Freeduc, a free educational software promoted by UNESCO, has come to India. Freeduc, which stands for Free Education Software Database, contains a host of educational software and information on subjects like literature, history, geography, languages, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, sciences, technology, documentation, educational games and audio-visual applications.

Based on the open source platform, Freeduc is aimed at providing reliable and cost-effective educational solutions. In order to expand the reach of the software to a larger section of the Indian population, Linux For You, Asia's first magazine on Linux and open source, has released it totally free of cost in a CD for that comprehensively packages the features of Freeduc.

Mr. Rahul Chopra, editor, 'Linux for You,' expressing his views on the software says, "Freeduc is an interesting proposition for the education fraternity seeking cost-effective and interactive educational solutions. As all applications are based on open-source, the software permits greater flexibility and reliability."

Usage of the Freeduc CD will substantially reduce the spending on costly software for computer education in schools. They can even use this CD as a part of their curriculum to make the topics of mathematics, science and geography more interesting, and students can even use this as a good self-study interactive tool.

Dr Geo—software of interactive geometry is one of the key highlights of the icon dedicated to mathematics. The other applications of this section include a tool for the drawing planes, a lightweight spreadsheet, a tool to plot 2D numerical data, a curve plotter, a tool for 2D interactive geometry, an advanced calculator, a Chinese abacus, a browser for fractal curves, a calculator for numeric and algebraic expressions and a tool for 3D geometry. An interesting feature of the science section includes a sophisticated sun-clock. The other prominent applications that form part of this section are simulator for classic mechanics, a unit conversion utility, a tool to create maps of the sky, a 3D viewer for molecules, a planetarium, an editor for scientific and structured documents, a sophisticated clock, a periodic table of the elements, and a molecule editor.

Freeduc also features a special segment on technology that provides a host of exciting interactive tools. Dia—a tool to create diagrams is one of the most attractive elements of the package. An editor for printed circuit boards, a simulator/ editor for numerical circuits, a morphing utility, a tool for technical drawing, a basic draw utility, an image manipulation and paint program, and an advanced tool for vectorised drawing are also available.

Xmap, a tool to explore geographical maps and information about countries in the world along with a geographic information system (CIS) and geographic maps is also one of the most informative applications of the software Freeduc. It also has a language instructor. Hanzim, a program on Chinese writing (classical and modern), along with other features, can help one in learning and Latin and Spanish. The dictionary utility gives bilingual access to English technical as well as common words.

The CD also contains a number of editing and help tools. The other applications of this section are GQview, an image viewer, free office suite, a desktop publishing tool, a lightweight word processor, a basic text editor, a screen-magnifying utility, and the HTML page editor of Mozilla.

A specially designed icon 'XFCE' enables learning of basic methods of data and information access. In addition, the CD also comprises of educational games such as escaping from caves, grabbing diamonds, managing a city, disguising Potato Man for the infants, chess, jigsaw puzzle, Chinese puzzle, calculations in sequence and also an educational game suite for students of all age groups.

Linux For You is Asia's leading information resource on Linux and Open Source Software. It highlights the interests of corporates, developers, IT implementers and new and seasoned Linux users.