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I don't think that a seven year old want's to use a linux disto because of the simple fact that they can't play much games on them....and that is one of the only things that kids do with a computer(except tomorrows geeks) :)

Well my daughter (6yrs old) is no geek :( she doesn't run freeBSD for a start ;o)
However she does run SuSE linux as her main OS (She also has BeOS, and Win95 for her Authur and Fireman Sam CDROMs). She hasn't expressed any interest in programming, but she does enjoy KDE's range of games - particularly Shisen-sho, SameGame, Sokoban and KPoker.

Back on topic: As well as debian-jr and SuSE's educational emphasis, there are projects such as www.seul.org.

Residents of the UK should watch their local Linux news sites for a schools Linux project which will be launching soon....
- Derwen

For my home machine, I generally use Mandrake's cooker branch. Since I am often downloading packages, I was interested in trying the various ftp clients available. For a while, I was using gFTP, which was easy to use, but not always stable. Before then, I often used Netscape, but it is a total sloth at FTP. Then I tried lftp one day and was shocked; it was usually one or two(!!) orders of magnitude faster than any other client I'd tried (This on my university's T1, so I have the bandwidth.) When other clients would give me 6-80 Kbps, I routinely get 500+ Kbps from lftp (to the same server, of course).

So for those of you who are comfortable with the original command-line ftp, and have high bandwidth, I recommend you try lftp. It has tab-completion, bookmarks, wildcarding, etc. I'd be interested in hearing other people's recommendations for ftp clients.

PS. Yes, I use MandrakeUpdate as well, but I like to check for new packages.

http://www.seul.org/edu/

The focus is on using Linux in education at all levels, K-College, both in the classroom as well as administration.

Hope this helps!

I'm not sure if you're looking for general advice on how to administer a network, or for education-specific software to run on those systems.

Things like Dan's Quiz Page cover creating custom quizes, while there are some sites that have a specific topic like science. The general site LinuxForKids.org has links to most educationl titles, though the emphasis is for home-use.

If you're looking for help on how to set things up, and administer them, look here at Learnux.

If you're looking for School Administration (beurocratic) software, I didn't find any. That doesn't mean that there isn't any. Take a look here , here or here . Ask these groups questions, there are quite a few mailing lists on this subject.

I'm not sure if you're looking for general advice on how to administer a network, or for education-specific software to run on those systems.

Things like Dan's Quiz Page cover creating custom quizes, while there are some sites that have a specific topic like science. The general site LinuxForKids.org has links to most educationl titles, though the emphasis is for home-use.

If you're looking for help on how to set things up, and administer them, look here at Learnux.

If you're looking for School Administration (beurocratic) software, I didn't find any. That doesn't mean that there isn't any. Take a look here , here or here . Ask these groups questions, there are quite a few mailing lists on this subject.

Forgot one important distro.
Tiny Linux:
http://tiny.seul.org/en/

I looked into the SIF when it was first announced months ago. We went over the license on Technocrat, and quickly realized that it wasn't open source at all.

When you look at how MS intends the ZIS to be used, the end-user software that anyone but the techies see isn't intended to write or read data natively in the SIF format. There are agents to translate from the proprietary data formats to/from SIF. After things get through the agents into SIF form they get processed by the ZIS.

So why bother with SIF at all? The agents are clearly where the important work is to be done. If we want to do something similar, why bother with porting some MS code and be limited by their license? We already have an XML spec called EduML that does pretty much the same thing. There are OSS educational programs being written to use EduML as their native data format. If we were to use something like the Casbah Project as the backend, all we'd need to do is write a little glue and agents for whatever non-EduML software we wanted to play with our efforts. And it would all be OSS.

If you're at all interested in this sort of thing, come take a look at SEUL/edu and help us get Linux and OSS more widely accepted and used in education!

Doug Loss

I looked into the SIF when it was first announced months ago. We went over the license on Technocrat, and quickly realized that it wasn't open source at all.

When you look at how MS intends the ZIS to be used, the end-user software that anyone but the techies see isn't intended to write or read data natively in the SIF format. There are agents to translate from the proprietary data formats to/from SIF. After things get through the agents into SIF form they get processed by the ZIS.

So why bother with SIF at all? The agents are clearly where the important work is to be done. If we want to do something similar, why bother with porting some MS code and be limited by their license? We already have an XML spec called EduML that does pretty much the same thing. There are OSS educational programs being written to use EduML as their native data format. If we were to use something like the Casbah Project as the backend, all we'd need to do is write a little glue and agents for whatever non-EduML software we wanted to play with our efforts. And it would all be OSS.

If you're at all interested in this sort of thing, come take a look at SEUL/edu and help us get Linux and OSS more widely accepted and used in education!

Doug Loss

I think the above mentioned idea of contacting Linux companies for any infomation and support is a very helpful one. Additionally, there are projects dedicated to supporting the use of Open Source software in education. I just did a quick search on Google and found some sites. This site, K12 Linux, is aimed at helping teachers and administrators use Linux in elementary and high schools. Another link is SEUL/edu, a sub-project of SEUL, the Simple End User Linux. It is a discussion group for those interested in using Linux for education.

For anyone interested in this issue there is a web site at www.seul.org that is endeavouring to make Linux easier to use. I get a periodic newsletter from them.

It's geared toward a wide range of Linux users, which makes sense given the goal of bringing Linux to the broader public. The site is fairly big with stuff for newbies and nerds. Not surprisingly there's always need for volunteers.

Linux need a subset, independent from its parent. Much like embedded Linux is a subset of Linux. A Linux for the masses, One distribution for Everyone Else.

Sort of like SEUL, you mean?

Single End-User Linux is what they want to do. Interesting project. Check it out!

http://www.seul.org/

Alex

Linux need a subset, independent from its parent. Much like embedded Linux is a subset of Linux. A Linux for the masses, One distribution for Everyone Else.

Sort of like SEUL, you mean?

Single End-User Linux is what they want to do. Interesting project. Check it out!

http://www.seul.org/

Alex

Check out SEUL/edu, where `SEUL' is ``Simple End-User Linux''. They offer a page to search Freshmeat for educational SW.

Then there's Linux for Kids, which is collecting both educational software and just plain games.

If you want a wider perspective, K--12 Linux is working to coordinate educational use of Linux in all primary and secondary schools.

Go for it! And don't forget to pass it on, and to return the favor to these sites.

Check out SEUL/edu, where `SEUL' is ``Simple End-User Linux''. They offer a page to search Freshmeat for educational SW.

Then there's Linux for Kids, which is collecting both educational software and just plain games.

If you want a wider perspective, K--12 Linux is working to coordinate educational use of Linux in all primary and secondary schools.

Go for it! And don't forget to pass it on, and to return the favor to these sites.

Try Genius (which is now part of the Dr Genius package) I was using this as a tool for matrices before I ever tried MatLab. Once I sat down at university lab PC, I found it to amazing how close to MatLab Genius is.

I'd also love to see a decent pool simulator, such as Interplay's "Virtual Pool 2" ported to Linux... I used to love VP2, and try as I might, I just can't quite get it running right under WINE... (It comes CLOSE, which just frustrates me all the more... ;-)) I've checked out some of the open source pool games, like GTKPool, which is a nice attempt, but it's just nowhere near as polished or playable yet (understandably so)... I've yet to see any that were... I'd kill for one as good as VP2, though... I used to play that thing all the time, whenever I just needed a quick relaxing gaming session (as opposed to an intense and usually long-lasting gaming session, like a game of Quake3Arena, which I also love)... One of the very few Windoze programs I really miss... That and GameSpy... If those two existed on Linux, I'd be a VERY happy puppy... ;-)

Don't forget these as well:

ET-Linux - Runs on embedded x86 systems, and really IS meant for small, embedded systems (eg. little to no security). glibc2.1/kernel 2.0.38. Used with an ADC card to acquire data in the astrophysics lab where I work. It'll fit nicely in a 6MB flash chip.

TINY Linux - Really meant for recycling old 386s, works in an embedded environment without too much work. A full install with X takes around 80MB, but you can pare it down to 10-20. Based on libc5, though, so watch out when compiling new packages.

MicroLinux - I haven't used this one, nor do I read Russian (which the page is in), but I've heard that it works and has a very small installed footprint.

MuLinux - An Italian distro, still in development, major feature of which is the ability to live in a ramdisk on a computer with only 4MB of ram, if I understand correctly what I've read about it. (Haven't actually used this one either.)

If you're interested in Linux in education, take a look at SEUL/edu. We've been working on the problem of getting Linux ised in schools below university level for over a year. We've got a number of apps under development or ready to be deployed, and We have a team working on documentation for teachers on how to install, configure, and maintain Linux systems. We do a weekly report on Linux in education for Linux Weekly News and LinuxToday (although Slashdot hasn't ever mentioned it). And we have a database of existing educational programs for Linux and a list of links to other Linux educational sits around the world. Check us out!

Take a look at www.seul.org. It's "Simple End User Linux", and also has a section about Linux in Education (www.seul.org/edu).

With regards to software, the almost exclusive uses are word processing, spreadsheet, etc. (i.e. Staroffice could be used) and programming (and there are so many programming languages available for Linux). There *really* isn't anything else used at school (maybe some CAD occasionally).

Take a look at www.seul.org. It's "Simple End User Linux", and also has a section about Linux in Education (www.seul.org/edu).

With regards to software, the almost exclusive uses are word processing, spreadsheet, etc. (i.e. Staroffice could be used) and programming (and there are so many programming languages available for Linux). There *really* isn't anything else used at school (maybe some CAD occasionally).

I'm paying some attention to what's going on with gEDA and PCB. Those are programs for electronics CAD. I can only speak for my self, but I guess many people, like electrical engineers, know their "trade" much better than the inner workings of a user interface.

What I am requesting is a general CAD toolkit etc for which you can write (parts of) your particular application as a plugin. One candidate (though I haven't mentionied this idea to their development list) is dia.

--
Borge

[OFF-TOPIC]

This is excellent news.

However, I'm not entirely happy with the assertion that Lokisoft makes 'most of the uber-cool games' for Linux! This article was about how cool it is that Creative are open-sourcing their SBLive drivers. And it is very cool. So remember, that Loki don't make open source games.

Now, I do of course understand why they don't. And I do think Loki is a very exciting company, and they're doing exciting things for Linux, and I'm sure it won't be all that long before we see some more open source offerings from Loki.

But, I'd just like to remind people that there are some excellent open source games for Linux. My personal fave has to be FreeCiv - http://www.freeciv.org/ - and pingus will be excellent when it goes 1.0 - http://pingus.seul.org/

For many other superb linux games, many of them open source, pop over to http://happypenguin.org/

Jules

I'm having the same problems. The only thing keeping me back from running Linux 24/7 is a good resuming ftp client and Blizzard's Diablo.

Anyway, I was attempting to upgrade my distro (RH5.2) and was looking for a gtk+ upgrade. I noticed gFTP on the gtk site at the time. I suppose it's kinda like BulletProof FTP (which I use in Windows), but I don't know. I couldn't compile it because my libraries are so dated.

Hope it helps to break your bad habit.



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Linux people to help provide such support. If LUGs around the globe would reach out to their local schools (universities aren't what we're talking about; they can generally support themselves), we'd have much improved chances of getting Linux into the schools. Probably initially as test projects, but that's where it starts.

Right now there's something like this being done at the Corbett school in Tucson Arizona. The link won't show you much other than some drawing by the students, but there's a short description in an email. It's a work in progress, done mostly by volunteers.

Really, it all comes down to making a bunch of cheap X terminals and some application servers. The X terminals can be much cheaper than $400 (refurbished 486's work well enough). Though they are hard to maintain, it's even possible with donated equipment (which, while plentiful for schools, tends to be otherwise useless). There has been a lot of discussion about this on the SEUL-edu mailing list (interested people are invited to join).

Maintenance issues as a whole are very important in schools, with public labs, occasionally malicious users, and a lack of knowlegable admins. The lack of security on Windows and Macs make them totally inappropriate for classroom use, but somehow most schools don't seem to appreciate this. As a result, school computers tend to be finicky and inflexible, and take up as much time doing dumb technical stuff as they do helping children learn.

The alternative is the laptop schools, which is to me a Very Bad Idea. But at least the computers trully are personal -- and if the kid messes up their computer, they've messed up their computer. But there's so many minuses to laptops...

Of course the Riverdale school has been using Linux for a long time on the server side, but recently there's been a lot more activity on the client side as well. I think Linux can do most of what most schools want to do right now, which doesn't make it perfect at all, but perfection is not a serious option to many schools -- or even half-way decent (I'm sorry to say).

Learnux is a Canadian volunteer effort to recycle old computers into useful Linux computers.

Actually, this is one of the things Project Independence is trying to address. It is all about Linux for the home user. Linux for you mother... They are addressing things like security, the fact that most users leave the computer off for the overnight chron jobs...

We have a mailing list, seul-edu, and a website, http://www.seul.org/edu/ that are dedicated to fostering educational applications for Linux. We have a number of programs both pedagogical and administrative and documents (HOWTOs, on-line texts) under development which I think you might find interesting. We can always use help and feedback. Please take a look at what we're doing and then join us!

Doug Loss

This article is very informative and gives a good kick in the pants towards a direction. And it is also reminscent of the same old trash (I'm even unafraid to say FUD) I saw before the DOJ case against Microsoft.

Linux is a morass of arcane text commands, bewildering options and incomprehensible Unix concepts

Linux is not Command Line dependant. In *very* easy instructions that comes with Redhat I removed any command line boot up on my computer at home. Once KDE was installed (is 'rpm -ivh kde*' that hard? If it is the package manager in the control panel is easier!) I only had trouble setting up the menus to handle everything I wanted to do. But that wasn't harder than learning Win95.

the Achilles heel of their open-source software development model -- the need to get cool people to take on uncool tasks. [i.e. make it simple for non geeks]

There is Stampede lite, Simple End User Linux, Corel, and other potentialy good distributions working on just those problems. There is a lot of work being done in this area already.

Installing Linux as many have pointed out can be easier than Windows, and when something goes wrong, it is even easier to fix.

I didn't accept this trash before, and I don't see a reason to accept it now. This is where I draw the FUD line, when they project an image of Linux that is not true. It isn't a cryptic mess of command lines (unless you like it that way.) Non-Geeks won't be abandoned by the community, just by Ivan.

Remember when the community won an award for its support? As far as I know the Linux-Help IRC channel is still an invaluable help line. Maybe we've gotten lax with IBM and other companies promising support? No, it may sound like it until we remeber back that its just a rehashing of fud with the same old answers we've maybe forgotten because we haven't been challenged by them in a long time.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~

Yes, majority of all the PC users in the world buy PCs with a pre-installed OS. But what we seem to forget is that majority of those PCs are pre-installed with either Windows 95 or 98.

Difficulties with installing Windows 95/98 notwithstanding, majority of PC users will never have a problem installing it, simply because it comes pre-installed with their PCs.

So we still do have a problem convincing users to use Linux if we can't improve the installation process. We can't mask the problem by adding technical manuals or installfests -- these are kludgy, awkward solutions to something fundamental that needs to be designed from the ground up.

In addition, FUD or not, Linux is still far from being an ideal desktop system for non-technical users (by this I mean people who use PCs as a means to a end; not as an end of itself -- to write to their loved ones, to manage their family budgets, etc.. and are not necessarily enamored of their machines, otherwise -- in other words, people not like us /.ters). At this point in time, I would still tell my mom, sister, or brother (who are non-technical users) to stick with Windows 95/98 simply because it would be less of a hassle for them and for me.

It's no good to say that people who use Linux should learn to use the command line, that people will be empowered by having to learn the lower level details or have to find a supportive Linux community (or a good Linux guru) to be able to use it. The only result that achieves is that non-technical people will find no compelling reason to switch to Linux, even though in the end it actually benefits them.

This is not to say, however, that things are not improving (or improving quickly). Linux is a moving target and over time it will become as good as any commercial GUI (Windows or Mac) out there.

But it is also important to admit that Linux GUIs (KDE, Gnome, GnuStep, etc.) are not there yet and that there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

The best way to respond to these criticisms (or FUD) is not through explosions of rhetoric that just muddles the issues further, but to actually contribute to those efforts that produce real, tangible results (either in actual code, documentation, bug reports, test results, suggestions for improvements, etc.). For a concrete example, look up the seul project. I don't know how active they still are but their efforts should be supported.