Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday released the upgraded KITE GNU/Linux operating system (OS) suite – the FOSS-based (free and open source software) OS developed by the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) for deployment in new laptops in schools.
This OS suite can be used as a complete computing platform not only by students and teachers in schools, but also on home computers, in government offices and DTP centres, and by software developers.
The new OS suite has all important updates till date of the popular Ubuntu OS. It also features a lot of FOSS-based applications that are not part of the Ubuntu 20.04 repository. Most of the applications in the OS suite have been updated to their latest versions and customised as per the school curriculum, especially for higher secondary and vocational higher secondary sections.
The updated OS suite features a large collection of Malayalam Unicode fonts that help in Malayalam computing, DTP graphics image editing software, sound recording-video editing 3D animation packages, IDEs for programming, database servers, desktop version of mobile apps, and so on. The OS also contains internationally acclaimed FOSS applications such as GeoGebra and GCompris that help learn different subjects using IT.
Another highlight of the ‘KITE GNU Linux 20.04’ is the inclusion of computer-aided design (CAD) software LibreCAD instead of the heavily priced AutoCAD that is widely used in engineering courses. The suite also includes Scribus that can be used for DTP purposes.
The Chief Minister released the OS suite by handing over a copy to Little KITEs IT club members M.S. Kalaveni of Government Higher Secondary School for Girls, Cotton Hill, and Akash J. of St. Joseph’s School here. Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty and KITE chief executive officer K. Anvar Sadath attended the function.
The operating system can be downloaded for free from the KITE website www.kite.kerala.gov.in
The State has been making full use of free software in education, even adopting ‘GNUKhata’ instead of Tally, the proprietary accounting application that is licence based. The State saving crores with the use of FOSS-based OS in over two lakh computers deployed in schools had also garnered attention.
