Romania is considering Ubuntu in schools

Plagued by a slew of unlicensed or old unsupported versions of proprietary software like Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in many of its schools, the Romanian Education Ministry is now considering a switch to open source solutions like GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and Edubuntu, in particular.

Recently, the Ministry released a tentative list of applications recommended to be used along with GNU/ Linux: LibreOffice, Firefox, Inkscape, the GIMP, GNU Octave, FreeCAD, Geany and Lazarus, to name a few. However, as of now, the list is only ‘ experimental’ with no specific information available regarding whether or not such a move will be made official at some point in time. “Until we can provide national support for this product, including localisation in Romanian and national minority languages, the decision to use this distribution is up to each school,” a statement from the Ministry said.

Earlier, the Penn Manor High School in the US distributed as many as 1,725 ‘Linux’ powered laptops to its students. Linux has now become the part and parcel of the ‘ entire’ institution. For almost a decade, it powered the servers and provided the platform for the school’s websites, storage, and learning management systems. So Linux was the natural choice when it came to providing its students the right learning tool. The Penn Manor High School has provided every student in grades 9-12 an Acer TravelMate laptop pre-loaded with Ubuntu 13.10.