During the months of July and August 2005, all the computer infrastructure of all italian schools in the Autonomous Province of Bozen has been upgraded, using the free operating system FUSS Soledad GNU/Linux. This operating system is a customization, made by a team of experts for the South Tyrol's schools, of the most famous Debian GNU/Linux [1] distribution of the desktop environment GNOME[2].
The peculiarity of this upgrade and his strongness is the free license [3] used to redistribute the entire operating system and all the applications.
This initiative, supported and funded by the Italian Scholastic Intendancy of the Province of Bozen [4], the European Social Fund [5] and the Center for Professional Formation in italian language CTS "Luigi Einaudi" [6], with the partecipation of all the public and private schools, will give to all the students, families, teachers and operators from the educational world, the opportunity to easily use a entirely free operating system, both at school and at home.
Beside the accurate selection of the multi-language software added into the distribution, about 20 thousand live-cd will be delivered to students and teachers, with the collaboration of Alpikom [7]. All the students and families will have, for free, the same software environment and all the applications used in the computer classes at school.
This process of introducing to this new operating system and to free software in general into the several educational activities will be supported by a specialized team during the whole academic year 2005/2006. The main task to be accomplished by this team will be to offer support and to develop reaserch tasks, both on the technical and the educational aspect, for all the educational units.
The switch to the new operating system will be facilitated, starting September 2005, by several courses for all the schools operators, and almost 40 installation party, to have all the people involved in the education world to know this peculiar version of the GNU/Linux operating system. This occasion will let everyone to have their computer system installed, legally and for free, the FUSS Soledad operating system.
The project, on top of the great didactic and pedagogical research effort made by the Intendacy, will offer to the schools an important choice towards knowledge freedom and share, free software solutions, to give a full-life right to learn, increasing freedom for all the users to use, copy, redistribute and modify the software and the operating system without any restrictions.
The activity is coordinated by Paolo Zilotti and Antonio J. Russo, supported by the excellent technical staff guided by Christopher R. Gabriel of Truelite srl [8], which has completed the deployment of 2.460 PCs in 23 working days, guaranteeing an high quality standard defined in the analisys phase of the project.
For the Province Council Member for italian schools Luisa Gnecchi and the Scholastic Intendant Prof. Bruna Rauzi Visintin, this project will introduce an higher quality level on the pedagogical aspect and a fundamental choice towards a more dynamic and distributed use of information technologies.
Free Software is a cultural and professional enrichment that can't be excluded from the education world. A choice strongly supported also by the department director Dott. Barbara Repetto and the director of the CTS "Luigi Einaudi" Dott. Giandomenico Sbop.
For more informations:
http://www.fuss.bz.it
mailto:info@fuss.bz.it
[1] Debian Project: http://www.debian.org/
[2] Gnome Project: http://www.gnome.org
[3] The free software: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[4] Intendenza Scolastica italiana: http://www.provincia.bz.it/intendenza-scolastica/
[5] Fondo Sociale Europeo: http://www.provincia.bz.it/europa/esf/index_i.asp
[6] CTS "Luigi Einaudi": http://www.cts-einaudi.it/
[7] Alpikom Spa: http://www.alpikom.it
[8] Truelite Srl: http://www.truelite.it
Durante el verano está siendo instalada una distribución del sistema operativo GNU/Linux en 2.460 equipos en la provincia de Bolzano de Tirol del Sur. Este despliegue incluye las 70 escuelas públicas y privadas, y afecta a más de 16.000 estudiantes.

La distribución instalada, ''FUSS Soledad GNU/Linux'', es una versión creada a partir de la popular distribución Debian GNU/Linux. ''FUSS Soledad GNU/Linux'' tiene soporte multilingüe y utiliza el entorno de trabajo GNOME.

Además de los equipos de sobremesa en las escuelas, se crearán más de 20.000 "LiveCDs" para ser distribuidos gratuitamente a los estudiantes y a sus familias. Estos LiveCDs permiten a los estudiantes utilizar en sus casas el mismo software que utilizan en las escuelas.

El co-director del proyecto, Antonio Russo informó que, "Con la participación de todas las escuelas públicas y privadas, todos los estudiantes, familias, maestros y operadores del mundo de la educación tendrán oportunidad de utilizar un sistema de operación completamente libre, tanto en la escuela como en casa."

Este proyecto fue financiado por la provincia de Bolzano, el Fondo Social Europeo y el Centro para la Formación Profesional en Idioma Italiano.