Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
I’ve been thinking about writing an “article” for the French FCM for a long time, but I haven’t dared to … until today! In this article, I might startle people who are, without question, in favor of FOSS and/or Ubuntu (and I apologize about it beforehand).
As far as I can recall, my first contact with the world of Open Source was during an “Ubuntu Party” in 2010 at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie of Paris. There I attended lectures which seemed technical and were addressed to a small group of specialists, all of whom knew each other… So I finally left the “party” more quickly than I’d expected to, but some of the information has stayed with me, and that has meant that I have gone back to such “parties” (either to listen to lectures, even if I didn’t understand everything, or to help as a volunteer).
To sum it all up, I told myself that the philosophy of FOSS is interesting, but that Gnu/Linux and Ubuntu remain « technical » nonetheless. Then I decided to update my machine(s), which had (or would have) Ubuntu on it/them – without worrying about the details. I didn’t want to touch the command-line, especially since that was one of the things that were emphasized at the Ubuntu Parties (no need for the command-line). So that was what I did: I upgraded everything every time a new version came out…. Finally, I had to do a bit of command-line with just a few commands: apt-get update / install / remove / autoremove / autoclean / clean, and dpkg (just for LibreOffice). A while ago, I installed gdebi to take care of installing .deb files. Out of laziness, I guess, I had always refused to use the command-line because, in the back of my mind, I thought I might “convert” other people to Ubuntu…
Time has gone by and, during the lockdown, I got an email from the principal of my son’s middle school, proposing some county (Indre et Loire) computers (on loan, I think) for kids who had none at home. The machines were distributed very quickly, but it was impossible to honor all the requests, and it was then that I had an idea.
In May and June of 2021, I began my own personal crusade: I looked up the biggest companies in my “département”, found the director’s name and deduced his/her email address and I sent him/her an email explaining that I wanted to recuperate machines (preferably laptops) that had been discarded, in order to recondition them and give them to kids in middle school who had no equipment.
Fortunately, a big company replied affirmatively and I got 20 portable computers (Intel i5 with 8 GB of RAM). I had to “join” an association (the Center for social and cultural activities) in order to take advantage of their gift.
Next I had to convince suppliers with whom I work to replace the mechanical hard drives with SSDs and to change the batteries (all of which has been done).
My idea now is to get the help of the principal of the middle school, that of the parent-teacher associations and the Center for social and cultural activities, as well as that of the social worker, so I can identify the students in need. After that, I plan to take time with the kids who have received the machines in order to give them a minimum of training. I would give them the (very) basic ideas of FOSS, install Ubuntu with the student (ideally in the presence of a parent or big brother or sister as well), and explain how to update it, install software, and so on and so forth.
The objective is to have machines that provide everything they need, with LibreOffice, VLC, Firefox/Brave, Gimp, Transmission, etc. I hope I will be up to the job of training them and transmitting the message.
Even before I trained the first beneficiary, I sent another email just yesterday (the 19th of January, 2022) to the elected officials of the “département” of Touraine to propose the same procedure (collecting, reconditioning, training) at the county level, my target being the middle schools (which the county manages) and, after all, why not the high schools… To convince them, I cite both “saving money” and reducing electronic waste. We’ll see how it goes!
There you have it, the story of me and the world of Open Source and Ubuntu… I’d appreciate your contacting me and telling me about your own experiences if the projects I've described seem familiar to and/or appeal to some of you.