Custom Linux Distributions from Educational Institutions? 42
Benoit des Ligneris asks: "The engineering faculty of Sherbrooke University, the Sherbrooke University LUG and Mandrake Canada just released a Linux distribution called EduLinux, which is based on Mandrake 9.1. The event had good press coverage [in French]. Now, it looks like several universities in Canada are interested in the project. EduLinux targets novice users and educational users, alike. As one of the leader of the project, I wonder if other universities or corporations are endorsing Linux like this? What does Slashdot think of the future of this kind of personalized Linux distribution?" Note that the Canadians aren't the only ones doing this, NewsForge reports that the Swiss are, too. How long do you think it will be before colleges in the US start following suit? Update: 06/20 04:34 GMT by C : The EduLinux website is now available in English.
finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:finally (Score:1)
exactly. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:exactly. (Score:3, Funny)
Do you still see those 'Rolla - Black H
OT: umr (Score:3, Funny)
The university's new slogan is "Rolla - The middle of everywhere". What they forget to mention is that everywhere is shaped like a donut.
Old news: College Linux (Score:1)
Re:finally (Score:1)
Us to. (Score:4, Informative)
Point is the schools do not have much money, with skolelinux you need one "terminal" server, and other old machines are used as thin clients. Allows much reuse of old hardware , and the cost is minimal.
"We are developing a Linux distribution for schools. Our aim is to make it simple to install and maintain. Furthermore, to be of real use from primary school on up, it should be available in as many local languages as possible. For Norway, that means both official standards of Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) as well as Sami. These pages are under construction, and will be developed further when a full version 1.0 of Skolelinux is launched. Until then, our main arena will be http://developer.skolelinux.no"
RPI, hardware based (Score:5, Interesting)
MIT? (Score:1)
There are in fact a lot of initiatives... (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, I talked recently with an official from a high school who pushes Linux in his establishment, and he sure saw the benefits of switching to a system with such a better manageability. His main problem was (amazingly !) Microsoft-infeodated executives trying to find every little flaw they could to push their solutions instead (despite national directives recommending Open Source to be used where applicable). PR are still the Achilles heel of Linux, it seems...
d00d! (Score:1)
> Here, we've SLAES and AbulÃdu.
Shouldn't that be GnuAbulÃdu ?
Debian-Edu sub-project (Score:5, Informative)
we already do (Score:2, Interesting)
The differences are that the distro comes pre-packaged, will install over the campus network, and has specific virus/firewall protections built in that are not part of the standard REd Hat release.
Re:we already do (Score:3, Interesting)
A "Profile" of Debian (Score:2, Interesting)
I keep meaning to look into how difficult it would be to write a tool that could take a list of packages and an apt repository to mirror and create from it a mirror containing just the named packages and their dependencies. Even better would be
Re:A "Profile" of Debian (Score:1)
Linux québécois (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux québécois (Score:1)
"Custom" Distros for Schools? (Score:2, Informative)
By that I mean that Linux very definitely has a place in schools, and will need to be customized for use anywhere, but that I (a lab manager at the University of Arizona) won't find value in the same distro as a lab manager in another department, let alone at a completely different institution.
We use Debian extensively in the College of Engineering, but I use Knoppix in my lab for a variety of reasons (yes, I know, it's a Debian variant) and
Re:"Custom" Distros for Schools? (Score:1)
Home Town Pride (Score:1)
Re:Home Town Pride (Score:1)
Please visit the GULUS [gulus.org] when you will be coming home ;-)
It'll be a while at my school... (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll probably be a while at my school.. This past academic year the school signed up for the Microsoft Academic Agreement, or whatever the hell it's called. We get WinXP and Office XP for $5. A couple years ago they switched from Novell Groupwise to Exchange for email. I'm currently helping the department I work for migrate over from a Novell server to a Win2k server.
We have a few first gen iMacs floating around the Housing labs that are being replaced this summer. Not with newer Macs, but with Gateways running WinXP. We even had one dorm "vote" to get rid of all the Macs in their lab and have them replaced with Windows machines.. they didn't care if the machines were slow, they just wanted Windows! We gave em P2-400MHz machines running Win98, and didn't hear from em again.
I was in a "Linux Lab" in the CS department yesterday for class.. The machines in there were running RedHat 7.1 and the 2.4.2-something kernel, IIRC.
It seems as if MS is strengthening its foothold here, can't see Linux making headway anytime soon... I'd bet we're typical of non-geek schools in the country. At least the Teacher's College is recommending that incoming freshman buy iBooks.
Re: It'll be a while at my school... (Score:2)
> This past academic year the school signed up for the Microsoft Academic Agreement, or whatever the hell it's called. We get WinXP and Office XP for $5.
And I wonder how much your fees went up to pay for the 'deal'.
Re:It'll be a while at my school... (Score:1)
BlueHat (Score:3, Informative)
Re: BlueHat (Score:2, Funny)
> The University of Michigan College of Engineering distributes "blue hat"
And the School of Business distributes "ass hat" Linux?
Stanford has... (Score:1)
yes (Score:1)
So it begins (Score:3, Funny)
or they could reduce all classes 5 minutes... (Score:1)
or they could reduce all classes *to* 5 minutes... (Score:1)
SNU ??? (Score:2)
I see on the Gentoo site that SNU donates server space to the Gentoo project so they can't be totally against Linux.
However when I go to www.snu.edu I find the site is running IIS, which I find very discouraging.
I've seen horror stories about several universities FORCING students to use Windows XP and ONLY Windows XP
Re:SNU ??? (Score:2)
Now THAT'S draconian opress
erm... mr Pot, meet mr kettle...
Nothing like letting kids make their own decisions in life. I can imagine the uproar there'd have been if you posted, "i won't permit him to use of be forced to use Linux"....
Re:SNU ??? (Score:2)
A hand grenade or a winbloz box. Both blow up with handled. You would not want to trust your life to either one of them.
You would not want to leave your kids alone with either one of them would you???
Re:SNU ??? (Score:1)
Re:SNU ??? (Score:2)
Really, if they are bent on Jihad I'll be happy to lend any advise on the best ways to camoflogue a Linux box. From KDE themes, to logging the machine into the Windows Domain, to having the right ports open to blend in with the crowd.
And BTW, Win4Lin is a great product for those 'Doze only apps. It gives you a complete working copy of Windows 98, just encapsulated i
The Franklin Institute (Score:2)
We use it for workstations, kiosks, firewalls, and servers. I get around the constant compile hell by distrubuting the build process across our rackmount's using distcc, and caching the binaries. Build once, install many.
It's really only used internally (and for my network at home ;). I