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350,000 Linux (Virtual) Desktops Land In Brazil
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:12 PM
from the rip-helio-gracie dept.
from the rip-helio-gracie dept.
xufem writes "Millions of Brazilian schoolchildren will soon be 'brought up right' running Linux on over 350,000 seats each using PC sharing hardware and software from Userful and KDE. This is world's largest virtual desktop deployment and probably also the world's largest Linux deployment, and seems to have been selected over OLPC by Brazil. Definitely a moment to celebrate — and just in time for Brazilian Carnival which starts tomorrow!"
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Hmm... (Score:2)
Nice headline and all. I don't really care about it at the moment though. I want to hear back after they've been running the program for 5-10 years. Or do they quietly cancel the program after a year or two of failures? (Any project of this size will have road bumps that need to be solved. Will they be solved or will they spend the money and buy the machines, yet the machines never end up assigned to students for another 4 years?)
Extramadura Spain (Score:5, Informative)
The place to look would be Extramdura in Spain, they have been using Linux for a long time. They claim very, very low costs. I don't have any recent posts but LWN wrote about it in 2003 [lwn.net], and last time I heard it was still going strong.
Parent
Extremadura, Spain (Score:2)
How do you say "wooosh" in Spanish?
(BTW, tha write speling is Extremadura, well at least in Castellano Spanish it is)
Pay attention to the license (Score:2, Informative)
This solution may not be entirely Free/Libre:
http://support.userful.com/wiki/index.php/Manuals/UMx/Readme#Copyrights.2C_Licenses_and_Trademarks
"Copyrights, Licenses and Trademarks
Userful Multiplier is commercial software and contains proprietary, patent-pending intellectual property. See the Userful-EULA.txt file for full terms of the license agreement."
From the EULA in the download:
Re: (Score:2)
Any large IT project I don't care what OS you use will cost a lot more then you expect. License Costs are the least of your problems. As they are the easiest to calculate Seats*License Cost per seat and is also the smallest part of the equation. The most expensive is human capital and Change Management to get them doing thing the right way.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention the headaches recovering a failed machine. Random software will decide that you've moved it to a new machine and will deactivate your serial number.
The last thing you need when everything's smoldering around you is to sit on hold with the vendor while they deactivate you old serial so you can reinstall the software you've paid for.
Linux has its flaws but being able to easily install a pile of software on a freshly deployed machine is a godsend.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
While I could not find really useful English links about it, the Open.Amsterdam [amsterdam.nl] project has been running for two years now, and last October the City Council have declared [amsterdam.nl] that the long-term goal is to have all of the local government on open-source desktops. The pilot used SuSE Linux for two of the city's departments. Along with the wide-scale deployments like Munich or Vienna have done, I think you will have plenty data points in a few years.
See here [www.osor.eu] for a minor press release in English.
Tell me when it's done (Score:2, Insightful)
The Brazilian government is really good in announcing things, but not really good in making them happen. ie http://br-linux.org/2008/um-ano-apos-fiasco-governo-marca-novo-pregao-por-laptops-educacionais
So let me know when they start to deploy it.
Re:Tell me when it's done (Score:5, Informative)
Ethanol.
Parent
Re:Tell me when it's done (Score:4, Informative)
But Gasoline is more cost-effective than Ethanol where I live, for instance.
Because:
1. While Gasoline is about 42% more expensive than Ethanol, the mpg is lower on Ethanol. So, to correclty compare prices, you have to multiply the gasoline price by 0.7. When I do that, Gasoline ends up being 5% cheaper.
2. There is no control over ethanol tampering in Brazil. Quite a few gas stations add a bit of water to the tanks, and the flexible fuel cars won't stop working because of that. You just get lower mileage.
3. The temperature in our region is lower (Hey, 25ÂC is SMOKING HOT for me). We actually have a bit of snow during the winter... and Ethanol doesn't play nicely with cold temperatures. The engine deals with it by adding gasoline to the mix.
Unless you live in Sao Paulo (where ethanol is 45% cheaper when comparing prices vs mileage), it's just not worth it.
Diesel cars, the ones that are truly efficient, are not allowed in Brazil. That is because while Brazil doesn't depend on others for heavy crude oil, we have to import ALL of our light crude oil... and diesel cars would screw up the import/export balance. What about biodiesel, you say? We barely have enough volume to replace the diesel used in our trucks, nevermind fueling cars.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter. We have the technology to completely switch to ethanol (where cars are concerned, anyways) if we need to.
I agree the politic on ethanol pricing is less than ideal (and sometimes downright stupid), but I think the important point is that we managed to develop a viable fuel alternative -ok, we might have been lucky for already having an established sugar cane production, and having the area to do so but nonetheless we made it. Most other countries would love to be in that position. Biodies
Re:Tell me when it's done (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, an anecdote does not make a pattern. Ethanol is cheaper than gasoline on almost the entire brazilian territory. Except for, it seems, where it snows (You realize we are talking about some 2% of the territory here, and some very unusual 2%, don't you?). Now, did you take into account that gasoline also lacks quality control, and is some times mixed with kinds of solvents that, differently from water, damage your motor?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You live in Brazil? The same Brazil i live? I have never head of snow in Brazil, not even in the south region, in high altitude cities... They get a little frost during the night, thats all.
Prepare to be amazed! Prepare to have you socks knocked off your frost bitten feet! Prepare to make icicles like only a man can in the winter!
Santa Catarina [sc.gov.br]
Rio Grande do Sul [homestead.com]
Brazillian Snow Ski Holiday [rentmeavacation.com] (Okay, there is in fact only ONE result...)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in santa catarina, (that's a brazilian state) and we all
Wonderfully understated (Score:5, Informative)
PP said:
Wonderfully understated. But in this case, taking it further is interesting. So here I go...
Brazil's government has achieved a bunch of really aggressive goals in recent years. Let's start with the ones in energy independence...
* Ethanol is a viable fuel, being based on sugar cane and not corn. It's been that way for a while now.
* New cars in Brazil are now sold with engines that are equally happy burning gasoline or ethanol or a mix (or, with a conversion, natural gas - see below)
* Natural gas, originally imported via a pipeline from Bolivia, and now with big reserves found in Brazil, presents another alternative fuel with environmental, financial, and geopolitical advantages over petroleum. The pipeline was announced and then successfully executed. Exploiting Brazil's own natural gas was a new challenge. The programs were announced and then successfully executed.
* Over 95% of Brazil's electrical energy comes from hydroelectric plants. Hydroelectric projects were announced and then executed successfully.
* Total independence from foreign petroleum. Planned, announced, done.
Changing from energy, there are other things, like the...
* massive migration to FOSS going on since the early days of the Lula government (2003-present). I saw with my own two eyes huge numbers of Linux desktops at ITI (Information Technology Institute) and other government offices in 2005-2007. This one is still in the process of happening, and faces very well-funded opposition (from MS and friends), but despite that, it's been successful. Announced and made to happen.
* A more stable (and, not coincidentally, better-regulated) banking system than the one in the USA
* Health care policy that has basically done away with the black market for transplant organs, maintained the viability of what is widely considered the best AIDS policy in the world, and brought the benefits of generic drugs to the Brazilian people. All planned, announced, and executed successfully.
* A GROWING middle class. Tens of millions of people have joined the middle class of Brazil in the last several years. Growing the middle class is often a stated goal, but rarely achieved as spectacularly as it has been in Brazil in recent years
* I would also mention that the Brazilian government paid off close to $20B in loans early just in the year 2005, meeting the goal of reducing foreign debt, which the previous governments seemed to love, and saving something on the order of 10^9 dollars in interest payments. Goal announced, goal achieved.
Every place has its advantages and disadvantages, and wherever you go, the deal is the same: you've got to try to make the most of the advantages and minimize the effects of the disadvantages. Brazil's advantages and disadvantages are different from those of the US. But to say the Brazilian government isn't good at making things happen is just wrong. I hate to pull out a mean word, but here it is: saying the Brazilian government, especially in the last several years, isn't good at making things happen, is just plain ignorant.
In early 2003, the US invaded Iraq to save the world from Saddam Hussein's supposed stocks of weapons of mass destruction, and to fight a war against terrorism and bring peace, stability, and democracy to the Middle East. I remember the announcements. I also remember announcements of how the economic policy would continue US economic dominance into the 21st Century. I'm a US citizen, so I know the answer to this question as I ask it: how are those goals workin' out for ya? Is terrorism down in the last several years? Was the haul of WMDs worth the multi-trillion dollar cost of the stupidest war ever, plus the destabilization of the region? I guess by mentioning the destabiliz
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't know that one, thanks. Starting to wish I spoke Portuguese and not Spanish.
Re:Wonderfully understated (Score:4, Informative)
Health care sucks. You can get AIDS medicine, but if you are in an emergency and depend on the SUS (sistema unico de saude, unified health system) you're pretty much toast. that's why health plans sell like water around here.
Our financial system broke down several times in the last 70 years; the american and european broke twice.
No new hydroelectric plants are coming around until 2015. All the recent growth is based on gas and coal burning, and some crude oil.
The middle class in brazil is different than the middle class in other states. Here, middle class don't have two cars, nice house with front lawn and a trip to disney every year; we strugle between paying the rent and paying school and highschool for our children, because the educational system is a hell of a mess.
We are not so good, but we are not so bad either. I speak that as a brazilian. I really love brazil, but i'm as skeptical as the next guy when it comes to analysing this or any other governaments before.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm honestly not sure if this is the case. It doesn't contradict what Petrobras says [petrobras.com.br] (in Portuguese) on its site: that average daily production is higher than average daily consumption of petroleum products in Brazil. Meanwhile, new platforms are coming online and huge new reserves have been discovered, so pet
No, no, no (Score:5, Funny)
I am known by my friends as a UNIX bigot, but I need to inject a little sanity here. Running Linux on the desktop is not a precondition to a good upbringing. We all know it's the editor you use that determines that.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I heard that emacs is actually quite good to use... If you have 6 fingers on each hand (not including thumbs as emacs users have not evolved to opposable thumbs)
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And the editor we used was timothy, who determined it. Yeesh.
Finally!!! (Score:2, Funny)
The year of the (virtual) Linux desktop is here!*
*Valid only in Brazil.
making a profit on GNU/Linux .. (Score:2, Informative)
"By combining a mixture [linux.com] of proprietary administrative tools with a modified Red Hat distribution and a GNOME desktop, Userful has updated the concept of timesharing by adapting it to a personal computer. The result is DiscoverStation, a hardware and software solution that connects as many as 10 terminals to a single computer"
It will be done. Mostly. (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Brasil. This kind of things are announced from time to time, and the implementations varies. But they are mostly done. See for example the conversion of the government's computer to Linux. It was slow an irregular, but it was done, and it is working for some time know.
This is an issue that has been on media for quite some time, and it would be quite shameful if it failed again. I really think this time is for real.
The thing that really worries me is how these systems are going to be administrated. There aren't exactly a lot of Linux sysadmins here. If they aren't very careful about it (and they seldom are), we could end up with a huge expensive system badly misconfigured, that would just harm the kids and Linux's reputation.
Let me give you a real example. In my university, there are countless computer labs, and two of them run linux. One of them is run by be central administration of the exact sciences department. It is a bloody mess. They couldn't even get the user accounts working well, and its a heroic feat to get anything to compile there. The other lab, is run by the physics department. Mostly physics students that are hired to administrate it from time to time. Runs tighter than a duck's ass.
That said, it is really wonderful to get that mindshare, and for the first time kids won't be trained to think that windows is all that is.
This guy has a dog (Score:2)
I have no idea of who is this iris-n user, but obviously he or she has a black poodle [youtube.com].
RIAA math. (Score:4, Insightful)
350,000 virtual desktops is as meaningful as "The equivalent of 421 CD burners [theregister.co.uk]." Nowhere in the article does it actually give meaningful numbers like the maximum number of concurrent users, or the actual amount of server hardware, or what sort of workstations will be hosting those virtual desktops.
This is 350,000 monitors and keyboards, and users (Score:2, Informative)
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of the Apple ][ in school. Apple had a huge education discount back then. In hopes that kids will grow up with the Apple ][ and Macs and then will purchase them when they grow up. But the reverse effect happened. When they grew up they remembered all the problems they had when they were a kid and linked issues of the past with Apple (B&W screens (Most people I know still though well in the late 90's that all Macs were in Black and White), Incompatible floppy formats (Apple cant read IBM Disks, IBM Cant read Apple Disks), etc...) So using a PC seemed so much more modern, as the ones they used in schools as they were so budget conscious that they never updated their product line, still having Apple II well until the late 96 when they finally went with Windows 95 where the new PC's were so much better then the Apples.
This could have the same effect as well... Being a Virtual Desktop on a massive server over the Network it will seem slow and clunky to the kids especially once they are shown a modern Windows PC that their parents my have for work, or when they start to go to work. Also because Linux has much better security, when exposed to windows they will feel that it could do more.
So this could have the reverse effect on Linux Adoption.
Not how I remember it (Score:5, Interesting)
The schools I attended from the late 80s through mid 90s had 5 to 10 Macs for every PC. In spite of this, there was usually a wait for Macs but never for PCs.
After we graduated, we found that the business world was 99% PCs, as it had been from day one, never having given Apple any serious consideration at all.
Most then went on to get the same kind of computer at home that they used at work because, as much of a pain as it is to use Windows, it's more of a pain to have to use both.
Then school boards started making noises, with some merit, that kids should learn in school what they'll be using in the real world. This caused many schools to switch to PCs.
This has nothing to do with technical merit and everything to do with first-mover advantage in the right market (personal computers for business).
Also, running virtual desktops over the network is not necessarily slow and clunky. Have you tried it? I've been doing it for years.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, running virtual desktops over the network is not necessarily slow and clunky. Have you tried it? I've been doing it for years.
I do it all the time. But still compared to a real one, they are still clunky. The fast enough to be not annoying and useful. But still it sometimes when you get those subtle animations It makes it that much nicer to work locally. Although it depends on the work you are doing. I wouldn't do anything graphic intensive over Virtual Desktops (Stuff that really encourages kids to
Re: (Score:2)
>I do it all the time. But still compared to a real one, they are still clunky.
>The fast enough to be not annoying and useful. But still it sometimes when you get those subtle animations
>It makes it that much nicer to work locally.
You are thinking of network thin clients, or just running X remotely over the network. The solution Brazil is using is a multiheaded Linux machine. There are just lots (10 sets) of keyboards, mice, and monitors connected directly to each single (local) server. So there
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But, but, but all the Brazilian students will be encouraged to download Linux live CD's and see what it's really like on their more powerful home PC's.
I think you're right on. We could pray they might teach some interesting computer science classes with these environments that really shows off open software, but for the majority of students it will just be a locked down, strange platform running educational software. Yay.
There is no server required for this deployment (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
But the reverse effect happened.
I'd argue that you are wrong. I think the only thing that got Apple through the misery of the mid-to-late 90s was brand loyalty, in large part thanks to their aggressive education marketing.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the brand loyalist were not students during that time but professionals and graphic artists who didn't want to loose all their programs. Also the people who hated Microsofts dominance at the time.
Good insight (Score:2)
But it's not like most student care, most school computer systems sucks anyway, there just isn't enough money to administrate them. I rather the schools pay that small amount of money to Linux admins than Windows admins. Knowing Linux admins they are usually alot better at sharing info on the net than the Windows admin, even though there are now lots of good windows blogs.
As is stated above this isn't about VNC or remote X11, it's about shared physical machines. Not that it makes it less painfull, try playi
Re: (Score:2)
Not if they use ubuntu : )
Re: (Score:2)
This reminds me of the Apple ][ in school. Apple had a huge education discount back then. In hopes that kids will grow up with the Apple ][ and Macs and then will purchase them when they grow up.
We had Apple ]['s at high school. They were fantastic machines. very easy to hack and develop for. The transition to the Mac turned me away from Apple. It was less open, more oriented to non-technical users.
;)
Maybe they should have put Woz in charge
Re: (Score:2)
Virtual Desktop on a massive server over the Network it will seem slow and clunky to the kids especially once they are shown a modern Windows PC that their parents my have for work
Almost without exception, every Windows machine I've had to deal with, other than mine, has been a mind-bogglingly slow piece of garbage. That isn't necessarily because of Windows, but because of the way peop
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Disagree. I'd rather my kid got a case of gout from Linux than a virus from using Windows.
Of course neither is as bad as the swelled cranium that results from using a Mac...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pfft, troll... especially implying that using Linux leads to gout... lol
Seriously though, the basic day-to-day operation of Windows, Linux, OSX, etc... is about the same as the various types of the english language, yeah we stumble on some metaphors, and references, but I can switch between them all quite easily, besides where the "work" gets done, is in the software UI, which is even more seamless between OS's...
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, at what point does a troll become so blatant that it deserves a Funny mod?
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Linux works just fine for me. I use it just like I do Windows. Stuff "just works". Setting up my dual displays was a pain in the ass, but that was a 1-time annoyance. If you are having such big problems with Ubuntu, then why are you still running it?? Why not go back to another OS? And why didn't you u
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know why you have had such issues with Ubuntu. It obviously does happen though. Funnily enough the rants you gave against Ubuntu/linux as a desktop could parallel my reasons for leaving Windows.
My point is that the anecdotes you provide can be leveled at MS Windows. I personally don't know why people think it is ready for the desktop and am appalled that people actually pay for it! I keep trying it every now and again and it is nearly there.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, I installed Mandriva 2009.0 last night, and it defaulted to Gnome. Gah