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[seul-edu] GNUlinux in Belgian schools

Hello 

Just a little note to let you know what is happening now in Belgium (the 
small country around Brussels, most known as the location of many European 
institutions)

The South French speaking part of Belgium, Wallonia, has decided to install 5 
computers per classroom in  about 600 schools, making about 40000 
computers.  

The idea (not original as it has already been implemented at many places) is 
to use recycled, refurbished computers with new screens as X-clients with one 
powerful server (at least ) for about 50 clients or more.

This has been demonstrated to local authorities in a pilot primary school in 
Brussels (Ecole de La Futaie) and has been convincing enough for the 
authorities.

This has implied technical work, information, demonstration, contact with 
authorities for which many effective people were active. 

I happen to be the person who lead the installation of the pilot and has only 
conviced other people to come and look, while friends have been the effective 
relays for the authorities. 

We shall now develop an industrial solution to equip the other school and 
maintain them, and evidently, that solution will be Free Software and be 
usable by others. We take care in not developping what other people have 
develop and hope to be able to soon post more info.

This is just an introduction. More information will be posted to the list 
when publically available.

Best regards,

Nicolas

PS: we were just to lazy to setup a web site about the pilot as it was 
nothing exceptional and many other example can be found on the web.

But we have developped a prototype that should help and be interesting for 
others: with our solution, adding a client to a running installation DOESN'T 
imply any work - at least with the hardware we have tested so far- as the 
client that is connected to the network and booted from a floppy or from a 
bootrom card is automagically  recognized and configured on the server.

-- 
Nicolas Pettiaux
Avenue du Pérou 29
B-1000 Brussels