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My 6 year old just celebrated his year anniversary of running Edubuntu www.edubuntu.org/news.html - Edubuntu has been launched 4.5 months ago :)

Anyways, Edubuntu seems well suited for school use. A funny (I guess) story. Couple of months ago I said "enough" after my parents' 20th virus-related emergency, so I burnt Ubuntu CD and installed it on the their computer next time I visited them... just to find out that I burnt the wrong image (I had Edubuntu iso in the same dir) and didn't notice it during installation and first booting (Ubuntu/Edubuntu have that dark brown logo on a black background when you boot them... and my parents have a monitor with crappy contrast).

Also, it might be a good idea to contact people from - what they do is they deploy OSS (probably (Edubuntu, because it's Shuttleworh Foundation) in Sourth African schools. I bet they could give tons of useful advices.

If I were you, I'd go for Edbuntu, but before you go and install it on all the sytems, please check that it works on one system properly.

Product page http://www.edubuntu.org/
Tour http://www.edubuntu.org/tour.html

there is a bunch of software available to teach these kids on Edbuntu

If I were you, I'd go for Edbuntu, but before you go and install it on all the sytems, please check that it works on one system properly.

Product page http://www.edubuntu.org/
Tour http://www.edubuntu.org/tour.html

there is a bunch of software available to teach these kids on Edbuntu

Why not test it out using the live CD? Let some staff and pupils give it a try and see what they think.

Sure the handful of crapfully crafted games he had for Windows wouldn't run, but within the first week he didn't care. The distro comes loaded with educational games and exercises. His 1st grade class has 3-4 ancient iMacs (the ones that came in different colors). My impression was that they don't use the computers to construct or teach lessen plans, but its there to get them accustomed to using computers on a daily basis. For some edu-games, some heavily restricted internet, and education exercises I HIGHLY recommend edubuntu for younger kids.

I don't seem to understand this assumption. Just because you're asking someone to switch from a Windows interface to a Linux disto interface, why is it automatically assumed they're going to have a difficult time making the transition? If they can perform the two basic functions of modern computer use (press key on keyboard, click button on mouse), I'll bet they'll pick up the system just fine. A couple of posters mentioned Edubuntu, and based on the what I've seen of that, I can't think of a reason that any minimally-capable child (or teacher, for that matter) couldn't master the use of that system in rapid fashion.

I also believe this idea of you not being around much to manage the systems is something not to worry about either. I'm a system administrator and our site's systems all run Windows. I'm not there all the time. The computers get heavy use on weekends and when I'm away on a trip or on holiday. Sometimes stuff breaks, and if it isn't critical (which it rarely is), it waits until I return. My guess is that if there were some unforseen glitch with one of these Linux boxes, a remedy could wait until you return. And if you're setting up a server, is remote access an option?

As for the day-to-day maintenance, I run a couple of Kubuntu systems at home and on the job, and I rarely find the need to "do" anything to them other than use them. On my personal system, I'm run Adept every few days to see what packages have been updated, and maybe I'll tweak something here or there. But, I don't spend any more time under the hood with these systems than I do with a Windows box.

Perhaps there's a faculty member on the school staff who might have an interest in this new system enough for you to show them the basics. You might train the trainer, as it were, and provide some information on routine maintenance, just to cover you in your absence. You could also provide a list of bookmarks/links to the plethora of Linux sites out there, specifically sites about the distro you choose.

One other thing: why not set the distro up on a single machine and show it to the staff at the school? Give them the opportunity to see what you're proposing, let they play with it a bit. My bet is that the unique experience of using a decent Linux distro, combined with the low cost and your enthusiasm, will let it sell itself. This sounds like an exciting project to me.

oh, pleez...I've been running high school courses running linux exclusively for more than 4 years now. I've forgotten what windows looks like! I enjoy eating my lunch while the windoze users are running around trying to deal with the latest plethora of windows problems.

As for elementary schools, there are lots using all kinds of open source materials, programs, etc.

Check out places like:

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/

Tuxpaint is designed as an elementary school children paint program. They also have tux math and tux type, which I have found to be excellent programs for elementary level school children.

Google for additional info such as: "linux school programs" etc. and you'll find out that there are thousands of schools using linux already.

And here's a link to a massive roll out of 300,000 linux computers! The entire state of Indiana is moving all of the student computers to linux in every high school!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1844695,00.as p

And then there is the leadership by schools in the Extramadura region of Spain:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/view.html ?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_3

And so on and so on.

Since you are considering Ubuntu, you might want to look at Edubuntu:
http://www.edubuntu.org/

the main concerns are the availability of educational software for them to use

There is no need to be concerned. THIS is the _perfect_ solution for you. Edubuntu. It's Ubuntu loaded with educational software.

If you are thinking about Ubuntu why not consider Edubuntu that is targeted at schools and has quite a few educational programs included? Here's their webpage

Edubuntu may be the way to go.

Edubuntu FAQ

Looking at the Edubuntu Tour, some of the programs seem to be for a younger age, around kindergarten and up, but the SchoolTool calendar for teachers looks interesting.

OpenOffice is included (of course). You don't mention what applications the kids may need - if it's just for internet browsing and research, and maybe some of the other educational things already included (Typing, etc), Edubuntu may fit your needs.

The upcoming 6.04 release of Ubuntu's Dapper Drake may fit you better, as it will have a formal support cycle. (I want to say 3 years).

Edubuntu may be the way to go.

Edubuntu FAQ

Looking at the Edubuntu Tour, some of the programs seem to be for a younger age, around kindergarten and up, but the SchoolTool calendar for teachers looks interesting.

OpenOffice is included (of course). You don't mention what applications the kids may need - if it's just for internet browsing and research, and maybe some of the other educational things already included (Typing, etc), Edubuntu may fit your needs.

The upcoming 6.04 release of Ubuntu's Dapper Drake may fit you better, as it will have a formal support cycle. (I want to say 3 years).

Edubuntu?

Edubuntu (Ubuntu Linux for schools) for example.

Makes me wonder if it's possible to create a country that has 100% of its computers running on OSS. And methinks Ubuntu is a good choice here. Check out http://www.edubuntu.org/, Mark Shuttleworth seems genuinely interested in developing OSS for the not-so-developed countries. Its not just about the technology or the beauty or KDE vs Gnome, I think the philosophy of ubuntu fits in well with the market needs and the objectives here.

This is hilarious. its not that the idea is bad, but rather the humerous download page. Read the damn thing. Its obvious if your a linux user you'll see no problem.

http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuInstallNotes

For the layman, child or non technical user, you've already lost them. Seriously linux folks, you need to get more education in human interaction and usability. That download page is far too technical for a parent or child or someone who ISNT familiar with computers in general. They should simply need to download the file, run an install and be done with it. Its ridiculous. If you want to keep promoting Linux to the same crowd of people (parents who use Linux) hey more power to you. But if your trying to do these things to expand your market, you're competely clueless.

And you all wonder how windows NT killed Novell and why windows dominates the desktop. And no, it isnt just because of marketing. Seriously, the linux community needs to evaluate itself in the area of "consumer" usage and marketing if it wants to dent the windows dominance on the desktop.

I always wonder why so many distributions insist on being GNOME-based. In general, it results in things like the list of apps that edubuntu uses. In short, the list has 18 KDE-apps, 1 GNOME-app, and 6 apps that use GTK but no desktop specific libs, despite the fact that Ubuntu is nominally GNOME-based. It seems that GNOME offers little in the way of important libraries, or more groups already writing GTK software for Linux would bother to make them GNOME apps, and less people would go to KDE as a platform.

Now, don't get me wrong, GNOME has made some great backend stuff. Beagle and GStreamer in particular jump to mind, but the desktop as a whole just doesn't seem to offer all that much. It's not even that I necessarily think that GNOME is the wrong choice (although I personally wouldn't choose it), it's just that all the distros that choose it (including Ubuntu and most everything else) don't appear to give any strong argument for why, so I'm somewhat confused as to what they base their decisions on.

Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:

Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes, together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting.

...and the Application Selection criteria:

Target Market for applications - while applications for the learners are required, the main requirement now is for teacher tools, to enable teachers to create teaching content, worksheets, cross words, tests.

So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:

1. An easy-install/control LDAP-based network environment
2. A Learning Management System
3. A bunch of pretty basic and standard educational applications - although the Timetabling app isn't to be sniffed at

Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.

Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:

Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes, together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting.

...and the Application Selection criteria:

Target Market for applications - while applications for the learners are required, the main requirement now is for teacher tools, to enable teachers to create teaching content, worksheets, cross words, tests.

So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:

1. An easy-install/control LDAP-based network environment
2. A Learning Management System
3. A bunch of pretty basic and standard educational applications - although the Timetabling app isn't to be sniffed at

Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.

Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:

Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes, together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting.

...and the Application Selection criteria:

Target Market for applications - while applications for the learners are required, the main requirement now is for teacher tools, to enable teachers to create teaching content, worksheets, cross words, tests.

So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:

1. An easy-install/control LDAP-based network environment
2. A Learning Management System
3. A bunch of pretty basic and standard educational applications - although the Timetabling app isn't to be sniffed at

Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.

Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:

Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes, together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting.

...and the Application Selection criteria:

Target Market for applications - while applications for the learners are required, the main requirement now is for teacher tools, to enable teachers to create teaching content, worksheets, cross words, tests.

So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:

1. An easy-install/control LDAP-based network environment
2. A Learning Management System
3. A bunch of pretty basic and standard educational applications - although the Timetabling app isn't to be sniffed at

Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.

I'm deeply suspicious of a so-called "educational" distribution put together by people who can't seem to spell "calendar" correctly.

I must say that I prefer the kids' Firefox icon (topleft) than the blue earth icon that the "serious" release uses.

http://www.edubuntu.org/images/tour/gnome-desktop. png

The philosophy and developer base of OSS allows for products to be made to fit niches that big closed source companies like Microsoft can't be bothered to service. The ability to develop to suit the needs of fringe groups is a powerful tool. It's good to see it being fully exploited.

Gnome people, this is not the time to freak out. Just because Mark is using KDE as his desktop and he wants to put more resources into KDE doesn't mean that the Gnome side of Ubuntu is going to suffer. There could be many reasons for his new found interest in Kubuntu.

1.From the beginning it seems that Mark felt a little guilty that he had to pick one desktop to really do well. I know a lot of people think "just do one thing and do it well" is an admirable philosophy, but in the GNU world that is the path to weakness. The Linux Desktop is chaos and unless you want to spend enough to harness that chaos you HAVE to make some big decisions like that. When he first started with Ubuntu, he had no idea how successful it was going to be. He had not idea if the whole thing would be a waste of money, or that no one would care. But now that Ubuntu is making a huge splash in the Linux world and is making noise across the globe Mark has decided that he is willing to commit more of his resources to the entire Ubuntu project. He set up the Ubuntu foundation and gave it $10 million to begin with. So a new commitment to KDE and Kubuntu DOES NOT MEAN THAT UBUNTU WILL HAVE LESS, just that probably he will be willing to give more overall to help the KDE side as well.

2.Despite its relative popularity, the Kubuntu side of the project has not had nearly the resources the other side has gotten so far. The Kubuntu maintainer- Jonathan Riddell - did a lot of the work in its free time. At first he was only given a smallish contract at the end of releases to help get them in better shape. I bet that if Mark is serious about Kubuntu it will finally have a full time developer (if that is not already the case).

3.A big goal of the entire Ubuntu project for Mark is his Edubuntu side project. Well in all honesty Kubuntu might be a better fit for that project than Ubuntu for a few reasons: the The KDE Edutainment Project is the single best educational software on the GNU desktop and is far more developed than anything on the Gnome side. Plus KDE uses less RAM (this is my own opinion) so it might be a better fit for the older computers that many schools might have today. Gnome hates to have less than 256mb, and you can't build a user friendly desktop around XFCE (and it would probably take less resources to make Kubuntu better than to fix all of Gnome's RAM problems single handily). So a better KDE is better for the Kubuntu project.

4.The entire Ubuntu community has been trying better to make the KDE side seem like an equal ever since it was announced. On the Official Forums we have separated KDE and Gnome areas for the Breezy release, and beyond that a forum independent forum was made by a third party for Kubuntu. So in some ways Mark is just catching up to the rest of the community.

The last thing any Gnome fan and Ubuntu user needs to think is that "the sky is falling." This is a GOOD thing for you Gnome fans. Why? A better Kubuntu will bring more people to the distro and that could help build the overall community. A better Kubuntu will help establish the entire project as THE Desktop Linux which would help with gaining support of third party application makers that won't release for anything not called Red Hat. A better Kubuntu shows that Mark is becoming even more devoted to the project, and considering the man makes more off of investments than the entire Linux service industry more of his support means that the entire project is is better shape. Finally, a better Kubuntu means that there is more choice in the community and that the entire project is maturing. Its a good time to be a Desktop Linux user.

I'm using it right now, and apart from a new splash screen that resembles the forums theme and the replacement of the GNOME foot with the Ubuntu logo in the top left corner, the most immediately obvious changes to the end user are the features introduced by GNOME 2.12. Namely, the menu editor, disks manager, clipboard daemon, Evince document viewer, drag-and-drop preview, type-ahead-find for Epiphany and GNOME's help browser, and so on. That stupid gedit focus bug is fixed. The switch from OpenOffice 1.1.3 to OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Beta 2) is a substantial one as well; xine 1.1 and AbiWord 1.1, unfortunately, were released too late Breezy's dev cycle and aren't included. Similarly, 5.10 has shipped with GStreamer 0.8, which is still unusable for video, so you'll want to install totem-xine over totem-gstreamer as soon as possible. Under the hood, Ubuntu is now using the 2.6.12 kernel, modular X.org and GCC 4.0.1. Ubuntu has also updated their ATI fglrx drivers to 8.16.20, which gives a significant performance boost (from crap to less crap) for those cursed with ATI cards.
 
Overall, my end user impressions are that this is a worthy and welcome upgrade to my distribution of choice, but apparently I'm only really scratching the surface. According to the release notes, the major features of 5.10 are advanced thin client integration, an OEM installer, the Edubuntu project for deploying Ubuntu in schools, and Launchpad integration ("Launchpad.net is the new infrastructure that Ubuntu and its derivatives use for translation, bug tracking, sharing code patches, fixes and technical support."). So, in short, I like what I'm seeing, but what I haven't seen looks even better.

Such systems already exist. There is Edubuntu and also some Live CD's based on Knoppix with focus on education. I'm sure others exist, but those just a few.

We've also been able to do far more in-house than we'd have been able to with MS stuff, I have a strong sense of ownership, and of kinda understanding how everything fits together. This last year we've been exploring web-based technology, such as the incredibly brilliant Moodle virtual learning environment.

Anyhow, we're now interested in the notion of Linux on the desktop, and I too have been impressed by how easy ubuntu is to set up and use. Spent the weekend at the edubuntu summit, chatting about the idea of a ubuntu based, easy to install and use, distribution aimed at schools, including those in developing countries where internet access isn't all it could be. This is a tremendously exciting project, and given how easy the unbuntu experience is, could well be the way to get linux onto school desktops. The first release is due in October.