[ubuntu-za] Desktop deployments in South Africa

[Jan Groenewald]

Hi Garron,

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:13:46AM +0200, Garron Stevenson wrote:
>    Anyone have any decent desktop Linux deployment stories for South Africa?
>    I've found lots of SARS maybe, Government maybe etc. but nothing definite.
>    I'm looking for desktop not server deployments.
>    Anyone?

CSIR had some articles about starting to migrate 2700 desktops recently.
SARS, DoE, DST, SITA are more talk than walk, I think, but you can check with 
Karl Fischer @ DST, Meraka, etc. who might have more info for you on those
projects.

What counts as decent? Many universities have compsci or applied math
or some linux labs floating around, from 20 to 40 or even 60 or 80 machines,
however always dual booting though, the largest linux-only I saw was around 20
machines. And then these institutions still have windows around a lot though.

I run 94 Ubuntu desktops and 4 ubuntu laptops and 6 Ubuntu servers for the African 
Institute for Mathematical Sciences. That's all the desktops we have. None of those 
have Windows on them. When the institute started they wanted to dual boot but I used
the term "neo-colonial" and hinted at not taking the job. We started with 6 Windows
PCs for admin staff, I eliminatedfour in a month and another one after 18 months 
(user change management, mostly, that was the secretary, I had her on windows +
firefox + thunderbird + openoffice for 12 months with the Linux desktop next to
her windows one for a year). Now I have one windows machine running DVR for 
security cameras and if I had any free time it would have zoneminder on it 
already. It is not allowed internet access, and I prefer to have it not on the ethernet
at all. I also run one proprietary application from Impronet for security door access
tags, but on a Linux server using a firebird database. I don't have the skills to replace this
in the forseeable future. I install various proprietary bitsaon the desktops to aid adoption 
(skype, googleearth, adobe flash) and all the restricted codecs, libdvdcss, etc. The rest is 
Free and Open Source Software.

I put Ubuntu next to Windows on about 50 visiting laptops every year for desktop usage.

We run desktop training courses.

regards,
Jan

-- 
   .~. 
   /V\     Jan Groenewald
  /( )\    www.aims.ac.za
  ^^-^^