Re: DEBATE FROM INDIA: Linux for schools

[Frederick Noronha <fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Edward for your mail. Permit me to forward your letter to a couple of
Linux mailing lists in India, with a request that anyone who might have
specific information get in touch. We could/should share synergies. Frederick.

On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, you wrote:
> Fred -
> I am working on a similar project for Ghana.  Do you know how much it
> costs to hire an Indian teacher, knowlegeable in Linux?  We might need
> some in Ghana, if they are available...  thanks.  Also, if you have a
> contacts for getting programming work done in India, please let me know.
> Thanks.
> Edward Hiskes
> Richland, WA, USA
> hiskes@xxxxxxxxxxx

*************ANOTHER INTERESTING MESSAGE********************

Re: DEBATE FROM INDIA: Linux for schools
Date: 12 Nov 2000 19:23:17 -0500
From: Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: linux-without-borders@xxxxxxx
Reply to: Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@xxxxxxxxxx>


Depending on the memory, many of the 486 machines can be useful
if you use the low-memory linux distribution developed by the
Canadian Linux Users' Exchange --- we developed this distro for
use in our Learnux project to outfit inner-city kids with
"discarded" computers.  Check out www.linux.ca -- I believe there
is a link on the page to download the distribution.  If not, let
me know and I will hunt it down for you.

On http://www.teledyn.com you can find a link to Linux@school, a
mailing list of people interested in using Linux for curriculum
education (K12 means "Kindergarten to grade 12" or roughly children
aged 4 to 19).  There are also some links to school projects in
our link directory:

http://www.teledyn.com/search/search.php?category=linux.Children
http://www.teledyn.com/search/search.php?category=linux.Schools_and_Teaching

You may find that you do not want to run Linux on classroom machines
because of the large volume of very good old DOS software on websites
such as the Simtel archives (sorry, I have no URL for them anymore)
and you can get DOS-based browsers for the internet use.  A great many
of the more useful Linux programs are too slow to be useful on a 486
with less than 8Mb of memory, and Linux on less than 300Mb of
diskspace may require you to delete document files during the install
process to keep within the disk limits.

You can use Linux in console mode, it served many of us very well for
many years.  For example, lynx or w3m can be used for web surfing and
you can run pico or emacs for an editor (my children first learned
computing using Emacs as their editor).  Once you move into a graphic
desktop, the demands on memory and diskspace make many programs
difficult to use; many programs also require a larger screen than the
typical 640x480 on an old SVGA card (this also frustrates laptop 
owners).  If you have machine which do have more than 8Mb, we find
WordPerfect will run fairly well providing there are no other
processes running and you use a minimal desktop manager.

Linux may be more useful as an infrastructure operating system to run
file and print servers, internet gateways, network hubs, or to teach
older children (ages 13 and up) programming and computer science.  One
of our local high-school children (16) used several 486 machines to do
a project on networking and was thinking of building a supercomputer.

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@xxxxxxxx>: office voice/fax: 01 519 4222723
T(C)Inc Business Innovations through Open Source http://www.teledyn.com
KernelWiki Community Linux Docs: http://kernelbook.sourceforge.net/wiki