I am Tirthraj Barot, a research scholar in the field of IT application into Education. I have been researching different apps and instruments that are oriented towards Education when I came across an open source initiative of C-DAC.
I work with Education Institutions and understand their challenges. I believe that putting my views on BOSS may help in contributing to the awareness of our Indian Initiative by C-DAC.
What is BOSS?
Bharat Operating Systems Solution – BOSS. It is a GNU/Linux distribution developed by C-DAC for enhancing the use of Free/Open Source Software throughout India.
Its initial release was in 2007 and last in 2019. So it has been around for quite some time.
It is something similar to the UBUNTU you may be familiar with.
BOSS is Open Source and hence you can update the code to your liking. In most cases, it doesn’t require any customizations.
BOSS is available in following specialized variants:
- BOSS Desktop – Alternative to Windows or Ubuntu for Personal Use.
- EduBOSS – Education Specialized Variant for Indian Schools.
- Advanced Server – Server Variant to support AMD & Intel Architecture.
- BOSS Mool – Minimalistic Object Oriented Linux Version has re-designed kernel to reduce coupling.
Who is associated with BOSS?
As BOSS is an initiative of C-DAC, it is backed by the Government and is under use by Government Institutions. It last came into highlight when the Chinese hackers were reported to have hacked Indian Computers running on Windows. Using BOSS can help ensuring security for such misconducts.
BOSS has very credible partners. Some of them are listed below.
- IIT Madras https://www.iitm.ac.in/
- DBAUX https://www.dbaux.com/
- N Computing https://www.ncomputing.com/
What does BOSS offer in Education?
BOSS has a version – EduBOSS that is specialized for Indian Schools. It offers a wide range of softwares and games built in.
Above that it is available in 19 indian languages including but not limited to :
- Tamil
- Gujarati
- Assamese
- Hindi
- Marathi
- Bengali
- Kannada
- Malayalam
Moreover it also has a rich library of quality applications and games that can be categorized as following:
- Kindergarten Apps for Alphabets, Words
- Math Apps with Fractions and Geometry
- Basic Math Functions apps like Multiplication Puzzle, Tuxmath and Percentage
- Science Apps like Chemical Structure Editor, Chemistry Editor and Periodic Table.
- Social Studies Apps like Country Capitals and Stars.
- Coding Apps like Scratch
Who can adopt EduBOSS OS?
EduBOSS has a very lucid interface that doesn’t require much learning curve if you are already familiar with know-hows of operating computers. This qualifies a lot of stakeholders for using EduBOSS.
Schools, Colleges and Universities can adopt EduBOSS.
There are big labs in all these educational institutions. Each machine would majorly be running on Windows ( It’s like a norm ). Now to run the latest version of Windows, your computer needs to be upgraded as every new version will come with new features that would result in slowing down of computers.
The education institutions usually have a fixed set of softwares that they would be using for every standard in school and every course in college/university. They would be teaching the version of the software mentioned in the syllabus. So they wouldn’t need the newer features of Windows. They would want Windows to provide support to the older version that they are using.
This is a general scenario that can be avoided with relatively lesser efforts.
The Minimum Recommended Specifications for BOSS V8 are
2 Ghz dual core processor or better
2 GB system memory
40GB+ hard drive space
This means that the Computers that the Institution Purchased in lets say 2010 or 2012 can very efficiently run this OS with no hardware upgradation required.
So if you have a lab of 100 computers – All with Dual Core/ Core 2 Duo processors with 2+Ghz, 2 GB RAM and 128 GB HDD, you can comfortable migrate to EduBOSS avoiding the cost of 100 x 2 Microsoft Licenses (Saving ₹3000 for OS + ₹4000/Year for MS Office).
Why adopt EduBOSS?
There are several reasons why you should adopt EduBoss.
- It is developed by India
- It is specialized for Education
- You save on expensive licenses of Microsoft Windows and MS Office.
- Runs on Computers that once ran Windows XP and previous versions as well.
- Improved experience with higher speed and lower maintenance.
- It is used by many institutions of Government of India.
- It is secured against the threat of Hackers.
- Free forever
- Very reliable as it is backed by C-DAC
- Local Language Support
- Lastly, It makes the students and teachers proud while learning on our OS.
Visit https://bosslinux.in/ to download the OS. Try it out!
If you have any questions or require help to implement it, feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin – Link
