Linux in Italian schools

The region of Italy known as Trentino-Alto Adige or South Tyrol has an interesting history. It became part of Italy as a spoil of World War 1, and many of its residents have never been entirely comfortable with Italian control. It is a breathtakingly beautiful region, where German is heard more than Italian. The unique nature of this area has resulted in it being given a great deal of autonomy; Trentino-Alto Adige often does things its own way.

Bolzano, a provincial capital in Trentino-Alto Adige, has just broken some new ground with this announcement that the area's Italian schools have switched to Linux. Your editor was able to discuss the project with three of its principals: Antonio J. Russo, Paolo Zilotti, and Christopher Gabriel. They deserve thanks for helping to fill in the details, and for putting up with your editor's Italian.

This project goes by the name "FUSS", for "Free Upgrade South Tyrol's Schools." Over the course of two months, the entire computing infrastructure for the region's Italian-language schools was converted over to a customized version of the Debian distribution. This effort involved installing Linux on 2640 computers over the course of 23 days; an installation party photo gallery has been posted for those who are interested. The project has also developed a live CD which will be handed out to students when school opens (September 12) so that they may all run the same software at home. The students of these schools will be able to do all of their schoolwork using free software.

And freedom is an important issue in this project; the introduction page starts out this way:

(The linked page, like most in this article, is in Italian; translations by the editor).

To achieve its goals, the FUSS project decided early on that only free software could be used. All of the usual reasons apply for this choice: ethics, the ability to give the software to students, ability to modify the software, etc. Given this constraint, it is not surprising that FUSS decided to base its effort on Debian. The 100% free nature of the distribution, combined with its quality, vast array of packages, and adaptability are given as the reasons for this choice. The project developed its own version of Debian, which it calls "FUSS Soledad GNU/Linux," or just "Soledad."

Soledad is based upon the Sarge release, but the FUSS developers have made a number of changes. The installer and default configuration have been adapted to the schools' needs, and a special GNOME-based desktop has been put together. The mix of packages has carefully selected for the target audience, with a strong bias toward educational software. The package list for the desktop configuration is available; there is also a version of Soledad for server deployments. ISO images of Soledad are available from the FUSS download page.

Many of us who have dealt with the public school systems in their countries have often wondered why there is not more free software in use. But anybody who has tried to convince a school system to change knows what kind of inertia exists there. So how did the FUSS project supporters get the approval for a change of this magnitude?

There are a few factors at play here. The Italian schools in Bolzano are (unlike those in much of Italy) organized around a central purchasing structure for information technology. Even better, the relationship between the schools and the central IT folks is good. This structure made it easier to convert the entire school system at once. The initial supporters of FUSS came from within the school administration, and thus had the advantage of pushing for change from the inside. Even so, the FUSS supporters had to work for years, and had to "assemble a fair amount of paper" before getting the project approved. Mr. Russo adds:

The FUSS developers add that the autonomous nature of Bolzano helped, since decisions are made locally. But the importance of laying the groundwork is clear: spend enough time educating people about the benefits of free software, and they will eventually come around and support it.

2460 Linux installations may seem like a lot, but it is only a beginning. This deployment only covers Bolzano's Italian-language schools; the region also runs a great many German-language schools, and a rather smaller number based on Ladin. The FUSS developers have made offers of help to their German-speaking counterparts, but, so far, have received little response. School systems in various other regions of Italy are said to be interested, however, and are watching to see how it all turns out.

The acid test will start on September 12, when 16,000 students return to school. It is hard to imagine that there would be no startup glitches on a project of this magnitude. How quickly they are ironed out, and how quickly students and teachers become comfortable with the new systems will have a big influence on whether other parts of Italy will make the jump to free software. The odds are in the project's favor: school systems have few needs which cannot be met nicely by currently-available free software. The hard part of this project is done; congratulations are due to the many people who have worked for years to make FUSS a reality.

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