Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Ubuntu

Having exhausted most avenues to send SH computers to third world countries, I thought I would have to try and give them away to individuals. Out of the blue I received a comment on our last blog with details of a Murdoch University scheme called '8Ball Computer Recycling Program'. I contacted the gal who fronts the program and she was very happy to use my cache of computers until she found out that they were Macs. 'Our IT students don't know anything about Macs', she said. I got over that one by offering to set them up with all the programs that come with the Apple operating system and she was very happy about that. The next shipment goes in February, so I have plenty of time and no doubt more Macs will come my way from other sources.

The Murdoch IT students overcome the software piracy problem by installing Ubuntu, an open- source operating system on the PCs they configure. That stops the computers 'phoning home' to Mr Gates and getting sued. Ubuntu can be installed on Macs, but OSX is such a nice OS and it comes with everything needed without having to use Mr Gates' stuff.

The Murdoch Students' Guild page is here...http://murdochguild.murdoch.edu.au/swb/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this is great news, it makes me so happy that, the computers will not go to land fill or be used by someone who only wants to upgrade.


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