Guardabarranco is the national bird of Nicaragua. It’s also the name of a public school that migrated to GNU/Linux back in 2005.

Nationwide, 175 public schools have computer labs, but only Guardabarranco uses Free Software. Their choice of distribution was GnuLinEx, based on Debian GNU/Linux and developed by the government of Extremadura, Spain.

Overall, it has been a very positive experience, but the project is facing some difficulties.

1. They have no Internet access and cannot download the latest version of GnuLinEx or upgrade their systems via the online repositories.
2. The computer lab have only seven computers for a typical class of 35-40 students.

Our local LUG is supporting this school, and as a first step we’re going to upgrade all their systems to GnuLinEx 2006 (the latest stable version) and see if some local companies can donate some hardware in order to increase the number of computers in the lab.

If you want to know more about this project, watch the videos in our youtube channel:

Computer lab: 1 | 2
Interviews with students: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Thanks to Rodrigo from Ubuntu Nicaragua for the photos/videos.