I'll answer the "just use the apt-get anyway" idea. Unfortunately
there are schools in Norway that don't have broadband to do
apt-get. Then everything you need must be on the CD. Also users in
other countries has big limitations in bandwidth, and Skolelinux is
used there as well. Then it's of extreme importance that every tools
that prevents using the apt-get. I'll show to this issue discussed in
the Skolelinux project report from 20002 to the ministry of education
(translated to English):
The Skolelinux project has to take in consideration that few schools
has the band width that permits transferring big data volumes. That
talked about in chapter 2.1.5 page [*], most of the schools have 64
k-bit/s ISDN connection to the Internet. With that kind of
limitation there are really important how the schools sets up
temporary storages (proxy's). [...]
http://developer.skolelinux.no/rapporter/forprosjekt/node5.html
We also support schools in Norway with no or little network
connectively. 1/3 of the Norwegian schools don't have broadband. The
situation in other countries are not so bright either. In Africa they
ship mails by temperate storages that are taken bay moped to from the
school with Internet to the schools that have no Internet.
- Koffice (redundant and the cause of a lot
of problems because of OOo mix up and it's
better that a sys admin removes OOo and
install Koffice to minimize end user problems
if Koffice is their choice.
Koffice is growing and has the same
File, Edit, View, Insert, Format menu as OOo and
for basic usage the same skill set is necessary.
I consider Koffice redundant since OOo as of
today is our preferred office suite. Personally
I like Koffice better and I'm waiting for a better
MS Word filter)
It's a good question because a lot of whats in the OpenOffice is never
in use in practical life. Why not use the Koffice-applications as
Kword which is popular in the lower grades (1-4) because it doesn't
have to complicated user interface. In lower grades the application
should be under-loaded with functionality. A lot of the pupils are
learning to handle complexity.
That said. After 4-5 year at the school, the pupils get older, more
educated in use of computer programs. Then OpenOffice is
introduced. It's bit like kids in general that starts with a tricycle,
and then go to a bicycle with helping wheels.
The real story here is that grown up expert applications that seems to
be general tools that everybody use, had a stiff learning curve. It's
to many menus for lower grade pupils. They use days to figure out the
menus before they can do anything. Grown ups tend to forget this. It's
like the cow that has forgot that here has been a cattle.
Thats why we should not use Evolution as a e-mail client, but a simple
web-mail client, or e.g Thunderbird / Kmail.
Also Koffice have good drawing applications both in koffice, and
OpenOffice. There you get a rectangle with a push on the mouse
button.
If the replacement is done the schools will have more
apps for learning purposes and the usefulness of
Skolelinux will increase.
I believe we should take away the applications that have to much
complexity in the menu structure. But removing the old LTSP will free
70 MB, and will help us removing applications to be less painful.