Edubuntu CD/ Distro for Chile and LatinAmerica

[Mauricio Hernandez]

Unfortunatelly, my skill are not yet the ones I need to make my own LiveCD.

However, I do have a view of what the Chilean and some latinamerican
countries current education reality is and what needs we have in terms
of Linux.

- Most computers in schools are Pentium II or III (sometimes even Pentium I)

- The average RAM is 64 MB and some schools have 128.

- Internet is still "lazy" but the Gov. is trying to have more and
more schools with all computers connected to the web.

- Teachers, and as Gov. knows very little about what a Computer Class
is, what teachers do is to teach MS Office, mainly and mostly :(.

- Students usually learn MS xyz applications and that's it. They have
poor understanding of how a computer works, unless they study in
Schools that here are considered "with technical curriculum" (very
few)

- Usually, those schools who are implementing Linux or testing it,
they use LTSP, mainly because installing Linux to each single machine
is tedious.

Why?, because we still can't find a distro that allows you to:

a) test a light LiveCD (so we can check HW and show it working)

b) and if you want to install from it, you can select Which_Apps you
need to install,

c) and then you kill X (automatically, so installation does not take
for ever considering the little ram we have)

d) and start in a regular tty pressing "next, next, next" after partitioning, 

e) and being sure you'll end up running a very light Desktop such as
Fluxbox or XFCE4, but still running productive-education applications
(Abiword, Gnumeric, Firefox, Thunderbird of Evolution, TheGimp,
Sodipodi, Gcompris, at least)

If Edubuntu can accomplish that goal, then you'd be solving many
problems we have in latinamerican countries' schools.

Of course, there are very few exceptions to this issue of resistance
to Free Software technologies. Please check this colombian private
school project that is currently working 100% using free software and
also teaching about it http://www.gfc.edu.co/si/linux/

-- 
Regards,

Mauricio Hernandez Z.

"Hell is repeating someone else's mistakes" (JPS)