Canonical announced yesterday that the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science will deploy more than 180,000 workstations running Edubuntu 7.04 as part of the "Computer for Every Child" project. The operating system will be installed with the Macedonian language pack.

The "Computer for Every Child" project of Macedonia is one of the largest thin client and desktop Linux deployments that were ever started. The first 7000 computers with Ubuntu pre-installed were shipped in September. Half of the elementary and secondary Macedonia students go to classes in the morning and the other half attend school in the afternoon, so 180,000 workstation will be more than enough for the entire public school population.

"Macedonia is showing tremendous vision by deciding its own destiny in choosing how its children will learn through computing. By choosing Ubuntu which is free to modify, use and redistribute it turns students into participants in Information Technology and not simply consumers of it." - said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project.

Ivo Ivanovski, Macedonia's Minister for the Information Society, added: "The Computer for Every Child initiative is the largest and most important education project undertaken in the 15-year history of the Republic of Macedonia. By selecting Ubuntu as the operating system for all of our classroom virtual PCs, our education system can provide computer-based education for all school children within the limited financial and infrastructural confines that most institutions face today."

160,000 virtual PC terminals and 20,000 PCs will be supplied by NComputing, all of them running the Ubuntu operating system. The machines will be procured and installed by The Haier Company, a PC maker based in China.

The project will bring innovations in the educational system. Interactive web-based classes in which experts teach in areas like mathematics, biology, chemistry to multiple schools around the country will be one of the advantages brought by the "Computer for Every Child" initiative.

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