donated computers lab setup

[Guillermo Garron]

On 12/31/06, Norm <maillist at sios.ca> wrote:
> Ric Moore wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-12-30 at 09:22 -0800, Norm wrote:
> >> Tim wrote:
> >>> On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 13:20 -0500, Ric Moore wrote:
> >>>> a similar setup in Beckley WV, using 16 XT's and 386's as dumb
> >>>> terminals. Someone donated two Dickens Terminal Servers and I just
> >>>> ran DOS on those machines and Qterm for text logins at 9600 baud.
> >>>> People could use Pine and email to the internet just fine or play MUD.
> >>> Not too many years ago I scored a collection of XTs, 286s, and a 386
> >>> from the local high school that was just going to dump them.  I sorted
> >>> out what worked, and a local disability group took them for their blind
> >>> members to log onto their BBS to chat, do mail, and play games.  Even
> >>> what most would consider to be obselete, often has a use to someone.
> >>>
> >>> The lady who took them off my hands was confined to a wheelchair, barely
> >>> able to speak or do anything physical, but you'd never guess that when
> >>> you chatted to her on-line.  Computers to her, were a liberating
> >>> experience.  Just for a change, she got treated the same as everyone
> >>> else.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Tim
> >> Your project is the type of project more of us in the IT world should
> >> do.  Too often people in IT are considered nerds and not part of the
> >> real world, if a a group we use our IT skills to help the disadvantaged
> >> and at the same time spread the use of Linux we can all feel we have
> >> done something to help society.
> >
> > Well here's one of huge magnitude that needs Linux users to reclaim Open
> > Source ground that Windows and Mac users have grabbed a hold of.
> >
> > http://www.croquetcollaborative.org
> >
> > Yeah, I'm gonna pang on this one until we get some interest started.
> >
> > People like Alan Kay are directing this project and if we snooze we
> > lose. The project is completely Open Source, but from the people I am in
> > contact with, there is for all intensive purposes very little
> > participation shown by the Linux Community. We leave it to the Win / Mac
> > crowd, someone will paste a "For Sale" sign on parts of it or patent
> > Virtual Reality and then the crying towel gets tossed into the ring.
> > And, it'll be our own damn fault.
> >
> > This is bigger than spreadsheets and databases ever thought of being.
> > IMHO, it's the next Big Thing that can issue in the New Era. The dnload
> > is supposed to work with Linux, Windows and OS-X. Guess which part is
> > the buggiest? First introduced under Linux, it can't find openGL
> > libraries out of the box.
> >
> > I'd REALLY like to see the Fedora Foundation and RH take this one under
> > their wing as Alan Kay is also part of the $100 one-laptop-per-child
> > project, as is RH and MIT. I'm using it for my OAR project to reduce the
> > recidivism rate among the 2.7 million incarcerated in the US. As much as
> > I cut up, I'm stone cold serious on this one. I want to put RH or Fedora
> > on the servers with everything running as it should, and I'm no coder by
> > any stretch of the imagination. I want to get Linux into public
> > institutions, in this effort, before Bill Gates sees 2.7 million
> > licenses. Ca! Ching!
> >
> > Please dnload it and check it out. See if you can figure out why it
> > doesn't grok localhost, running a server and a client app on the same
> > machine. I can't. It's beating my ass here. They don't connect and I
> > think they should be able to, without having to have another machine on
> > a local network. I hope some of you gifted ones can eyeball this thing
> > and participate in the project.
> >
> > Thanx for any considerations, Ric
> Ric
> Years ago Mac almost became the OS of choice after they started giving
> few equipment to schools.  Most people will prefer to stay with the OS
> the first learn on.  The Linux community is no where near as cohesive as
> a single company like Apple or Microsoft can be.  This does not mean we
> can not take a page out of the marketing manual of the others,  As a
> community we need to find projects that will bring new users into the
> community.  How, each of us have specific ares of interest related to IT
> and and the world at large(in my other world I swing into an
> environmentalist mode),  If as a New Years resolution we can each
> resolve to bring one more person into the Linux community, by finding
> ways to support projects like th One-Laptop-Per-Child we can make a
> difference.  Support can take many forms from expanding the number of
> application they will need, of course money, providing recycled
> computers to those that miss out on the one laptop program, but probably
> the biggest area is in finding ways to supply individual support to
> encourage the child to stay with the program.  Is there an online help
> or mail list focused towards the program that will be available?  The
> challenge of setting up a useful multi-language help desk is big.   As
> community do we have the resources to do this?  If we can keep the new
> users on Linux for their first year the odds are they will stay for a
> lifetime.
You are right, that is specially helpfull in countries like mine
(Bolivia) where most of people do not have PCs, and if they have they
can't afford to pay Microsoft for using XP, or Vista, or anything.
Linux is a great chance to do it, but as you said, they need support
to stay on linux, as the most users are on windows.
I am starting one week ago a site
www.go2linux.org (where i will try to put the few things I know about
linux) also created jaws.go2linux.org (Spanish site) and
foro.go2linux.org (a spanish forum)
that will be my small help to the linux community.
Any ideas are welcome, and if some of you have documents or How-Tos to
share with me, or I can translate to spanish to publish here, will be
great!

regards,

Guillermo.


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-- 
Guillermo Garron
"Linux IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are."
(Using FC6, CentOS4.4 and Ubuntu 6.06)
http://www.go2linux.org