is quite simple for IE users. IE under Wine won't even work.
The Internet connection in Korea rocks, and Ilove it, but the actual Korean web sucks, filled with IE-only sites, sites completely in Flash, and sections of text converted to JPEGs to make the page formatting consistent.
Regarding the moderation -- it's probably one of the Mac guys I pissed off recently. I've been mod-bombed a few times in the last two weeks.
Put identity in the browser.
I know how you feel. I've been mod-bombed enough times i no longer really get discombobulated. There REALLY ought to be a revision to the mod system. Like, any precipitous change in score or category, or any range of change attempting to evade a close-look due to change in score should automatically trigger an e-mail to random, trusted, balanced moderators to out-mod the on-duty moderator to make sure that there is no chance of banging the hell out of inciteful types such as me. I call a spade a spade, as you can probably discern... hehehehe, especially in the political stuff, where i tend to rankle the ire of enough ppl to get my scoring capability limited. Plus, some stuff I say may be so volatile that it's radioactive, and nobody will touch it for fear of the various monitoring intel agencies associating user sympathy toward me for an expression or baseline of their political posture... fraidy cats, i suppose...
I'm thinking of visiting Korea, and boy would I love to live there for more than a year. It would suck to get there with my Linux laptop and not be able to do much. But, as long as it's reading, I might muddle through... But, as you said, submitting official documents might be problematic for me, too, even if it's 2009 or 2010.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Yes, but in 50k labs how much computer time does that actually translate to per student? Im not saying that its not reaching a lot of people, but children that benefit from the XO program are getting a lot more face time with a computer. That would be like
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
i'm from India and I find most people to be scared of "linux". They don't mind viruses, system crashes bu simply don't have the guts to try out something new like Linux, inspite of its many advantages.
Yes you are insane! KDE really needs at least 256Mb of RAM so it's not accessing the disk all the time. Only yesterday i installed mandriva 2008.1 on a celeron 400 with about 200Mb of RAM, using KDE was painful. It was much better using ICEWM. This was all done for a quick hack. In reality on something that slow you are much much better of with a small distro, e.g., Puppy, DSL or Austumi.
To the other people in this thread: I guess KDE was chosen as it is a great desktop, rather than for its speed. Having said that however i use KDE on my 2yr old lappy and it's not slow
Your thoughts form your reality.
Its not as bad as it sounds once you remove some of the sillier options, eg indexed searching. I'll get flamed for this, but it is way faster then XFCE4 on the same machine. ICEWM lacks functionality, and my setup faster then XP. RAM usage with nothing loaded is about 100Mb, with a web browser loaded, about the same as XP. The custom Kernel helps a lot. I use mandriva as well, but beacuse I can install other desktop environments I dont need to go the DSL route.
I dont understand why we actually need so much RAM just to run a decent desktop environment. Or why there are no standard type interfaces that are small and fast. Windows 95 is more functional than some of these light desktops for goodness sake. Where is the simple fast desktop environment that is also functional enough to use every day?
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
This has no true value. It is a socialist government imposition, through the power of the state, with the complete ignorance of the people.