Altruism and open source often go hand in hand. Through our recent coverage of Perl (see LXF276) we’ve seen that the idea of helping others was intrinsic to both the language’s (and the community’s) development.
More generally, anyone who gives their time and expertise to an open source project, whether it’s through code, translation, documentation or polite bug reports, is helping that project. You might think that hacking on your favourite project is probably not going to save the world. But then that all depends on the project.
Back in 2016 (see LXF216), we featured Emmabuntüs, a French collective that combined the power of Linux with the charitable efforts of a hardware recycling cadre. Back then it was putting its bespoke spin of Ubuntu (also called Emmabuntüs) on donated and refurbished computers, and sending those machines out into the world. Both locally, to the Emmaüs communities in France, and through partnership with other organisations, as far afield as Kathmandu, the Ivory Coast and Benin. Nearly six years on and Emmabuntüs is still at it. The only thing that’s changed is that the distribution is now based on Debian.
The collective’s latest initiative is a customised USB image for mass repurposing of machines. Thanks to some canny scripting, this makes doing this at scale much less time-consuming. Join us as we find out more about that and all the other great work the Emmabuntüs Collective do.
Origin story
Denne historien er fra April 2022-utgaven av Linux Format.
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Denne historien er fra April 2022-utgaven av Linux Format.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Create your first WebSocket service
Mihalis Tsoukalos explains how to use the Go programming language to work with the WebSocket protocol.
Fantastic Mr Firefox
Nick Peers takes a trip down memory lane to reveal the story behind the rise - and slight fall - of Mozilla's popular web browser.
Set up your terminal and email like it's 1983
Jump in the hot terminal time machine with Mats Tage Axelsson who emails from the command line using the latest technology.
Universal layer text effects with GIMP
Posters use them, films and presentations are hard to imagine without them: text effects. Attract attention with Karsten Günther and GIMP.
Jump to a federated social network
Nick Peers reveals how you can get up and running with this free, decentralised and non-profit alternative to Twitter.
Free our SOFTWARE!
Taking anything for granted is dangerous, so Jonni Bidwell and Mike Saunders revisit how the free software movement got started to help free us from proprietary tyranny!
Master RPI.GPIO
Les Pounder goes back to the early days of the Raspberry Pi - and his career with this classic library! -
Waveshare Zero to Pi3
Transform your Pi Zero into a Pi 3, they promised Les Pounder, but it's more like adding on go-faster stripes.
The Best OPEN SOURCE Software Ever!
In an attempt to trigger controversy, Michael Reed and Neil Mohr unequivocally state these are the greatest free software apps ever. Probably. We’re just trying to be helpful.
Linux-Mandrake 7
Simplicity and a wide range of applications make this a great distribution for all Linux users.
