Can Ubuntu Linux Close the Digital Divide?

Untangle is scheduled to host an Ubuntu Linux Installfest from Aug. 4 to 7 at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco. This latest Installfest, coupled with recent moves by Canonical and Intel made The VAR Guy wonder: Can Ubuntu Linux close the digital divide?

First, a little background. Over the past two or three years, The VAR Guy has heard pundits hype numerous technologies — from municipal broadband to one laptop per child efforts — as bridges that close the digital divide.

Sure, Ubuntu Linux holds great promise as a tool that helps to shrink the digital divide. Netbooks (low-cost subnotebooks) with Ubuntu Remix are expected to flood the market this winter. And Intel continues to press forward with its Classmate PCs — low-cost systems that target K-6 schools in the U.S. and K-12 in emerging markets. Now comes word of Untangle leading the Installfest at LinuxWorld Expo.

Still, low-cost PCs also need broadband. And in many cases, broadband isn’t available — especially in rural U.S. regions. In early 2007, The VAR Guy visited Vermont and sat in a meeting where local IT experts described how hundreds of miles of fiber optics sat in the ground and remained unlit. Verizon, it seemed, couldn’t find a business case to light the fiber and exited the  region. Ouch.

Meanwhile, K-12 school kids in Vermont and neighboring states were sharing dial-up connections in computer labs. And recent high school graduates were heading off to college and never returning home. Instead, they were relocating — permanently — to towns that had broadband.

Give a kid or a classroom aging PCs with fresh Ubuntu installs? Wonderful. But give them broadband — coupled with creative freedom and education — and the digital divide will get a whole lot smaller. If everyone had broadband, the next Google or Facebook or Oracle could be launched anywhere — without being tied to expensive real estate in Silicon Valley.

Instead, third-world technology is alive and well in many U.S. schools and homes.