Hi, the text quoted below sounds pretty impressive. Also make sure to read http://piacentini.livejournal.com/7871.html
Mauricio, do you have an email address from someone involved in this, I'd like
to send congrats to them and ask them how they modified Debian and how we
could cooperate cooperate in Debian Edu, another Debian based distro (being
99,867% pure Debian) for schools, in northern europe also used with KDE on
the desktop :)
regards,
Holger
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Aaron Siego: Deploying KDE to 52 million young people
Date: Thursday 24 April 2008 11:43
From: Planet Debian upstream <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mauricio broke the news today in his blog about what can only be described as
[a massive deployment of free software][1]. 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][2].
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][1]. I encourage you to head over and take a peak if you haven't
already done so.
[1]: http://piacentini.livejournal.com/7871.html
[2]: http://webeduc.mec.gov.br/
URL:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/04/deploying-kde-to-52-million-young.html
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