Africa Install

[davey_b]

Hi folks, new here so please go gentle if I'm posting in the wrong place. :)

I'm a computing teacher in a school in Scotland. We have a link with a school out in Burkina Faso in West Africa. I was out last year with a number of our senior pupils and we helped them hook up an Internet connection which has, as you can imagine, opened up a whole world to them. We're heading out again at the end of June and I've been given a donation to buy some computers and take them out there. I'm looking at getting these ones: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/182588

I would like to put ubuntu on them and Open Office and just looking for some thoughts/help on how to do that? I was planning to set it all up on one machine and then take an image of that machine and put it on the other 14 that we are taking out. However, I've not done a lot with linux before and not sure how easy/difficult that is. The other thing is that I'd like to set it all up with French since they speak French in Burkina Faso. Is that easy enough to do?

Any thoughts and help would be MUCH appreciated.

Many thanks.

Dave

[howefield]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/182588

As you know, Linux is preinstalled on these machines, so should take Ubuntu easily enough, and indeed, this is confirmed by the buyer reviews.


I would like to put ubuntu on them and Open Office and just looking for some thoughts/help on how to do that?

You can either dual boot with the system that is already present or install a fresh copy of Ubuntu over the top of the existing. Open Office is included so you wouldn't have to worry about that, but you might want to install some other bits and pieces, depending how strong the internet connection that the recipients have, ie, multimedia codecs.


I was planning to set it all up on one machine and then take an image of that machine and put it on the other 14 that we are taking out. However, I've not done a lot with linux before and not sure how easy/difficult that is.

Clonezilla should make that a breeze.


The other thing is that I'd like to set it all up with French since they speak French in Burkina Faso. Is that easy enough to do?

The language can be set during install.

[davey_b]

That's great, thanks very much. It sounds fairly straight forward then. The internet connection out there is POOR! It's always on (when the power is on!) but only about 256K for the whole lab of computers so I would want to pre-install as many things here as I could rather than downloading them when we're out there.

We had problems last year that you would be downloading an update for something and then the power would go off and you would have to start again when it came back on...! I'm going to buy a UPS when we're out there so that should hopefully help a bit with that.

Many thanks

Dave