Kolibri and GNOME
Offline computing and learning was something of a theme at GUADEC 2022 as there were multiple talks by people from the Endless OS Foundation, which targets that use case. Dylan McCall and Manuel Quiñones had a talk on day two about a switch that Endless has made over the last few years away from its home-rolled "knowledge apps" to apps based on the Kolibri learning platform. While Endless has its roots in GNOME, and Kolibri runs well in that environment, the switch will allow Endless to reach users who are not running a GNOME desktop.
The talk would be a project update on some of the work Endless has done to bring the value of the internet to those beyond its reach, McCall said. Some of that also came up in two other talks at GUADEC: one on digital autonomy the previous day and another on an Endless OS project in Oaxaca, Mexico the next day, both given by foundation CEO Rob McQueen. McCall said that they wanted to present what Endless is working on now, especially as it relates to how GNOME makes a "really great platform to develop this type of software". He began by introducing himself a bit, he is from Vancouver, Canada and has been with Endless since 2019; Quiñones said that he is from the Litoral region of Argentina and has been with Endless since 2017.
The internet provides lots of benefits, Quiñones said, but there are large numbers of people who cannot access it for a variety of reasons. The Endless solution to that problem is to use storage, which is inexpensive these days, to bridge the gap. A small, cheap USB storage device can hold most of Wikipedia plus additional educational content—and even some entertainment options.
Endless has learned that integration with the operating system is important; "people understand apps". So making apps that work as people expect is needed. "What if they can search in their GNOME desktop in the same way that they 'Google'?" Endless OS has various "knowledge apps" that are well integrated with the desktop. The operating system comes with content from a variety of sources and "many apps", including general-purpose tools like Encyclopedia and more specialized apps depending on the needs of the target users.
But, he asked, "if we have something working, why change it?" The answer is "scale"; in order to reach more people and scale out its efforts, Endless needed to shift gears. The existing apps are great for Flatpak-enabled systems, but in order to reach more people, other types of platforms need to be supported as well. In addition, the development pipeline for creating content apps for Flatpak was expensive to maintain; it made creating the apps easy, "but we want to go farther".
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The work that Learning Equality, Endless OS, and others are doing is definitely interesting and seems likely to be useful to many students—of all ages—for a long time to come. These kinds of projects are highly visible reflections of some of the ideals that the free-software movement holds dear. It is great to see them being put into practice.