OStatic

As the LinuxWorld Expo conference, slated for August 4th to 7th in San Francisco, starts to take shape, more news is emerging about events to happen there. Oracle CIO Mark Sunday, IBM VP of Open Source and Standards Bob Sutor, and Kevin Clark, Director of IT Operations for LucasFilm are all slated to give keynote addresses. As of today, conference organizers have also announced a charitable "Installfest" event, where show attendees will be invited to customize donated hardware with open source software, to put computers in the hands of underprivileged children.

At LinuxWorld, Untangle is organizing an Installfest event to donate open source (Ubuntu) computers to schools in need of technology resources. The Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC) is donating the hardware. The ACCRC recycles discarded computers from businesses, government and the public.

At a previous Installfest event in March, 350 Ubuntu 7.10 desktop computers were built and customized from recycled components and donated to schools. That event relied on help from approximately 130 OSS community volunteers. The goal with the next iteration of Installfest is to leverage the greater numbers of attendees at LinuxWorld Expo.

The installations will include Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop with OpenOffice, Firefox, andΒ  multimedia content customized for school kids. According to show organizers: "The initial installations will be done from custom iso images on bootable CDs with the additional content and patches installed over the network as Debian packages."

You can donate unwanted computers and components to the effort, nominate schools to receive computers, and, if you will be on hand at the conference (OStatic will be there), you can help with the installations. Find out more from Untangle.

• ubuntu
• linux
• debian