Ubuntu in rural India

[rajsarkar]

Dear friends,

I am pretty new to Linux. I have been using it for last three months. I started with Red-Hat, then Mandriva and ultimately Ubuntu (Hoary). I am tremendously impressed with Ubuntu, Canonical and your philosophy.

As you know in India Linux has a tremendous scope. Three-fourth of our people live in rural areas. Affordability is a big constraint for them. But computer literacy is essential for rural students and our govt is cash starved.

Therefore, the utility of Linux in general is obvious for rural students. Keeping this in mind I had been searching for a linux distro which would be 1)free 2)easy to install, 3)easy to learn and 4) has good support.

Without any hesitation I would say that Ubuntu is perhaps the only OS which meets all the above necessities.

However, there are some hitches. The most important one is the usual installation and update mechanism. One needs an internet connection for using apt-get. But for rural India, internet connection is a distant reality.

Nevertheless, I realised that we can still go without an internet connection. As Ubuntu installation CD comes with all necessary packages. Therefore, I beleive that Ubuntu is going to be our future. And I have decided to take a role in making it a success.

I actually run an NGO (www.krittibas.org) which works in the rural education sector. We are just at the nascent stage, but we have great plans. This October we are going to have our first set-up of five ubuntu-boxes to be used by rural school-goers free of cost.

Shortly a stable version of Edubuntu is going to be installed and I think some good KDE educational applications have already been included in the pre-stable version.

My sincere gratitude and good wishes to all the people involved in Ubuntu. Lets make it happen: Humanity to others.

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Raj Kumar Sarkar

[ltmon]

Hi,

As far as apt-get goes, you do not necessarily need an internet connection.

If you burn a whole lot of CDs with a bunch of updates on them, you can actually add a CD as an apt location in your /etc/apt/sources-list and then proceed to update from the CD with normal apt-get commands.

You can even do this whole thing through Synaptic.

Cheers,

L.

[rajsarkar]

Hi,

As far as apt-get goes, you do not necessarily need an internet connection.

If you burn a whole lot of CDs with a bunch of updates on them, you can actually add a CD as an apt location in your /etc/apt/sources-list and then proceed to update from the CD with normal apt-get commands.

You can even do this whole thing through Synaptic.

Cheers,

L.
Hi Itmon,

Yeah, I know that. But it means burning a whole lot of CDs. I think that can be taken care of if required.

Thanks for the reply.

Reagrds,

Raj

[papangul]

Hi, I am from Kolkata,India, not far from Fulia. Perhaps you know that a great Wi-Max initiative is on to provide cheap BB connection to rural India. There is also a big OSS drive in GOI(led by sonia Gandhi) going on. If NGO's like yours join the scene, then it completes the circle.
Also watch out for technologies like AJAX, thin clients etc which are going to make computers very affordable for the masses of India.
By the way, have you been able to run Ubuntu in Hindi or other local languages?

Edit: Perhaps the only blot in the picture is our idiotic communist state government, the Chief Minister continues to be obsessed with the MS, IBM, Intel axis, perhaps this is an effect of lethal dosages of Powerpoint brainwashing sessions.

[alred]

feels great when reading this thread
may your vision comes true ...

[agger]

I took the liberty of mentioning your NGO and its use of Linux in my blog:

http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/linux_i_den_3__verden.html

(It's in Danish with English quotes, so you won't be able to read most of it)

[rajsarkar]

I took the liberty of mentioning your NGO and its use of Linux in my blog:

http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/linux_i_den_3__verden.html

(It's in Danish with English quotes, so you won't be able to read most of it)
Hi agger,

Thank you very much. You are always free to do so.

I shall share our experience with Ubuntu in the coming days.

I just downloaded Edubuntu and confident that it won't dissapoint us. Or should I say that we will make it "the best"

Regards,

Raj

[rajsarkar]

Hi, I am from Kolkata,India, not far from Fulia. Perhaps you know that a great Wi-Max initiative is on to provide cheap BB connection to rural India. There is also a big OSS drive in GOI(led by sonia Gandhi) going on. If NGO's like yours join the scene, then it completes the circle.
Also watch out for technologies like AJAX, thin clients etc which are going to make computers very affordable for the masses of India.
By the way, have you been able to run Ubuntu in Hindi or other local languages?

Edit: Perhaps the only blot in the picture is our idiotic communist state government, the Chief Minister continues to be obsessed with the MS, IBM, Intel axis, perhaps this is an effect of lethal dosages of Powerpoint brainwashing sessions.
Hi Papangu,

Thanks for your reply.

I am aware of Wi-max and OSS intiative. Also I am experimenting with LTSP. Haven't tried Hindi in Ubuntu yet. But definitely try it shortly.

I had met certain govt officials in WB, but the result was disastrous. Actually it does not matter. If we can get students into FOSS then our point will be proven.

Regards,

Raj

[papangul]

Seems like its going to be MS and not OSS all over the rural India: http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=28452

[alred]

heres something i stumped upon recently ...

its an individual effort in rural/slump works from delhi
necessary in that order , they are same stories but different "weight" i guess ::

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.html

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2000/nf00302b.htm

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/inamdar.html

he is using Windows ...

something do bugged me when seeing people trying to introduce and teaching free softwares stuffs for the under-previleged or those socially tends to be left-out where the rest of the nation are moving ahead towards a more secular society with modern social physical arrangments and some even can grasped the coming of a reality of space aged technology , i mean people like us , relatively speaking , who are nothing but more or less a broadband or 56k modem hugger , we got no problem spending more time and resources in learning free softwares technologies , but how about those people who are lesser previledged than us , whos going to guarantee them a safer and practical adult livelihood(if they do have a chance) , most probably in the cities or towns , they have to be left on their own someday whether they like it or not ... i guess sometimes we need to run things in parallel with other still prevalent social needs , a continuity of the current society however it is unwanted for some , towards a more progressive or a better one ...


just my opinion ...
although i an outsider and i definetly need to be there in-order have a better opinion(definately not judgment) towards others great efforts , hope that you guys and gals dont mind ...

wish you people enjoying your efforts and be sucessfull in them




regards .


.

[BWF89]

Dear friends,
Keeping this in mind I had been searching for a linux distro which would be 1)free 2)easy to install, 3)easy to learn and 4) has good support.
Unless they package some proprietary software which your not allowed to copy into the operating system all Linux distros are free. I could buy RedHat Enterprise Linux from RedHat.com or I could download the distro and burn it onto a CD.

[linuxdude]

Dear friends,
I am pretty new to Linux. I have been using it for last three months. I started with Red-Hat, then Mandriva and ultimately Ubuntu (Hoary). I am tremendously impressed with Ubuntu, Canonical and your philosophy.
As you know in India Linux has a tremendous scope. Three-fourth of our people live in rural areas. Affordability is a big constraint for them. But computer literacy is essential for rural students and our govt is cash starved.
Therefore, the utility of Linux in general is obvious for rural students. Keeping this in mind I had been searching for a linux distro which would be 1)free 2)easy to install, 3)easy to learn and 4) has good support.
Without any hesitation I would say that Ubuntu is perhaps the only OS which meets all the above necessities.
However, there are some hitches. The most important one is the usual installation and update mechanism. One needs an internet connection for using apt-get. But for rural India, internet connection is a distant reality.
Nevertheless, I realised that we can still go without an internet connection. As Ubuntu installation CD comes with all necessary packages. Therefore, I beleive that Ubuntu is going to be our future. And I have decided to take a role in making it a success.
I actually run an NGO (www.krittibas.org) which works in the rural education sector. We are just at the nascent stage, but we have great plans. This October we are going to have our first set-up of five ubuntu-boxes to be used by rural school-goers free of cost.
Shortly a stable version of Edubuntu is going to be installed and I think some good KDE educational applications have already been included in the pre-stable version.
My sincere gratitude and good wishes to all the people involved in Ubuntu. Lets make it happen: Humanity to others.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Raj Kumar Sarkar


Rajkumar, we are an open source company with some plans for spreading Ubuntu in India. I will see if we can do something to your NGO.

[rajsarkar]

Hi Linuxdude,


We would appreciate any help from people like you. I strongly feel that Ubuntu has a great future in India. Especially Edubuntu could become the most sought after OS for school-going-students.

You can always contact me.

Regards,

Raj

rajsarkar@rediffmail.com
ph-91-9867316685

[anil_robo]

I've written a how-to for using Ubuntu in Hindi (both menu display and keyboard input). Here's the thread! (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=102778) And here's the input thingie:

http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/7599/hindiinput9fl.png

[mishranurag]

Hey Raj! How is your experience going on India with regard to UBUNTU. As you might have seen, most of the users here have upgraded to Breezy or Dapper. I don know which version you are using, but if you are going to use Dapper in near future, I can burn a whole lot of CDs of extra software for you and ship it for free, if you want. You can make necessary copies and distribute it too. Dapper will be officially released in June, so I can do that in June.
Please let me know
Anurag