23,000 Linux PCs and counting in the Phillipines, Jan 29, 2008

Computerworld is featuring a story on initiatives in the Philippines to ensure that every public school has at least one computer. While the program has now expanded to provide most schools with a small lab, a server, and Internet access, the most notable feature of the program is the use of Linux on all of the machines.

I read an article on CNN a couple days ago about Linux and ewaste reduction. It wasn’t until I spent far too long shoveling my driveway tonight, though, that I had time to give the article any thought. At first blush, it seems to be another ringing endorsement of Linux. Free, open source, and with the power to save the earth, besides? I should be jumping up and down, right?

Designed as an add-on “EDU-CD” to accompany the upcoming 10.3 release of openSUSE, the so-called “SLEducator” is designed to “[ease] the installation and configuration of an educational network and student desktop.”

While the exact details concerning timing and availability of Dell’s Ubuntu-based hardware offerings are still emerging, an entry yesterday on their Direct2Dell blog outlined plans for support of the new OS. In particular, Dell will be launching a new wiki for users on their linux.dell.com website

While experience tells us that Linux, no matter how light the distro, will not turn an old computer into a modern screamer, this will certainly be a step up for students who would not have otherwise had access to a PC at home.

I'm talking about an application that is near and dear to my heart. It's Maple 11, one of the coolest bits of math software this side of SAS. Maple 11 is the latest and greatest from Maplesoft and handles everything from differential equations to graph theory to statistics. There is very little that Maple can't do in terms of mathematical computation and the application has saved me countless hours of tedium and pain as I work towards my masters degree (applied math - not a fun thing without a few technological tools). One thing it can't do, though, is run under Windows Vista

I'm writing this post using Fedora Core 6 on my new laptop. I've been running some flavor of Linux for a while now and I think I've finally settled on Fedora Core since it's doing such a nice job with both multimedia and office productivity tasks.