The students of a missionary school in Pakistan, from first graders to graduates, have become enthusiastic Edubuntu users thanks to the cooperation between their administrator and an Italian LUG.

Padre (Father) Aldino Amato is an Italian missionary who has been working for 25 years in the schools of the Rosary Christian Hospital, a nonprofit charitable institution in the village of Rehmpur, near to the city of Okara in the Pakistani province of Punjab. In 2006, during a holiday in Italy, a friend suggested Amato publish in an Italian missionary newletter a request for all the things his schools needed but couldn’t find easily in Pakistan. The first item on that list was computers. A newsletter reader pointed Amato to Golem (Gruppo Operativo Linux EMpoli), an Italian Linux user group (LUG) founded in 2000 in Empoli, a Tuscan town about 30 kilometers west of Florence.

Golem is particularly active in the “trashware” sector; it collects and fixes thrown-away computers and gives them away, after installing Linux of course, to schools, nonprofit organizations, and other users. In 2004 Golem sent a few PCs to a school in Somalia and, later, others to schools in Benin and Cameroon.

When Amato discovered this, he immediately wrote to Golem:

I have more than 2,000 students from kindergarden to senior high and only one computer. I’d need at least 50 more, since Pakistani school regulations state that computer training should be at least 40 minutes every day. Can you help me? I’d really like to help my students learn new technologies.

No problem, answered Golem member Maurizio Pertici. In a few months the LUG managed to put together and ship to Rehmpur 43 computers complete with mouse, keyboard, and monitor, plus one eight-port hub, one modem, and four speakers. With the exception of a few machines where a hardware issue prevented it, Golem installed Edubuntu on them all.

Keep reading for more. This is exactly how Linux needs to be used.