Thinvent provides a specially customised version of Thinux for Rural Telecentre Operators. This version of Thinux comes bundled with the following features:

1. An operating system that extends upon the legendary stability and security of Linux. Thinux has an inbuilt recovery mode and “read-only” base, that ensures that no matter what goes wrong on the field, the system can be recovered on-site.

2. Preconfigured drivers for all the hardware devices that one is expected to attach to the computer.

3. Pre-installed applications that enable common computing tasks such as browsing and document preparation. These applications also cover the syllabi of common computer courses that the telecentre operator may wish to deliver.

4. Compatibility with most popular Windows software.

5. Localisation. One can access Hindi and other Indian language websites and create documents in Devanagari under Thinux. Moreover, Thinux itself can display most software menus and help in Hindi, Tamil, etc. This is a boon for rural students and users.

6. Support for connectivity through dial-up, DSL, CDMA, GPRS, Wi-Fi and VSAT. Built-in VPN connectivity.

7. Remote Management: Thinux gives you the ability to remotely configure, upgrade, control, inventory, view and reboot your computers, from anywhere in your network, through a simple browser-based interface. This greatly simplifies the task of managing a heterogeneously connected network of thousands of computers.

8. Remote Monitoring: To help run the project successfully, Thinux provides you with details like uptime, connectivity issues, resource utilisation (such as number of printouts). These statistics are collated and made available at the central monitoring location.

9. Unified Communication: Thinux has built in support for all modern forms of communication – email, chat, VoIP and video-conferencing. The centres can use these services to communicate with you and each other, and also offer these as services to the village folk.

10. UI Customisations: When a computer centre is set-up by a new entrepreneur, the user will face a number of teething problems. This leads to frequent support calls. We minimise these in two ways.

First, the entire UI is customised to be very user-friendly. All the software and tools that they commonly require, are placed in a handy and organised manner. On-line help and tutorials (localised to Hindi) guide them through common tasks like taking their first printouts.

Secondly, we provide on the screen, a number of status icons. When the user calls up for support, the personnel can ask for the state or colour of each icon, and quickly determine the cause of commonly occurring problems. This is very helpful in debugging problems with printing or Internet connectivity.

The above software consumes a disk space of less than 512MB.