Australian Digital Education Revolutionbeing a BIG blow for Linux.

[harry at ipunix.com]

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Ubuntu-AU'ers I see a lot of time being spent on the Australian Ubuntu LoCo structure and now the wiki.

But what is happening around us and in particular in my area (Strathpine Queensland). I now see year nine through 12 student running around with mini notebooks (also called netbook) supplied through their school under the Australian Federal Government's Digital Education Revolution (DER) program. From my early findings it looks like that notebooks will be distributed to eventually every year nine through 12 student. They are all to receive a mini notebook with windows 7 installed by the completion of the rollout in 2012.

This is a big blow to the Linux community as for example 267,000 Windows 7 based netbooks that the NSW Government alone has started rolling out to high schools will come pre-installed with open source software. From information gathered they were certainly looking seriously at Linux platforms, but vendors didn't provide the answers or comfort they were looking for.

I think part of the problem with the Linux tenders would have been that they were represented by hardware vendors pushing Linux to increase their profit on the units, rather than pushing Linux because they believed in it or had the right answers. If they had gone with a Linux based system they could have saved the country (tax payers) close to a $1 billion in licensing fees.

All this points out that we the Linux (Ubuntu) users must be active not only within our own group(s) but engage direct with the community in general, visit schools, educate hardware vendors and lobby with the Australian Federal and State Governments.

Cheers,

Harry Degenaar
harry at ipunix.com

 
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