Christmas Computer Gifts - For Smart Indian School students - Ubuntu Laptop

Now that the Christmas and New Year shopping season is fast coming on and box retailers are making a grab for Indian upmarket customer pockets, many Indian papa and moms who live in Indian cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Mumbai are wondering what Christmas gift to buy for their school and college going children.

For some, it is a choice between splurging on a high priced branded computer, with a pre loaded and proprietary operating system from a desi manufacturer like Wipro, Zenith, HCL, or one of the multinationals like Acer, Compaq, Dell, Lenovo. They have been closely watching the Koi Mil Gaya lad showing his super smooth whizzkid antics with an Acer computer when he gets time off from advertising tobacco company ads. But this Greek god like lad does not reveal whether Ubuntu is loaded on the Acer notebook computer, for executive people, short of quality time for their children but having lots of money.

For the school students it is a differnet story. Maybe they are watching if they can run favorite games on a Ubuntu laptop or desktop and if latest Ubuntu version 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon is really as good as some of their more enterprising school mates tell them.

But for some parents, it is going to be an ocassion for spending quality time with the children. School vacations are about to begin and the IT savvy pops and moms, with their mega millions, are thinking that maybe this December they will find some time, to sit down with th children to play some computer games on the Firefox browser. So which Indian computer manufacturers have got their act together and are offering good Ubuntu computers with OS CD ? It seems not many. Most are preferring to give unsuspecting and illiterate customers preloaded copies of proprietary, closed source software rather than a free CD of Ubuntu Linux that people can install themselves.

And of course, not many Indian parents have even heard of Ubuntu Linux or themselves experimented with it. So maybe they will just go out and buy manufactured PC’s for their kids - without Ubuntu.

But the assembled market is beginning to gear up and is offering the more discerning parents, a choice of pre installed Ubuntu / Kubuntu alongwith a free copy of legal Ubuntu operating system software, with loads of latest, modern, office collaboration, and educational software programs, for inquisitive school children and college kids, licensed under GNU GPL and therefore, available for FREE with no risk of piracy.

So when these discerning parents will tie up with good computer hardware assemblers, who are well educated in installing Ubuntu they will be able to really give a gift of a lifetime to their children. And then maybe the pop and the mom will also begin to hesitantly start asking their smart, intelligent children to teach them a little of Ubuntu Linux. And quality time ? Yes, here come the parents and the children, all together, learning to get serious with learning Linux skills.

About time the branded hardware box sellers got a run for their money, rather than locking unsuspecting people into closed source softwares.

Where to download free mera wala Ubuntu from ? - http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Which Printer to Buy ? Which Printers are good with Ubuntu Linux Printing ?

Mera wala PRINTER kaun ?
Kya Linux Ubuntu par printer theek se chalta hai ?

For the Kanpur Lucknow based users of Ubuntu Linux computers one of the big questions to do some research on before buying a recommended printer from the Computer manufacturers or local assemblers - is whether the PRINTER being suggested works well with UBUNTU / KUBUNTU LINUX for English language printing ?
Please do ASK your computer supplier / manufacturer / local assembler if the printer they are suggesting for you to BUY, supports good black and colour printing with Ubuntu based Debian operating system ?
If the answer is NO - please do NOT buy that printer as it will be worth nothing to you once you buy it.
It is usually best to buy a LOW COST printer with good preloaded Linux Ubuntu DRIVERS.
If you want to check out if the printer which MAY LOOK GOOD but DOES NOT work well with UBUNTU then just tell the computer dealer to keep the printer in cold storage rather than expect you to buy a USELESS printer that you will not know where to DUMP and throw away.
Where to get the LATEST list of MODERN and best printers which work well with UBUNTU and KUBUNTU Linux ?
Check out at - http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting


It is very important for Indian computer users to buy only printers which have good Linux printer drivers preloaded. There is NO POINT buying a printer if it does NOT work with Linux.
Do ask your computer dealer this question before buying a computer from them.
There are many reports of printers with a lot of marketing push behind them from computer dealers and manufacturers but that do not support Linux Ubuntu for Indian markets and Indian users.

Every Student in Macedonia to use Ubuntu Linux Computer

Canonical has announced that every student in Macedonia will be using an Ubuntu powered computer / workstation. This announcement has tremendous significance for Indian school children as well who are wondering why they cannot have Ubuntu powered computers and laptops.
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http://www.ubuntu.com/news/macedonia-school-computers

Every Macedonian Student to Use Ubuntu-Powered Computer Workstations

Popular Linux Distribution To Appear On More than 180,000 Classroom Desktops Nationwide

LONDON, November 20th, 2007 - The Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science will deploy more than 180,000 workstations running Canonical’s Edubuntu 7.04 as part of its "Computer for Every Child" project.

The Macedonia "Computer for Every Child" project is one of the largest known thin client and desktop Linux deployments ever undertaken. Half of elementary and secondary Macedonia students attend school in the morning, and half attend in the afternoon, so 180,000 workstations will allow for one classroom computing device per student for the entire Republic's public school population. The first 7000 computers pre-installed with Ubuntu were shipped on September 4th 2007

Ubuntu is the award-winning Linux distribution for the desktop, laptop, thin client and server which brings together the best of open source software every six months. It is free, community-developed and contains all of the necessary applications to be up and running immediately, from web browser to instant messaging. It also comes with English and Macedonian language packs.

"The Computer for Every Child initiative is the largest and most important education project undertaken in the 15-year history of the Republic of Macedonia," said Ivo Ivanovski, Macedonia's Minister for the Information Society. "By selecting Ubuntu as the operating system for all of our classroom virtual PCs, our education system can provide computer-based education for all school children within the limited financial and infrastructural confines that most institutions face today."

"Macedonia is showing tremendous vision by deciding its own destiny in choosing how its children will learn through computing – said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project. "By choosing Ubuntu which is free to modify, use and redistribute it turns students into participants in Information Technology and not simply consumers of it.

The Ubuntu operating system will run on 160,000 virtual PC terminals and 20,000 PCs (which each also support a student on the attached monitor) supplied by NComputing and procured and installed by The Haier Company, a diversified manufacturer and PC maker based in China.

The project will enable a range of innovative educational programs, including interactive web-based classes in which specialized experts teach lessons in such areas as mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics to multiple schools and classrooms around the country.

About Canonical and Ubuntu

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is headquartered in Europe and is committed to the development, distribution and support of open source software products and communities. World-class 24x7 commercial support for Ubuntu is available through Canonical's global support team and partners.

Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Ubuntu will always be free to download, free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the center of a global open source software ecosystem.

Download Ubuntu from www.ubuntu.com/download. To learn about commercial support for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu, please see www.canonical.com/support. For more information visit www.canonical.com or www.ubuntu.com.

Lucknow Kanpur Computer Dealers short of trained staff to Install Ubuntu / Kubuntu Linux

Kanpur and Lucknow computer dealers - who have for years been selling proprietary operating systems are suddenly realizing that they themselves know very little about Ubuntu Linux operating system for desktops. On top of that, they have not invested in teaching their own support staff how to install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on customer laptops and desktops - that is customers who want to work with the best legal operating system already available in the markets. Many of these computer dealers have not even found the time to read the installation instructions from the Ubuntu website - www.ubuntu.com

Naturally these assembled computer dealers associations in Kanpur and Lucknow feel that first they have to learn Ubuntu themselves - and then - they have to teach their staff how to install Ubuntu or Kubuntu in one hour. What a bother. Learning Linux is sooo painful.

So it seems that intelligent Linux savvy school children will now have to teach these outdated computer dealers and hardware box vendors the fine points of Ubuntu Linux installation on laptops and desktops. One wonders when the computer assemblers will start giving themselves a crash course in Ubuntu and Linux so that they can install it on their customer computers in just one hour.

But go and see the home computers of children in Kanpur and Lucknow from schools such as Methodist, Jaipuria DPS, Christ Church - these kids know much more about the ease of Ubuntu installations than these hardware vendors - many of whom do not even have free CD to give to the customer just in case the customer tells them just to quote them a price for the hardware box. Many customers are deciding it is best to arrange Ubuntu CD themselves. Maybe Computer Science departments of top colleges will start distributing Ubuntu free also. For after all if children can install Ubuntu from CD by themselves, so can customers. And then maybe finally the staff of the hardware vendors will also learn how to install Ubuntu.

Many children of course prefer Kubuntu Desktop version because the KDE desktop is better to look at for those who only know how to send emails and chat on the Internet.

And last, the computer dealers will themselves shyly one afternoon decide to learn it themselves.

Where to download Ubuntu from ? http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Ubuntu Linux Party in October - Kanpur Lucknow Students and Teachers

Primary and secondary school Indian teachers and students in Kanpur Lucknow -
Those who have been using Linux on their desktop, laptops and servers for some time now will be aware that it is now only 14 days left for the next version of Ubuntu and Kubuntu to be launched. We just cant wait for the greatest Linux desktop ever to hit the Indian markets especially for users in Kanpur and Lucknow.
To celebrate the launch of the Ubuntu and Kubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon Version 7.10 - we are organizing a snacks and soft drinks party for bright school children in Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Agra, Gorakhpur and Varanasi to get together and share Linux tips with other school children. We all know that the school children in Kanpur and Lucknow know more about Linux Ubuntu / Kubuntu than their computer science teachers and instructors who have never even heard of Ubuntu.
We are also organizing a get together for adults interested in computer basics and some samosas - come and join us in end of October. We will be distributing free CD of Ubuntu and Kubuntu - and the first 100 laptops will also qualify for a free learn and install Ubuntu and Kubuntu training session.
Please note all school children from English as well as Hindi medium schools in Kanpur and Lucknow are invited - Methodist, St. Mary, Christ Church, Central schools, Jaipuria, delhi Public school, DPS children who want to learn to play with Linux and learn free, open and non proprietory softwares are all welcome.
Feel free to ask questions - the top three best questions about if Linux is Best for Indian school students will receive designer UBUNTU T-shirts - so polish up your debating skills on Linux versus whatever ...
Contact Email : oskanpur@gmail.com
Check out the Ubuntu website and download your free Ubuntu from the nearest server. Please note that despite all the talk of Indian IT - there is still NO Indian server providing free downloads of Ubuntu and Linux. That is a pity when you consider how many IT professionals the IIM IIT and IIIT produce each year.
Ubuntu download page - http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Hopefully soon some Indian IT science and technology bureaucrat will wake up from his sleep and offer free webservers for downloading Ubuntu from an Indian server for Indian children who want to learn Linux. Who knows what the S&T bureaucrats are planning once they get time off from teaching old stuff to Indian children ?