Mauricio broke the news today in his blog about what can only be described as a massive deployment of free software. I'd heard about this project recently, but reading more of the details in Mauricio's blog really cemented in my mind how groundbreaking this is.
In summary: KDE on Linux has stepped up to become the software platform in the primary school education system in Brazil. That may sound like a bold claim, but the numbers are staggering and speak for themselves:
By the end of this year 29,000 labs serving some 32,000,000 students will be fully deployed and in active use.
By the end of next year (2009) those numbers will have swelled to 53,000 labs serving some 52,000,000 students.
The systems use KDE 3.5 and take full advantage of Debian as well as KDE's Edu and Games projects, use of KDE4 in future implementation is just starting to be explored. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the deployment is how they maximize investment in hardware by putting several heads on each system.
What about the content used on these computers? Go see for yourself.
KDE 3.5 will be supported in the market for many years to come due to deployments such as this one. Looking towards the future, KDE4 will likely make some things even easier for them in the future, such as how to implement the navigation bar they added to the top of desktop as a result of usability research done involving this specific audience. With Plasma, a few lines of JavaScript is all that would be needed.
Brazil is rolling out an additional 150,000 portable machines in their "Um Computador por Aluno" project; those machines are Classmate PCs and though I haven't found out first hand yet what they will be running, my online spelunking seems to indicate they, too, are sporting KDE on Linux.
Brazil is not the only place in the world that things are heating up for Free software and KDE, but this has got to be one of the more exciting publicly announced projects going right now.
In a word, it is humongous.
You can learn more about this expansive project by reading Mauricio's blog entry. I encourage you to head over and take a peak if you haven't already done so.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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30 comments:
GREAT NEWS !!!!
[quote]The systems use KDE 3.5 and take full advantage of Debian as well as KDE's Edu and Games projects, use of KDE4 in future implementation is just starting to be explored.[/quote]
So you guys better put more focus on KDE4 for Debian, else it may be another desktop that will be installed :D
humongously humongous. :D
I was in Thailand when they made a similar announcement several years ago, though it was only around 1M. MS came in, made some back-room deals involving threats of BSA-style audits of the government (Thailand's piracy rate was huge), and the whole year-long movement toward FOSS was derailed in a week.
Normally classmate PC running Linux are running Mandriva with KDE.
'Classmate PC' showcased running Mandriva Linux
Viva o Brazil :)
Great news, Seigo. ty
Notice that afaik there is no decision on the hardware that will be used for the initial UCA run. Brazil made tests with 3 different solutions: OLPC, ClassMate and Mobilis. There was an initial auction and ClassMate won it, but did not reach the price point specified, so it was cancelled. A second auction will occur soon, apparently.
The slide they used show the 3 potential solutions as well:
http://pics.livejournal.com/piacentini/pic/00013056/
To Daengbo: Notice that, of course, states and municipalities are free to change the software installed on these machines, even switching to Windows if they want to. But in this case, they loose support. There will always be some conversion rate, but this is the other side of the coin on a democratic government. Someone told me that a few years ago, in the initial labs equipped with Linux in Brazil, there was a 35% conversion rate to Windows. Now in the installations for the previous version of Linux Educacional this number is smaller than 10%, and there is the start of a reverse trend as well, as teachers get used to desktop with the help of KDE and the usability research.
52 million ?! The population of Brazil is 180 mil. I don't think almost 30% of the Brazilian population is a student bellow high school age...
C'mon!
This is another grandiose plan from the Brazilian free software movement that likes to talk a lot and delivers very little.
Who ever heard of any substantial contribution to FOSS that was heavily funded by Brazil's leftist government ? Name one. Name their substantial contribution (via funding) to, say, make the Linux desktop faster.
Besides, the Debian fixation can only be explained by the political clique that surrounds the government (and, by the way, they get huge contracts), when all the world has moved to Ubuntu...
First off, great news :)
Second, that Brazil is kinda leading the way isn't so surprising to me due to various issues (like the bank sector in brazil), or more importantly *hint hint* Gobolinux
However I want to comment on one thing:
'With Plasma, a few lines of JavaScript is all that would be needed.'
Who uses Javascript when he can use Ruby or Python? ;-)
Exactly that I can use Ruby is a reason I will happily twiddle with Plasma in the future! (That being said, I think Kde4 isnt as easy-going yet to compile as Kde3. But i am sure these things will be improved on the next few months.)
While I do not like to respond to anonymous cowards, in 2000 the population of the country was around 170mi, with more than 25% in the age served by primary schools. This was the last official census. I can not find data for 2010, but it is not difficult to imagine it will be around 200 mi or more (growth rate of 1% per year plus in the last decade), and at that percentage the number given by the MEC guys seems close to the mark.
I actually do not care if there are 52million or 5 million, to be honest. Even if there are 10,000 people benefiting from this effort I think it is good for KDE and makes a difference in my motivation to contribute to it. But I can not dispute the claim based on nothing.
@anonymous: "The population of Brazil is 180 mil. I don't think almost 30% of the Brazilian population is a student bellow high school age..."
the beautiful thing about the internet is that you can research all kinds of things really easily before commenting on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Brazil#Age_structure
25.3% are below the age of 14. another 10% or so are age 15 to 19. so somewhere around 35% of their population is currently high school, elementary or pre-school.
and that's just today: the population is growing quickly there.
"Brazilian free software movement that likes to talk a lot and delivers very little."
there are certainly elements in Brazil that are like that. i've met some of them myself first-hand =) but not everyone there falls into this category.
"Who ever heard of any substantial contribution to FOSS that was heavily funded by Brazil's leftist government ?"
i'm not sure what the alignment of the government has to do with anything here, but i don't think it's really the job of government to fund software development.
it's the government's job to ensure resources are used wisely, that local economy thrives, that sovereignty is maintained. by using free software they create a local market which feeds both persons (potential contributors) as well as money into the free software ecosystem that in turn help drive things forward.
i think they are doing a good job of creating such an evironment in Brazil with initiatives such as this one, and as such can be seen as notable and valuable supporters.
"Name one. Name their substantial contribution (via funding) to, say, make the Linux desktop faster."
the "via funding" is not something i can answer as i don't have that sort of personal knowledge, but i will note that it's a straw man argument because "via funding" is not the only nor even probably the most interesting route for them to support free software.
however, if we look at this particular initiative, i think paying for 150k laptops and 59,000 computer labs is a nice investment into companies that deliver (and therefore are incentivated properly towards) free software solutions.
"Besides, the Debian fixation can only be explained by the political clique that surrounds the government (and, by the way, they get huge contracts),"
i thought you implied the government wasn't funding development? ;)
seriously though, i agree that the debian slant is very much due to the personal leanings of various segments of the community there. this is not surprising, actually. that you disagree with their preferences is your own perogative, but i think it's sad to let that negatively colour your impression of this initiative which is very positive for free software.
"when all the world has moved to Ubuntu..."
Ubuntu's success has been rather, and purposefully, over stated.
there is visible success amongst the vocal enthusiast community and they have also managed to start poking into the mass market areas via tie-ins with, e.g., Dell (though no number emerge). but brand awareness does not necessarily equate to market share (or, for that matter, sustainability).
the *buntu systems are quite good; i use kubuntu on some of the machines here at the house myself. but i think keeping in touch with reality is useful.
in this case that means recognizing that *buntu is an important up-and-comer, but that there are huge amounts of other Free software operating systems out there in real deployments.
that's actually a good thing, even. well, unless you believe in monocultures and limited competition, i suppose.
@daengbo: "MS came in, made some back-room deals involving threats of BSA-style audits of the government (Thailand's piracy rate was huge), and the whole year-long movement toward FOSS was derailed in a week."
yes, the Thai issue was unfortunate. thankfully this deployment is actually already in place and has good support. it's non-trivial to overturn a deployment of this size after the fact.
i think the free software community and the companies around it have learned a lot from past mistakes, in particular announcing deployments and other commercially relevant successes too soon.
the result is that more and more projects actually take root and are allowed to succeed before they are recognized and flagged as important threats to, e.g., Microsoft.
@anonymous: "Who uses Javascript when he can use Ruby or Python?"
heh... lots of people, for better or worse. it's great we also have these other languages available to us, but javascript's simplicity, security profile, low overhead coupled with huge market awareness (meaning people who know how to sling it around a bit) often make it a great choice.
but yeah, feel free to s,javscript,$LANGE_OF_CHOICE,g in these blogs =)
They should have switched to Apple Mac's. OS X is a better operating system in every way than Lin-sux. Better GUI, better kernal, better hardware. Simply better. Think Different. Think Smarter. Think Apple.
> They should have switched to Apple Mac's. OS X is a better operating system in every way than Lin-sux. Better GUI, better kernal, better hardware. Simply better. Think Different. Think Smarter. Think Apple.
No. Apple is a lot of things but they've never been better. Supporting a small subset of hardware is easy, especially if you control the whole platform and can charge for people's ignorance.
re:think different
Apple - the only entity more proprietary than M$. Nothing free about them.
I love the idea of free software as a choice for an entire public school system.
It's about time.
For a few years now, kde feels very light on memory usage. I like it because of that, and now something tells me that this is not going to change :)
>Simply better. Think Different.
>Think Smarter. Think Apple.
Wow, do fanbois know all the PR spiel by heart?
Good boy, now roll over.
Rob Enderle
As usual, there are some who just can't stand the success Linux is achieving. To me it's not about KDE, Linux etc, but about free software.
Think of the long term effects this will have on the country:
- They'll save a lot of money (firstly)
- Every student in Brazil will have heard about Linux and probably 90% of them will have used it at least once.
- A good percentage will keep on using Linux because of various reasons (brazil is a relatively poor country despite all their natural resources etc.)
- Those that keep using it will pass on the word
- A certain percentage of those will be highly-techy (good for open source)
- They will pass it on to those new to computers..
Probably a bunch more to mention...
...when all the world has moved to Ubuntu...
I find it really quite sad when people get strange delusions about what they think is happening, because it doesn't do anybody any good. All the world is not moving to xUbuntu (most of the world uses something 'else').
On top of that, while xUbuntu has gained some traction in the open source and Linux using community itself, I cannot find a single verifiable reason as to why all these mythical users are suddenly dropping Windows or other systems for xUbuntu.
It's rather like all that enterprise Linux desktop stuff people started talking about all the years ago. Where are all those users?
Ubuntu (or any other derivative) has managed to be top of distrowatch, and that's about it.
"What about the content used on these computers? Go see for yourself."
Yeah...if only I spoke Portuguese! :)
Yeah...if only I spoke Portuguese! :)
I speak. That doesn't are the softwares in the distro. It's just a bunch of links to education related projects.
I found it kind of funny that someone was complaining about a "political clique" in Brazil's government. Hint: It's a government. Who runs it is selected through something they call "politics". It would be pretty weird if there weren't any "political cliques" involved.
To Antonio: Among the links, there are those that are connected to the actual contect. The ProInfo one for example links to the actual .iso images for the distro. The Rived one links to some of the educational interactive objects. And Portal Dominio Publico links to pdf content, for example.
[quote]- They'll save a lot of money (firstly)[/quote]
Even if they spend the same as they would have with a MS/Proprietary platform, In this case, they can choose to have 100% of the money feeding the Brazillian economy, vs being shipped to the United States.
Is he just taking about Brazil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Brazil#Population
states that as of 2005 the Brazil population is this...
15-64 years: 68.4% (male 64,437,140/female 65,523,447)
so 52 million is most of the population in the age range of 15-64?
Quickly looking at the wikipedia section, it appears that there is only 47 million, not the 52 million as stated, but then again, I'm rushing through all of this.
The thing that I would like to know is: exactly how many of those young people in this 3rd. rate country are actually in school? Seems to me, I remember a news quote from the BBC stating that only a small percentage of children actually go to school in Brazil?
A lot of the people are just to poor to go to school; a lot of parents don't even think that school is of any value; their children are preferred to stay on the farm, etc.
Things may have changed, of course, but I still find the number of 52,000,000 a little exaggerated at best.
If true, however, it would be a shot in the arm for Linux, but whether that is enough to propel Linux on the desktop, that is another question? Children in school, well, that's still not the same as Windows.
Hopefully, what ever happens, Linux will increase to the point that it can give both Windows and OS X some real competition.
That would be a good thing indeed!
cool :)
as far as i know they plan to use Linux in Russian schools and labs too.
I think it has something to do with Microsoft lawsuit against principal of a school for having a pirated winxp on one of his computers which came installed from a computer store.
go linux :)
Truly awe inspiring numbers.
Congrats to all.
And as a cherry on the sundae, I went to see a friend this week who was running KDEv4 and wow! We will definitely be rocking 4.1 this summer (and so will be both my parents who are well into their 70's!)
PS: Can you keep up abreast of this story, I would love to read/see more about the brazilian project.
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