[ubuntu-za] Desktop deployments in South Africa

[David Robert Lewis]

Garron Stevenson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Anyone have any decent desktop Linux deployment stories for South Africa?
>
> I've found lots of SARS maybe, Government maybe etc. but nothing definite.
>
> I'm looking for desktop not server deployments.
>
> Anyone?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Garron
This list is quickly turning into yet another Linux list/discussion 
group on the OS kernal engineered by Linu(x) Torvalds.  And if one were 
actually heuristically and semantically correct about the system, you 
would call it Gnu-Linux, since there is not a lot one can do with a 
linux kernal in the absence of GNU software.

Ubuntu is not simply a "distribution" of Linux. It is a both an ideology 
and a language. Sure, at the base level of every Gnu-Linux system, there 
is the Linux kernal and the GNU software that surrounds it, but to 
reduce Ubuntu to the sum of its parts, is to ignore an important 
epistemological break and the development which began as the Debian 
project and which has evolved into Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has created a global community of computer users based upon FOSS. 
However, Ubuntu is also the basic language of the layer surrounding 
Debian and the GNU-Linux core.

If we forget this, then we run the risk of introducing proprietary 
elements that sacrifice community values. Killing the environment and 
community that uses Ubuntu in the process. There is therefore no point 
in talking about Linux deployment success stories. The question should 
rather be addressed to Ubuntu Linux success stories?


Sure, you could always produce a Linux system with a commercial layer 
that locks educators in, much like Apple has down with Nextstep and 
FreeBSD.

Thankfullly this is not what Ubuntu has done, besides there are enough 
egalatrian and altruistic people out there who agree that Free and Open 
Source is the way to go, and there is no sense in having closed systems. 
Also, South Africa needs to develop its own brand of computer culture 
and getting everyone used to Ubuntu as a language is what Ubuntu-ZA 
should be about.

I use ubuntu because of the FOSS lifestyle choice. I trust Ubuntu 
because it is Free. Yes I do like some of the Linux distros, but I can't 
say I trust them all, especially Suse, and I don't accept the kind of 
pandoring to corporate collectivist interests that hides behind this 
kind of discussion.

Let's talk about Ubuntu Linux on this list or not at all.

Regards

David Robert Lewis

PS This post is a 7pm posting. No more late night postings for me ;-)