I volunteered a couple of times to help at kids’ coding events. One of the first things I noticed was that they had better kit than me. I like keeping old computer hardware going as long as is humanly possible. I’m not retro, I’m ‘careful’; with the Earth’s resources rather than with money. I was giving my time freely in the hope of giving young people a better start in life. I realised I was giving it, almost exclusively to the children of Middle Class professionals. They were great young people, they’d had their parents support.
What the ‘other’ kids need, is a punk movement. They need the junk-shop chic of battered second-had guitars and home re-styled charity shop clothing. They have Raspberry Pi’s at school so they’ve seen Linux but they need their schools to give them access to downloads. More than 15% of UK homes don’t have Internet. THIS 15%. Meanwhile, companies throw away perfectly good kit because it’s cheaper than upgrading. There’s now a Raspian Linux for PCs so I’m not the only person aware of this untapped resource for education.
I wrote a couple of tweets this morning:
“What low spec hardware running Linux are people doing things with? #LinuxLimbo Is #LinuxHardwarePunk already a Thing? (please RT: for reach)”
and https://twitter.com/WooTube/status/900646598019080194
“I want #LinuxHardwarePunk to make disposable kit cool for kids without access to disposable income (from my Eee PC 1000 netbook #LinuxLimbo)”
I don’t see this working as a charity. No-one wants to be a charity case.
It might work as a youth movement. I’m both too old and too comfortable to lead a ‘working’ class rebellion. Do any of you young’uns fancy a go?
“A storm is coming and it’s name is Linux” as we used to say in the olden days.
(CopyLeft Martin Houston. He’s the guy who corrupted me at a DECUS meeting
http://www.deluxetech.co.uk/history-linux-magazine-cover-disks/
Linux-FT was my first distro because of him.)
On The Outside 