Mandriva & Intel presented and demonstrated the Intel-powered classmatePC to KDE developers at the aKademy 2007 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Intel's Latin America Linux Strategic Program Manager Sulamita Garcia and Mandriva's KDE developer Helio de Castro were participating at aKademy 2007, KDE's annual meeting of the KDE community, demonstrating the flexibility and the specialized educational interface of Mandriva Linux on the Intel-powered classmate PC in the "Edu and School" presentation sessions.
Sulamita is responsible for creating and maintaining the Latin America Linux strategy that takes into account all aspects of the Linux environment, including key elements around the community, government, standards, and vendors. Helio de Castro, KDE developer at Mandriva, was also on stage at aKademy to detail the developments of the Mandriva Linux image designed for the classmate PC.
Helio has been involved with the classmate PC since its early stages of development with Mandriva. He has described the challenges of determining OEM requirements and how to fulfill those requirements with a Linux/KDE pre-loads, using Mandriva as a sample platform.
Intel-powered classmate PCs are small, mobile education-oriented PC to be used in classrooms in emerging markets. The fully-functional PC is designed to provide affordable, collaborative learning environments for students K-12 and their teachers. The Intel-powered classmate PC is part of the Intel World Ahead Program to tap the combined power of technology, curriculum and teachers to improve education in developing countries.
"Intel recognizes the importance of Linux in education and is therefore working with multiple Linux vendors, like Mandriva, to provide the choice of Linux on Intel-powered classmate PC," said Justin Lipman, Staff Architect at Intel.
Sebastian Kuegler, KDE e.V. Board Member, acknowledged: "The Intel-powered classmate PC underscores one of KDE's core strengths: Educational Software. At this year's KDE World Summit 'aKademy,' the Edu & School Day manifests KDE's commitment to continue creating the world's most comprehensive suite of educational software. The KDE community is thrilled to work together with Intel and Mandriva in making the Intel-powered classmate PC a success."
"We have tuned Mandriva Linux to run on the classmate PC following Intel's requirements for the education market. In particular, we have provided a simplified menu interface that is particularly appealing to young and new computer users. This simplified interface is another result of Mandriva's OEM task force, to provide adapted, quick-to-market solutions to our partners," explained Helio de Castro.
"The classmate PC features a 1GB NAND-Flash. Our Mandriva Linux image for OEMs benefits from our Flash mobile technology, which is the same technology you can find in Mandriva Flash, the popular Linux key. Mandriva Flash is enhanced to benefit from faster application load times using compressed modular software stacks and prevents NAND support from wearing out with a Flash-optimized filesystem," added David Barth, Mandriva VP of Engineering.
More information about the classmate PC hardware and the overall initiative can be found at: http://classmatepc.com/