Sao Paolo Telecentros testimonial

[David Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

I'm forwarding a mail from Frederico Souza, one of the Brazilian
public servants behind the Sao Paolo telecentros project. He has
some interesting comments about GNOME, and some very nice things
to say about us.

A snippet:
  "Gnome at the time was just launching its 2.x series, it was 
  beautiful, clean, lightweight and fast, but most important, it 
  was the desktop project that had the most inertia at the time, 
  people were very motivated... 

  In the end, good desktops are very similar, and Gnome proved 
  to be a very good desktop which, amazingly, evolved a lot 
  since version 2.0."

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
        David Neary,
        Lyon, France
   E-Mail: bolsh gimp org
CV: http://dneary.free.fr/CV/

--- Begin Message ---

• From: Frederico Souza da Camara <fcamara prefeitura sp gov br>
• To: David Neary <dneary free fr>
• Subject: Re: Contato com a Gnome Foundation
• Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:05:18 -0200

Dear Dave,

Em Ter, 2005-01-11 às 22:08 +0100, David Neary escreveu:

I am working with the GNOME marketing team on various aspects of
the GNOME image in the world, and the story of GNOME's use in the
telecentros project is extraordinary. I was hoping that you could
provide me with some material which we might be able to use in
any future campaigns, such as the case studies and analyses which
you made before adopting the project, the experiences you had
during the realisation and deployment phases, and the general
reaction to the project now that it has been in place for the
last 2 years.

We have started the Telecenters project in 2001, using dual boot Windows
2000/Conectiva Linux (which uses mainly the KDE Desktop). We were also
using tabletop computers at the time. In 2002, third quarter, we have
switched to Red Hat Linux with Gnome, and started studying how to start
using thin clients in the Telecenters to reduce maintenance costs. As
part of the public sector, we have an annual budget, so reducing
maintenance costs means in fact opening more Tececenters.

We made very simple analysis at the time. Gnome at the time was just
launching its 2.x series, it was beautiful, clean, lightweight and fast,
but most important, it was the desktop project that had the most inertia
at the time, people were very motivated. Free Software is an ever
evolving process, looking just at the state things are at any one time
is just seeing part of the way things are. We must always look at the
future, if Gnome was so good then, in the future it promised to be much
better.

The Telecenters fight against the digital divide. We had to have the
largest possible number of applications installed in the computers, and
select a few for the Desktop. In the beggining we already had the
demand, and were struggling to learn the thin client concept. So we just
made basic customizations, deploying the first version of our thin
client Telecenters at the end of 2002 (using Debian/Gnome).

During 2003 we made a much better implementation of the same thin client
solution which we deployed in the beginning of 2004 (Debian/Gnome
2.2/Kernel 2.4 patched with fairsched). We hired some more developers
then, traced a roadmap for our thin client "distribution" and began
development of what we called Sacix, Tamandua version.

The Saci is a character of Brazillian folklore. He is a black one legged
hopping trickster, protector of the forests and fauna, who wears a red
cap and smokes a pipe. It is said that to capture a saci you could get a
piece of rope, do variuos knots in it, and drop it somewhere in the
forest. If a saci sees it, he will not rest before he unties all the
knots. Likewise we said we did not rest before we untied all the knots
in the development of the thin client Sacix distribution. We name
Sacix's versions with popular brazillian animals. Tamandua is the
brazillian name of the anteater.

The project reaction was very good. People in the Telecenters had never
or rarely used computers before, and did not bring any preconceived
ideas of operating environments, and that helped us a bit. In the end,
good desktops are very similar, and Gnome proved to be a very good
desktop which, amazingly, evolved a lot since version 2.0.

The main problems with thin clients are sound, storage and other
devices, which for the server are remote. Each user has only one
soundcard, floppy device, cd-rom associated with his computer. From the
server perspective, there are many of these devices, this situation has
to be masked for the thin client user.

In the meantime between Tamandua and Tuiuiu (the version before), we
switched to kernel 2.6, used technologies like Raid and LVM, and
reconfigured the (remote) floppy to be automounted and accessed through
sftp using encryption. These devices were nicely integrated in Nautilus
which is very good for us. We want now to give direct editing to
documents in the floppy, so the user doesn't have first to copy it to
the Desktop, for example.

And, of course, I would like to hear any criticisms you have as
well. Have you found the 6 monthly release cycles to be too close
to each other, or are regular updates an advantage for you? How
have you solved the problem of managing such a large deployed
base?

We used four kinds of deployment methods. There is an image of the HD of
the server which we used to replicate installations, small modifications
are made through patches using floppies or through the internet, for
large modifications, we use CDRW cds, and there is also an installer for
Sacix.

We are managing 122 Telecenters by now. São Paulo is a very large city
with a population of about 11 million people. Along with the surrounding
urban area, the population gets to 16 million people. So we divided the
city in 15 regions, each with 8 to 12 Telecenters, and hired for each
region a technician who configures, report problems and support the
Telecenters in his region, in rounds. This technician usually lives near
the area where he works, which is a plus.

I personally like Gnome's 6 months release period. This continuously
signal users that the project *is* moving forward. We haven't been able
to cope with this speed, but it is nice to follow what is being
developed and to plan to implement it in the next version of Sacix.
Also, with a 6 months cycle, we are never using a very ancient Gnome in
the Telecenters, we usualy have a 6 months to one year old version.

On the other hand, Gnome should keep lightweight to be used in a thin
client environment. Any application that grow in memory usage leaves e
very big memory usage in the server that, in our case, takes care of 20
thin client desktops. Unfortunately, applications tend to grow is size,
but I've noticed Gnome tries not to follow this tendency.

Best Regards,

-- 
Frederico Souza da Camara <fcamara prefeitura sp gov br>
Governo Eletrônico - Prefeitura de São Paulo

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