September 1st 2014 Emmabuntus 3 celebrates Festival of Humanity

September 1st, 2014 Emmabuntüs 3 celebrate Festival of Humanity



On September 1st, 2014, the Emmabuntüs Team is pleased to announce the new Emmabuntüs 3 1.00 (32 and 64 bit) based on Xubuntu 14.04.1. This distribution was designed to be used for the refurbishing of computers given to humanitarian organizations, especially Emmaüs communities (which is where the distribution's name comes from), and to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware to reduce over consumption of raw materials ( * ).

This new release is delivered to improve the work of reconditioning in Emmaus communities that use Emmabuntüs, and also for our friends JerryClan in France and Africa (Ivory Coast, Togo, Cameroon, Chad, Benin and Senegal) who practice re-use of computers by making Jerry Do-It-Together using Emmabuntüs to develop locally innovative uses.



Photo: on Emmaüs de Montpellier Saint-Aunès Community

This new version will be presented for the first time on Jerry during the big event of the season in the world of Free Software at “Espace du Libre, des Hackers et des Fablabs” in the Festival of Humanity. We encourage you to come to visit this area, and support the crowdfunding campaign for this event on Ulule.



This Emmabuntüs 3 release keep the same principles as the release 2, except that it is built from the Xubuntu 14.04.1. After free up some space by removing some software, we have redesigned the security of privacy (Startpage and HTTPS Everywhere), accessibility and training, incorporating the voice synthesizer Svox Pico in 5 languages (Fr, En, Es, It, De) and OOo4Kidsen 6 languages (Fr, En, Es, Pt, It, De) completed extensions to allow oral reading of words, sentences (PicoSvoxOOo), and coloring syllables (LireCouleur) to better help children in learning to read.

To speech synthesizer was associated gSpeech, the software to allow everyone to be able to listen to web pages, books in Calibre, or articles in Kiwix. This application does not read a book in a single pass, but can read by pages.

For this version 1.00, following fixes and upgrades have been made:


 * Based on Xubuntu 14.04.1.
 * Fixed a defect in certain icon labels under VirtualBox
 * Adding favorites in MenuLibre
 * Adding extensions Startpage and HTTPS Everywhere in Firefox and Chromium
 * Adding Voice SVOX Pico synthesis in 5 languages: En, En, Es, It, De
 * Adding gSpeech to allow easy reading-speech document
 * Adding OOo4Kids in 6 languages: En, En, Es, Pt, It, De
 * Adding to OOo4Kids the following extensions: PicoSvoxOOo, LireCouleur and Grammalecte
 * Update the extension Language Tools 2.6 for LibreOffice
 * Replacing Ekiga (obsolete) by Jitsi and XChat (obsolete) by HexChat
 * Incorporation of OSMGpsMap in Gramps
 * Incorporation of GnuChess and GnuCap for Gcompris Application
 * Fixed not launch Childsplay applying this patch
 * Fixed demand of constant updating from Picasa
 * Menu to “remove languages” in several languages

This realease is delivered in “final version”, but we draw your attention to the fact that there is still some problems with graphics cards like the Nvidia C61 GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 with which you must use the proprietary driver otherwise the screen freezes. Although highly functional we recommend to continue to use Emmabuntüs 2 for which we will make an update by the end of October to incorporate also some improvements from Emmabuntüs 1.00 3.

To ensure proper installation of Emmabuntüs 2, we advise you to install it first without Internet, and then to get online on the first reboot to complete your installation.

We would like to thank those who helped us for the development of this version, especially Frédéric, François, Jean-Marie, Jean-Christophe, Jérôme, Jean and Rodolphe, and our friends Emanuel and Gustavo for help in Promotion for testing this version.

We would like to thank also the holders of the following projects: Cairo-Dock, OOo4kids, Kiwix, Calibre, Multisystem, Boot-repair et OS-Uninstaller for allowing us the use of their logo on our new wallpaper startup because we considered their software as key software in Emmabuntüs and also friends of Tech & Tux for the video announcement of this release.

We also thank the leaders of the following websites and blogs that have supported the Emmabuntüs 2 project over the past year: Linux notes from DarkDuck, Weblog Frédéric Bezies, Gustavo Pimentel's GNU/Linux Blog, Cartas de Linux, Le Blog d'ANDRE Ani, Tech & Tux, SAM7BLOG, Toolinux, La vache Libre, Cédric Gavage and of course all our friends of Montpel'libre who worked for a year to present Emmabuntüs to Emmaus Montpellier, our friends from JerryClan in France and Africa (Ivory Coast, Togo, Cameroon, Chad, Benin and Senegal) using daily Emmabuntüs for their major projects.

This version will be available from September 1st 2014, from our homepage: emmabuntus.org, but also from this website download.emmabuntus.org.

We encourage you to give your old computers to charities, and support crowdfunding campaign to promote  “l'Espace du Libre, des Hachers et des FabLabs” on the Festival of Humanity.

Here are some links to install and to use this distro: List of applications, Installation, Personalization, but also the traditional F.A.Q

If you have any problems or comments, you can contact us on: forum, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, contact

Note :

According to the ADEME from manufacturing to disposal, through its use, each stage of the life of the computer equipment can be quantified by its environmental impact: making a computer and a screen requires 1.8 tons of resources (240 kg of fossil fuels, 22 kg of chemicals, 1500 liters of water).

For the Ecoinfo's group the priority is to act. Each member of the group does it by himself (purchasing, maintenance, development of networks), but everyone of us can also contribute by his personal behavior. Their conclusion: " if it is already possible to intervene at all stages of the cycle of hardware, the most effective action you can have is to limit the environmental impact of these materials by reducing your purchases and by increasing their life ! ".


 * ''Extract from Lettre N°3 – Octobre 2008 : L'informatique omniprésente. Quel impact sur l'environnement ?
 * Exposition Le numérique et l'environnement (Analyse Le numérique et l'environnement )''
 * Quelle est l’empreinte carbone d’un ordinateur ?