In the shadow of Ceibal (Uruguay's One Laptop Per Child)

A little square of heaven,
a window to the river
A river made of light
a river made of light
and of birds in flight.
 I want to be a navigator
through the southern sky
without leaving my backwater
in the shade of the ceibal.
I understand that Jorge Drexler is as loathsome as his songs, but the post had to start with something.
The Ceibal Plan is a project started in 2007 as an implementation of the project One Laptop Per Child by Nicholas Negroponte in which school students (from underdeveloped countries) could have access to a cheap laptop. The project received all kinds of praise and criticism but is still in force. Today there are about half a million XOs (also known as the Ceibalitas) in schools and high schools in Uruguay.
XOs are laptops designed to be small, cheap, durable, and efficient. The purchase of the new X0 1.75 was recently announced, which have a 4 to 8 gigabyte flash hard drive, a 1 to 2 gigabyte ram memory, a 400 to 1000 Mhz ARM processor and a battery that lasts between 5 and 10 hours, plus the power consumption is 2 W (compared to the 10 to 45 W consumed by common laptops, it is quite a lot) …… .and its measurements do not exceed 30 centimeters.
Regarding software, a customized version of Fedora, along with the Sugar environment (although in some cases they moved to other distros like Ubuntu). There was a strong controversy when the possibility of doing XOs with Windows XP was raised. Needless to say, Nicholas Negroponte was filled with insults and even dared to point out that his brother was a CIA bastard. The truth is ………………… that when they have a ceibalita with Linux included, most of the users are very lazy to switch to another operating system. COME ON, I NEVER SAW ANYONE USING XP IN A CEIBALITA.
There are those who wanted to know how to install XP on Linux machines (because they wanted to use them to play or because they didn't like the Sugar environment, which by that means is an ugly environment for my taste) and what they achieved was only to change the graphical environment and learn to use Wine (for games, I insist).
Regarding criticisms (in addition to the software), they range from the understandable and classic such as the lack of technical personnel, the little knowledge of the teachers who use them, broken ceibalitas, etc. Even diverters like «schools are falling apart and you think about giving computers to children»Or ridiculous ones like«teachers are in danger of extinction«. Today only the former prevail.
Here are a few links, in case you want to be more interested in Plan Ceibal:

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  1.   guille said

    Well, incredibly, one of these has more ram than my current computer.

  2.   rudolph alexander said

    Here in Uruguay I see many children with their laptop, it is good to see that support for children and greater if the use they give it today, if someone wants to play, they can run games from the browser dedicated to children, which you do not need windows at all, I It seems like a good project and the advantage that children have free internet at school.

  3.   william_oops said

    Hello Uruguayan comrade Diazepan.

    It is correct that Uruguay has been a pioneer in America regarding the initiative, but there are other countries in the world that have joined One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

    I agree with you, the sugar environment is very ugly and it takes a while to understand how it works because it breaks with the windows paradigm we are used to. I would have preferred a distribution based on apt / dpkg ... with an e17 environment for example, which is super light but attractive and "familiar".

    Be careful that those that are given to high schools are not so modest. Aesthetically they are more sober, and have a dual-core atom processor, an intel igp capable of running a GTA Vice City very well (yes, I have seen it on my nephew's laptop who committed the stupidity of uninstalling the Ubuntu that came from the factory and install MS Windows XP), 2Gb of RAM and a 160GB HDD. It should be noted that both school laptops (XO) and high school laptops (Intel Magallaes) are delivered free of charge to public education students. This constitutes an act of equity and computer democratization without precedent in Uruguay (carried out by a left-wing government, naturally), despite the fact that some of the objections to the plan are valid.

    I honestly do not understand how you can allow students to install the operating system that they want. Without a common platform, how could teachers give students directions on what to do and how to get there?

    1.    diazepam said

      Worse are the teachers who want to use Windows in the ceibalitas. In the case of students, it is because they do not like the environment or because they want to play. But that a teacher wants to change to XP is much worse because that is already fear of change.

  4.   Miguel said

    I have a netbok Eeepc 700 (one of the first) and econ xp is unusable because it is very slow, on the other hand with linux it is wonderful.

  5.   victor lescano said

    I am the father of an adolescent who is in the third year of high school and has never had a ceibalita how can I be so that he has one

  6.   richard @ 40 said

    Hi, I'm from Uruguay and I use Linux at home, this Ubuntu case, most of the teachers don't know what Linux is and what its benefits are.
    The public school children were given laptops,
    and the teachers were given courses of a few classes.
    but they did not explain what is the meaning of free software.
    nor what is it for. and even those of the ceíbal plan told the teachers
    that by downloading a program from the internet you can connect to the internet.
    from the same school but with their personal Notebooks that they use.
    Windows .each one is free to use whatever they want but for me.
    If we want our children to learn Linux, we have to lead by example.
    it's my humble opinion PS sorry for the spelling mistakes