From RA Peter Voigt on Thursday, 2006-04-06 at 14:28:18 +0200:
Am 06.04.2006 um 13:59 schrieb Conrad Newton:
Bestix ...
Please tell about the relationship to skolelinux in just a few words.
Like most live CDs, Bestix is a promotional tool for Free Software.
Since there are many people outside of the community who have no idea
what free software is all about, there is clearly room for such a
tool.
In particular, one of the major selling points of skolelinux is the
inclusion of OpenOffice.org as a major program. There are still many
people (believe it or not) who have never heard of OpenOffice.org, and
to the extent that Bestix promotes OpenOffice.org, it also promotes
skolelinux. Not only is OpenOffice.org important, but the
translations
of OpenOffice.org are important. Bestix includes all of them.
When NordisKnoppix was presented at a computer expo in Lithuania three
years ago, I was told that it made a big impression that you could
type
Lithuanian characters into OpenOffice.org and that Lithuanian
spell-checking was included, even though the user interface (at that
time) was still in English. The same might be said about Armenian or
Georgian languages today, and if there is even a chance that people
there could be interested in OpenOffice.org/Skolelinux, I would be
thrilled!
Arguably, I could have made this announcement on the OpenOffice.org
mailing lists, and indeed it is my intention to do so eventually.
However, there are still some weaknesses in the CD (as described
in my first post) that should be removed before presenting it to
a more user-oriented mailing list (like OpenOffice.org).
Debian-Edu is not only more developer oriented, it is also my home
away from home on the Internet, so it is seemed natural for me to
first announce the CD here. ;-)
A somewhat more concrete answer to your question is that Bestix
includes among its "Download" categories an Educational category
that permits users to download childsplay, gcompris, tuxmath,
tuxpaint, and tuxtype.
Another aspect of the Bestix/Skolelinux relation is the question
of user interface. In a post to this mailing list just yesterday,
Knut Yrvin suggested alternative programs/interfaces for skolelinux.
One of the best interfaces I have seen is the interface created
by Trond Maehlum in Kongsvinger (based on icewm with XP theme).
The Bestix user interface may be seen as alternative suggestion,
inspired by the work done in Kongsvinger.
OK, not so few words, but you asked ...