One person's trash is another's treasure, and this weekend open source vendors and community members plan to join forces with a Northern Californian recycling organization to transform hundreds of desktop and laptops into PCs loaded with Ubuntu, Firefox, OpenOffice and more to be donated to needy area schools.

Untangle, an open source application software maker, joined forces with the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, or ACCRC, to first take in and then turn around hundreds of computers loaded with software for local schools. Dubbed Installfest for Schools, the event involves volunteers from the Bay Area Linux community coming together to install open source applications on recycled computers provided by the ACCRC in four California locations: San Francisco, Berkeley, San Mateo and Marin County.

While the Linux community hosts many generic 'installfests,' this is the first event in which the software experts will be coupled with the hardware recyclers at ACCRC. James Burgett, as executive director of the ACCRC, isn't certain what to expect but knows the more hands involved the more charitable donations his organization can make.

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