Re: description of benefits and limitations of debian-edu/skolelinux
>From Vagrant Cascadian on Thursday, 2004-12-02 at 14:58:50 -0800:
> i'd like to get a short description of the advantages (and weaknesses)
> of a debian-edu/skolelinux network...
>
> <snip>
>
> i am largely interested in diskless terminal technologies, but i imagine
> there are other big advantages with skolelinux that would interest
> schools.
>From my point of view, diskless terminal technologies are
the big technological advantage of skolelinux. The other
major advantage is the very active developer community,
with its close ties to Debian.
> i'd also be interested if anyone had some sort of presentation or
> demonstration materials i could use...
There is a live CD called skoleknoppix:
ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/skolelinux/knoppixes/skoleknoppix/
Unfortunately, this CD does *not* include the diskless terminal
technologies that are of most interest to you. Skoleknoppix
is basically a KDE 3.1.5 based skolelinux workstation.
The default language is Norwegian, but you can boot it into English
with the boot option:
knoppix lang=us
Skoleknoppix also supports the following languages: de, fr, it.
A related live CD project I have been working on is called Snofrix:
http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix.html
http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix/html/us/programs.html
Download:
http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix/html/us/download.html
Snofrix is above all designed to make Linux attractive to children.
The main difference between skoleknoppix and snofrix is the inclusion
of many games in snofrix, at the expense of latex and the developers'
tools that are included in skoleknoppix.
> some issues i've had with GNU/Linux advocacy in the past were with java,
> flash, and who knows what other "latest plugin fad of the year". how
> does skolelinux handle those sorts of issues?
Since it is not permitted to redistribute flash, you must download it
separately, whether you use skolelinux, skoleknoppix, or snofrix.
It can be done more or less automatically, but you have to initiate
the procedure. Some java support is included, although I do not know
what its limitations might be---it is not SUN's version of java.
Conrad
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