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"They need something that just works"

The AUCOOP Base Image

Now that you know what hardware you have, you need software. Every laptop needs an operating system, applications, and configuration.

The AUCOOP image is a ready-to-use Linux Mint system designed specifically for community deployments. It's pre-configured with:

  • Linux Mint Cinnamon — A familiar, Windows-like interface that minimizes user training
  • OnlyOffice — A productivity suite that looks and feels like Microsoft Office
  • Web browser — Firefox, pre-configured with useful bookmarks
  • System optimizations — Cleaned of unnecessary applications, lightweight and fast

The AUCOOP image is available from a public repository. You download it, write it to a USB drive, and you have a bootable system that works on almost any PC hardware.

Work in Progress

Suggested image: Photo of a USB drive labeled "AUCOOP Image" next to a laptop.

Testing Before Committing

You pick up the first laptop from the pile — a Lenovo ThinkPad with a few scratches on the lid. You insert the AUCOOP USB and power it on.

When you boot a laptop from the AUCOOP USB, you have two options:

  1. Live mode — Run the system entirely from USB without touching the hard drive. This lets you test hardware compatibility, check that WiFi works, verify the screen displays correctly — all without making any permanent changes.

  2. Install mode — Write the system permanently to the laptop's hard drive. This is the real deployment.

The screen flickers to life. Linux Mint's desktop appears. You click around — the WiFi connects, the browser opens, OnlyOffice launches. Everything works. You breathe a small sigh of relief.

This two-step approach is valuable: you can evaluate a batch of machines in live mode first, identify any hardware issues, and only then commit to installation.

What Happens During Installation

When you choose to install permanently, several things happen beyond just copying the operating system:

  • Device registration — If you provide a DeviceHub token, the laptop automatically registers itself with your inventory, uploading deployment evidence to app.ereuse.org
  • Offline resources — The image includes offline content like Wikipedia, so users can learn even without internet access
  • Educational tools — Pre-installed educational games and a local language model for offline assistance

Offline-first design

Community networks may have intermittent connectivity. By including offline resources, the laptops remain useful even when the internet goes down.

Creating Your Community's Golden Master

The AUCOOP image is a starting point — but every community has specific needs. Maybe your community center teaches graphic design and needs GIMP. Maybe the local cooperative uses specific accounting software. Maybe you want the desktop wallpaper to show your organization's logo.

This is where you create your golden master: a customized version of the AUCOOP image tailored to your community's requirements.

You gather your team around the table. "What do people actually need?" you ask.

The answers come quickly: a browser for online courses, a word processor that looks familiar, spreadsheets for the cooperative's bookkeeping training. Nothing that needs constant technical support.

The process:

  1. Start with AUCOOP — Install the base image on one reference laptop
  2. Customize — Add software, configure settings, create user accounts, set the hostname
  3. Test — Make sure everything works as expected
  4. Capture — Create a disk image of your golden master using Clonezilla
  5. Deploy — Clone that image to all other laptops

By evening, you have one perfect machine sitting on the table. Every laptop you deploy from this point forward will be an exact copy — same software, same settings, same reliability.

But... What about the 19 other computers?