The Emmabuntüs community is an
informal group of people who gathered together to develop a project based on a
GNU/
Linux distribution, and named
Emmabuntüs.
This distribution was developed to simplify the task of refurbishing old used computers, which were given to Charitiy Organization, and in particular to the
Emmaüs Communities (this is where the name of the distribution is coming from). In addtion, this distribution aimed at the promotion of Gnu/Linux among the novice users, as well as the lifetime extention of the hardware in order to limit the wasre of resources induced by the over-consumption of raw materials.
This project started with the finding that all the current distributions, even the easiest to use, do not take into account all the needs of a large users population, for whom configuring their machine is the very last thing they want to have to deal with. One good indication is that the “
Install-party“ are over-crowded despite the general ease of of the distributions, but after a first participation to install the distribution on their machine, a large portion of the population is coming back to install useful missing applications.
The initial goal for Emmabuntüs was NOT to offer a distribution based on
Ubuntu and to be downloaded by everyone, but rather to sell computers refurbished with Emmabuntüs to the large population coming to buy used computers. These computers were donations made to the community Emmaüs de Neuilly-Plaisance.
The
Emmabutüs Community adheres to the
Emmaüs Movement Manifesto, however – as of today – is not officially recognized by this movement. But some active members of the community are volunteers within the
Paris,
Liberté,
Catalogne,
Montpellier,
Villers-les-Pots,
Angers, and
Cabriès Emmaüs organization.
Main featuresSee home page of our Wiki :
www.emmabuntus.org or
communityportal.emmabuntus.orgEmmabuntüs overviewSee this review on
DistroWatch ***
Project goalThe activity of the Emmabuntüs community goes far beyond the pure creation of another GNU/Linux distribution. The target we are aiming for is to build the structures to ease the computers refurbishing within various Charity Organizations, and to invite people to follow our steps in order to fight three main plagues:
- The poverty within some layers of the population, by giving new sources of income to the Charities organization when they sale this refurbished computers.
- The Digital gap in France, in the world in general, and in Africa in particular through the spreading of a distribution extended by free data.
- The waste of resources induced by the over-consumption of raw materials, by increasing the life-time of computer hardware.
***
(Fair and freed by Emmabuntüs)
CooperationEmmabuntüs is not only a GNU/Linux distribution, but also a community working on the re-use of old computers and cooperates with
Les Amis de la Terre, Festival de la Récup,
Les Pc de L'Espoir,
Trira (TRI Rhône-Alpes),
THOT (c.i.s), and
e-nexus.
The community cooperate also with organizations promoting the free (as in freedom) software :
Montpellibre,
Perpinux,
Gard-Linux,
Infothema, and the free culture: Société d’Histoire
Saint-George & Dalayrac.
Since fall 2012, a deep synergy exists between the projects Emmabuntüs and
Jerry Do-It-Together.
Jerry is a computer assembled in a plastic container with components extracted from old computers. Jerry became the hardware companion of the Emmabuntüs distribution during the Free Computer Exhibitions.
This cooperation was extended when
JerryClan Ivory Coast adopted Emmabuntüs as its distribution of choice for the development of a group of medical services.
These services are based on an mobile application using SMS to monitor patients with tuberculosis, or to monitor pregnant women (see JerryTub, m-Pregancy, OpenDjeliba). And you can watch the video Jerry-Marathon à Attécoubé.
This first project gave birth to several other cooperations with the
JerryClan Ivory Coast,
Togo and the new
Emmabuntüs Cameroun Comunity, also the JerryClan of Chad,
Benin, and
Senegal. Stay tuned …
Testimony of Florent YOUZAN
Articles about Emmabuntüs published in the press :