Macedonia Deploys 5,000 Ubuntu Desktops in Schools 227
vladoboss writes "The latest GNOME Journal is running a story about the deployment of 5000 Ubuntu desktops in public schools. The Republic of Macedonia is a small country in Southern Europe with a population of around 2 million. Internet penetration is only around 5% and software piracy rate is rampant. Also, the government does not play any major role in the development of the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and a private sector is dominated by Microsoft technologies. Given the circumstances, one would not expect any free software related stories to make the headlines. Yet the presence of a small volunteer organization by the name Free Software Macedonia is making a big difference in this small country."
Office Apps (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a strong movement because children tend to come back home and fiddle with home PCs (like installing games/trojans), so it's now more likely that more Macedonian homes will be running Linux too.
What I am not sure is the career future of these children of the future. Will they be better off in their career now that they are primed with OpenSource ideas, will they become the valuable elites in "knowledge-based exports" market, or will they be forced to re-learn MS once they enter workfoce?
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Then, knowing "linux" instead of "windows" does not mean anything. I guess there is more difference between windows95 and vista or between kde and gnome (which is what they would see) than xp/gnome or xp/kde.
And there are custom themes to reduce this look&feel difference.
Re:Office Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes there is more relearning between versions of an App than there is between two different apps that serve the same purpose.
The other thing I imagine they can use is educational software - I should check the article if they deployed Ubuntu or Edubuntu.
I wonder if the free educational software in the OS world could provide schools lots of savings?
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
IIRC, both Apple and Microsoft really really really want schools using their software. Microsoft moreso, as they can provide their software only (free to them, but they might still charge) whereas Apple is still glued to hardware.
Re:Office Apps (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps free software will create jobs. The opportunity is certainly there.
Re:Office Apps (Score:2, Funny)
Well they can learn how to flameware with Greeks on the net about the name of the country and learn how to avoid getting shot by Serbs by playing Quake.
Re:Office Apps (Score:5, Informative)
They are, unfortunately, being killed, constantly, but by Albanian separatists. They were promissed help by the U.S. , but since they have no oil they got nothing. Most of Macedonians still live in fear of Albanian terorists, who rampage, kill people, raid vilages and bomb cities allmost every few days.
The only ones the U.S. helped there are the Albanians. Islamic extremist and terorists are allways welcome in Europe, by the U.S., especially when they have drugs money to pay for CIA instructors.
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Albanians! [imdb.com]
Re:Office Apps (Score:5, Interesting)
The US did not then and has not since supported any Albanian terrorists or even seperatists who were operating, or who even wanted to operate in Macedonia. We really haven't even supported those so inclined who live and operate in Kosovo, since we entered into Kosvo, if anything most of our effort is spent protecting Serbs from harassment and discrimination. We supported the Lawfully elected Macedonian Government (though we did encourage a few reformations to reduce the discrimination the Albanian minority thought it was suffereing, sometimes truthfully sometimes not.)
The funniest thing about that entire Insurgency/Civil War/Call it what you will, is that the entire time the NLA was certain that any day we were going to start helping them either actively with troops, or with weapons or supplies. But we never did. The US always supported the government, mostly with monetary aid.
Your accusation at the end of your post is unfounded and uncalled for. Although not really unexpected. Most the time we were there we were constantly being asked if the US still hated the Serbs. Which of course we the US never did, we just hated what some of them had been doing to Kosovars, and what they had done to non-Serbian Bosnians and Croats.
As to supporting Macedonians, we've had troops in Macedonia since it declared independance and asked for UN Peacekeepers to keep Serbia from trying anything like it did when other states broke off from Yugoslavia. We joined that mission and supported it until the Kosovo War. We transitioned our base to be the rear support base for our main force in Kosovo. We remained there until a couple years ago when we moved those support personnel up to Pristina in Kosovo.
Since the day The Republic of Macedonia (I heartily disagree with the politcally correct FYROM) declared independence, the US has supported the it and it's lawfully elected Government, and thus the majority of the people. We have supported your troops and police. We poured tons of money into your economy, and we definatly did not help the NLA or any follow-on groups.
Oh and as to the original article, yea Piracy is big there, I myself brought home a few disks with software and music on them. Hey, they were cheap and it poured some money into the economy. Oh, and on a non-piracy note, my wife really likes the custom tailored tux I got there that I wore on our wedding day. $100 (US) for a hand tailored Tux, awsome for a really skinny guy like me who has trouble finding clothes that fit.
Re:Office Apps (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a matter of political correctness. It's a matter of a Serbian nation making territorial demands in Greece. How would you like it if C
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
BTW, yes Macedonian page clearly states that the OO.org 2.0 has been finally fully localised - kids will use their native language in Office Apps.
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Re:Office Apps (Score:2, Interesting)
They are a Bulgarian (dialect) speaking sub-population of old Serbia. The ethnic composition is nearly 100% Slav or Albanian. They are no more Macedonian than Queen Elizabeth I. Certain Pakistanis have a better claim on calling themselves Macedonians than those people, as they ar
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Yeah some of these Linux geeks are pretty dedicated.
Re:Office Apps (Score:3)
For those curious enough as I was, this is why. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Office Apps (warning: rant, rave, and scream) (Score:4, Informative)
They are - and have been - and probably will be - a political and religious powderkeg.
Greeks in particular have a few things to be pissed about. The religious leader of their faith is in a different country because of how the lines were redrawn post-WWI. Hundreds of thousands were massacred in Asia Minor during the '20s by the Turks, but no one there will admit to it. (And yes, I know, they didn't get the worst of it. It was still brutal.)
In 1452, they (and the rest of the Orthodox world) lost their highest cathedral to the Ottomans, who desecrated parts of Hagia Sophia and turned it into a mosque. (Think of it as though St Peter's were conquered by Iran.) Now it's used solely as a tourist site.
The name of Macedonia was assigned to the former southern province of communist Yugoslavia in 1952 by Tito.
There's no historic basis for the name; the region of Macedonia whence Philip and Alexander came from was much further south.
Yes, at the time, there was no concept of Hellenic unity; that developed mainly after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, which put the final nail in the coffin of unity between Rome and Constantinople. However, there was this understanding that they spoke the same tongue, they learned the same thought (pop quiz: who taught Alexander?), they spread the same ideas and believed in the same faith as everyone else on the peninsula now known as Greece.
The Balkans as a whole are rife with religious and ethnic hates going back centuries. The Catholics hate the Orthodox, and both hate the Muslims. The Croatians and Albanians and Serbians are at each others' throats, the Greeks hate the Albanians for taking part of their country, the Turks for the same reason as well as the historical stuff, and everybody hate the Roma (gypsies).
The only thing that kept a lid on Yugoslavia's ethnic groups, well, was the iron fist of Tito.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Office Apps (warning: rant, rave, and scream) (Score:2)
Right, just like those niggers we freed 50 years ago. Why can't they just look forward and not at the past?
Re:Office Apps (Score:1)
Re:Office Apps (Score:2, Informative)
Also, I didn't RTFM, but I would imagine this 'Free Software Macedonia' group mentioned in the blurb will be providing them whatever
Re:Office Apps (Score:3, Interesting)
"Linux development is BUILT on providing support. I'm convinced that keeping the whole thing confusing and back-ass-ward is the thing driving the support-based business model. I mean... without delving too deep into the details... let's just look at the names chosen for software.
T
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
So you've never actually used Ubuntu, yet you're making assumptions about how it works? This was precisely my point in the previous message. What right have you to make a whole lot of baseless assertions about an operating system that you've never even used?
"Aside from the single point about gnome's Start Menu being in the TOP left instead of the bottom left which was honestly quite trivial to my point you
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
If you'd originally said something this reasonable, I wouldn't have responded so rudely. It was becau
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Nice troll... I suppose that you never took the time to use Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution running Gnome.
The name of the program that you use for performing a given task does not matter much, except if you want to run it from the command line. But most users will access these programs from th
Re:Office Apps (Score:4, Informative)
Twice for me.. both my fault (Score:2)
No operating system in the world could have dealt sensibly with either of those problems, so, for me, Ubuntu is batting 100
Re:Office Apps (Score:3, Informative)
1. To compile ndiswrapper for my wireless card
2. To install the official ATI drivers
3. To use vim
I'm very impressed by the polish of the Ubuntu distribution and will recommend it to others
Re:Office Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously, American children should have more of this. Challenge them. I sound like my dad but kids these days spend more time BS'ing about what they don't know instead of actually learning it. I feel sorry for my country. We put so much effort into convincing our kids how great our country is and how smart they are for being able to turn on a computer. We should be teaching them skills that will enable them to compete in the world. I say good for Macedonian.
Re:Office Apps (Score:1)
Re:Office Apps (Score:1, Redundant)
In Full Battle Array (Score:4, Funny)
Seven Thousand Macedonian Linux Desktops in Full Battle Array! [happychild.org.uk]
Glad to see... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not KDE (Score:1)
Why would they put KDE on a system and yet not use Kubuntu instead? It seems likely to me they're using gnome, which given their wonderful new Cairo API would be a good thing. I personally went right off KDE when i realised most of the apps were eating huge proportions of CPU and memory. It got so bad that i switched to a GNOME media player, despite me loving amarok. Now i don't use KDE. I'm thinking of this from the point of view that presumably macedonian poor families can't afford th
Re:Not KDE (Score:4, Informative)
Kubuntu is just the name of the Ubuntu install cd that installs KDE instead of Gnome by default.
So the parent post was right in saying that "that setup is always just a few mouse clicks away".
Copyrights, copyrights, copyrights... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Copyrights, copyrights, copyrights... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope with Vista that there is no Corporate version and that all businesses and consumer had to pay full price and activate immediately upon install. Make Windows and Office impossible to pirate and watch OSS use sky rocket.
In fact, someone should SUE microsoft or... (Score:2)
Microsoft only became popular because of piracy.
I say, Microsoft, don't be soft, force ALL users to pay. I have a DVD with cracked XP's, I run a LEGIT 2000 install on a partition at home.
It will be the last Microsoft I use. For the next 2 years I am sure games will run on win2k.
After that, I am sure they will run on my OSS OS of choice.
Re: Developers, Developers, Developers... (Score:1)
Mutual Exclusion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:1)
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:4, Informative)
Whereas we could go into any of the CD shops in town and get the same disks for just a few cents more. Or we could even go onto the NATO Base where there was a CD shop and again pay that same cheap rate. With the exchange rate in 2001 it cost $2.50 per disk and thats how everything was sold, on a per disk basis. A CD with hundreds of MP3's or a direct bootleg of a just released Album, or a copy of the latest version of MS Office or any other software you wanted was just $2.50.
And as to bringing said bootleg CD's home, all Customs cared was that you were not bringing multiple copies of the same product back to try to sell.
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:2)
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:2)
Re:Mutual Exclusion? (Score:2)
Oh, good grief. (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop it. Stop it, I say. I can't stand the words "rampant" and "piracy" in the same sentence anymore. And besides, how can a rate be rampant?
Re:Oh, good grief. (Score:2)
Re:Oh, good grief. (Score:2)
Well, you could crack a dictionary and find out the actual meaning of the word. And while you're at it, take a look at the etymology. Often, it explains why such a word is used.
Re:Oh, good grief. (Score:2)
Re:Oh, good grief. (Score:2)
Operating System classes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Operating System classes (Score:2, Funny)
More like, "We run GNU/Linux, where we know what the shit we are doing. You poor bastard, running windows, have no freedoms and are left with a piece of shit."
Re:Operating System classes (Score:1)
don't forget (Score:1)
Imagine (Score:1)
Imagine if some wise tutor could harness this technology and knowledge and instill a pupil with the ability to conquer the world...
muwhahaha...
yes yes I know I know...it's not the same Macedonia [wikipedia.org].
FSM did a great job (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FSM did a great job (Score:2)
The guy got his money, but the movement continues.
sri
Re:FSM did a great job (Score:2)
As for the contract. Until your people fixes your govt there is not much you can do other than to point out negligance through the free press or through some other means. But it's most likely this official got a lot of kickbacks for signing a contract to have Microsoft be an exclusive OS vendor. Of
flights booked (Score:2, Funny)
We read Slashdot all the time so we know in advance where the salespersons will want to go next.
We have chartered a plane for next week.
Expect a "Macedonian ministry of education revokes linux deployment plan" article here come January.
Only 5% are online? (Score:3, Funny)
The rest buy women off the streets (Score:1)
Re:Only 5% are online? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only 5% are online? (Score:2)
Re:Only 5% are online? (Score:1)
Piracy? WTF? (Score:1)
There is a school district switching over to Linux computers, I just don't see where any type of piracy is involved here.
The school isn't using them for piracy, and they aren't using pirated software.
WOULD PEOPLE PLEASE STOP MENTIONING PIRACY IN EVERY DAMN ARTICLE THAT HAS THE WORD "INTERNET" IN IT!
Re:Piracy? WTF? (Score:1)
I just don't see where any type of piracy is involved here.
That was their point. The combination of the fact that people will have used linux in school, and it doesnt require piracy to run will hopefully bring about more use of linux.
World First? (Score:1)
I wonder... (Score:1, Offtopic)
More of the Macedonia Project in the News (Score:1, Informative)
An Interview with Peter Cemerikic, CEO of Macedonian ISP On.Net [openfree.org]
Arangel Angov of Free Software Macedonia talks about Linux [openfree.org]
Lessons from Macedonia's national school wi-fi network [openfree.org]
Math (Score:4, Insightful)
No wonder this makes headlines.
Re:Math (Score:2)
Which way of looking would that be? Seriously, I just don't see it.
Explained (Score:2)
I say "if you look at it one way" and "comparable" because we're not looking at the same pool of machines. But being school machines they are very likely to have an influence where it counts - in potential new computer users (as opposed to zombified corporate Windows users
Re:Obvious... (Score:2)
Re:5% = Rampant Software Piracy??? (Score:2)
This is Eastern Europe. Piracy is huge there, and yes, it's largely of the burned-disc variety. This is a problem, because if FYR Macedonia wants to do business seriously with the West - and most importantly with the EU, which is immensely rich and right on its doorstep - then it needs t
Re:The Article (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Article (Score:2)
Re:The Article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Article (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The Article (Score:2)
Well, kubuntu then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, Gnome/KDE, it does not really make that much of a difference. ubuntu, kubuntu, both look nice, can run browsers, office software, software development software and definately a heck more than they would have if they were to use licensed payware.
Re:The Article (Score:2)
The right direction (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who's laughing now? (Score:2, Interesting)
If not, how about the CIA's World Factbook [cia.gov]?
In one last ditch effort, if Wikipedia and the CIA are too shady for you, how about the self declared First Macedonian WWW Page [b-info.com]? (I might note that the bottom of this page mentions that it "was rated in the 'Top 5% of the Web'")
Re:Who's laughing now? (Score:2)
Er, no. Does anyone?
If not, how about the CIA's World Factbook?
Which does say: "Macedonia; note - the provisional designation used by the UN, EU, and NATO is Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)".
Any group of people can draw a shape on a map and call it anything they like, but what the rest of the world calls it is important too.
TWW
Re:Very Funny Ha-Ha (Score:1)
Re:Avoid GNOME (Score:2)
I wish you'd find a more healthy outlet for this bitterness. This stuff only damages your reputation and no one elses. The image you posted clearly says "Galaxy" so one can probably determine who you are. You could have at least changed the graphic since people already pointed out that it reveals who you are at Osnews.
thanks,
sri
Re:Avoid GNOME (Score:1)
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12813
mod troll, please.
Indeed (Score:2)
Re:Correction.. (Score:1)
Don't you F.Y.R.O.M. me (Score:3, Insightful)
F.Y.R.O.M. is the name that the European Commission kindly asks us all to use, because of a spat with Greece over what the term "Macedonia" actually refers to. The Greeks claim that Macedonia is in fact a region spanning parts of Greece, "the F.Y.R.O.M" and Bulgaria, IIRC. The Macedonian people refer to their country as "Macedonia", just as Americans refer to the country they
Re:Don't you F.Y.R.O.M. me (Score:1)
Re:Don't you F.Y.R.O.M. me (Score:2)
Somebody in another post mentioned something about Quebec changing it's name to New York and annexing the State of New York. I seriously doubt that any Americans would give a
Re:Correction.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Correction.. (Score:2)
Red Hat is strange (Score:2)
As a name, I don't think Ubuntu is any stranger than Red Hat, or Windows for that matter. I do take issue with their release titles (e.g. warty warthog, hoary hedgehog, etc.) but thats another story.
Re:Why o WHY did they have to name it Ubuntu? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why o WHY did they have to name it Ubuntu? (Score:2)
Re:Why o WHY did they have to name it Ubuntu? (Score:2, Flamebait)
"Red Hat" means "Rode Hatred" in Swedish. That's a strange name, almost offensive.
But oh, I'm sorry, it has to be in English to be accepted!
Re:Bölöni != Boloni (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As Butthead would say.... (Score:2)