Paolo Dongilli

FUSS (Free Upgrade for a digitally Sustainable School – https://fuss.bz.it) has a dual nature: it is a digital sustainability project for schools and at the same time a Free Software product (Debian-GNU/Linux-based operating system and applications) for servers and PCs.

It was founded in 2005 and represents a unique experience in Europe for its organization and structure. The project has led to the migration to Free Software of computer tools used in the teaching activities of all schools in Italian language of South Tyrol: to date 1,900 teachers and 17,000 students use it; it is installed on 4,500 PCs and 65 servers in about 80 schools in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano). FUSS is coordinated and financed by the Italian Education and Training Department of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.

Member of the national initiative Repubblica Digitale, FUSS has made teaching and learning digitally sustainable thanks to four fundamental objectives: the use of Free Software, the use of open formats, the creation of free content, thus laying the foundations for the fourth objective whose achievement should be guaranteed in each school by definition: free access to knowledge.

How can users of your network be allowed not only to remotely access their files but also to collaboratively edit them? Docker, NextCloud, LibreOffice Online and LDAP are the pillars of the proposed solution. The talk will start describing the context where this proposal was born i.e. the FUSS Project (https://fuss.bz.it). The analysis of the problem will follow along with the development details of the solution and suggested deployment strategies.

FUSS is both a digital sustainability project launched back in 2005 and a GNU/Linux, Debian-based distribution for schools, currently used in around 80 schools in northern Italy’s South Tyrol. The presentation, held by Paolo Dongilli (FUSS Project coordinator) and Marco Marinello (developer) will quickly go through the first 15 years of life of the project and then deeply inspect the proposed solution called "FUSS Remote Access" which helped teachers accessing their didactic materials and files left in schools' servers during lock-downs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.