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Custom Linux Distributions from Educational Institutions?
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.
I don't mean to troll, but doesn't someone come out with a linux distro for novices once a month? I wonder what is going to be so special about this one? and what was wrong with the other user firiendly ones that they had to make a new one? mandrake is usually considered one of the friendlier ones by itself, and then they modified it? too bad the site is in french (and i'm to tired to babelfish it[i.e. karma whore]) best of luck to them, though
Here in Norway there is "SkoleLinux". Debian based and used in many primary schools though version 1.0 is not released yet. www.skolelinux.no
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"
Here at RPI, the ACM (at least when I was a freshman) would release RedHat CDs that they'd made for the IBM model laptops that you could get through the school. Since so many students had the school model laptop, these allowed the students to have a Linux that they already knew would work on the hardware, and was designed to remove any difficulties that might arise with it. Not an educational distro, per se, but of course, Maple and all those other titles can be run remotely over X, so the point of an educational distro would be a little odd.
We're on a mission from God.
I think that MIT might have been making a distro at one time, though I only visited for a week, so I'm not sure. =D
The University of Missouri - Rolla keeps it's own custom version of Redhat Linux that gets installed on any machine that requires linux on campus. It takes care of the repetative steps of setting up kerberos, nis, and afs, along with the custom software path and login scripts, etc.
Here, we've SLAES and AbulÃdu. And I'm sure I heard about more projects (if I remember well, the Spanish Debian-based LinEx is also geared towards education). These are not made by a single educational institution, but they are clearly targeted at them. The main problem is that educational software is always made for Win32, but this is slowly becoming a moot point, as free software is developed, and emulation solutions get better support for these programs.
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...
Xenu brings order!
Debian has been running a sub-project called DebianEdu for some time now. You can read up on the project at the above link or from the mailing lists.
assert(expired(knowledge));
There's something floating around my campus called "BU Linux" which is Boston University's distro of Red HAt Linux.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
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 if it could do it with symlinks to a full repository so that a full repository and a subset can exist side-by-side without wasting disk.
It's certainly possible to produce special-purpose distributions from other distributions, but only Debian lends itself to this sort of manipulation and centralization.
Isn't the point that this is aimed at French Canadian education: the Open Office spell checker is in French, it uses Frenchmozilla, and assumes a Quebec keyboard. So it avoids the anglophone configuration of most other North American distributions, and the Eurocentric assumptions of most other francophone distributions. Then it has kdeedu as an education package. I am sure that reducing configuration choices is the right answer for some potential users, but clearly not for others.
Custom distros are great; "Custom" ones are probably worthless.
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 other researchers in my own department have chosen to use RedHat or other distros.
I'm afraid this group probably is just trying to make a niche for themselves where one doesn't exists -- thousands do.
(from the description at www.ibiblio.org) College Linux CollegeLinux is a new, stand-alone operating system based on Slackware Linux and created by the Robert Kennedy College, Delémont, Switzerland. The aim of this experimental Linux distribution is to provide to RKC students and student population at large with an operating system which is easy to install and use and which provides an alternative to the traditional commercial operating systems. Yawn!
Hay Sherbrooke is me home town! Didn't even know they had a LUG there. Eh... Haven't been there since RedHat 2.0 ..... Or there abouuuuuts.....
Julius Caesar - Act I, Scene i: "What mean'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!"
How long do you think it will be before colleges in the US start following suit?
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.
The University of Michigan College of Engineering distributes "blue hat", now referred to as CAEN Linux.
:w
Stanford has something called SULinux. It is a modified version of Red Hat with APT, libsafe, different default firewall rules, and some programs preconfigured for Stanford's setup (kerberos, afs, etc.). http://sulinux.stanford.edu/
All the radicals at University of California, Berkeley are clamoring for one.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
"My school's Linux distibution is more prestigious than yours!"
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
No, sadly those t-shirts have long since disappeared, but I may have to revive them now that you've mentioned it. Sadly, Dearth retired last semester, and his replacement seems to know less about computers and networks in general than your average helpdesk grunt.
The university's new slogan is "Rolla - The middle of everywhere". What they forget to mention is that everywhere is shaped like a donut.
> Here, we've SLAES and AbulÃdu.
Shouldn't that be GnuAbulÃdu ?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
and have everyone run gentoo
no actual post, just an edit.
Anyone know what SNU's policy is towards students using Linux? My son is starting SNU this fall and I won't permit him to use or be forced to use Winbloz which is broken, defective and viral.
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 in the dorms. Now THAT'S draconian opression.
Anyone ????
someone tell this newbie, why does /. have a "BSD section" but not a "Linux section"? is Linux so fucking huge there's only room for the small interest groups here? seems odd to me...
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 ;). Its a convience factor, the elaborate mechanisms provided by the portage system allow me to knit together some really exotic combinations of hardware and software.
It's not for everybody, but my computers have to run for a few years between installs. By the time I had finished retrofitting and customizing RedHat, I practically had my own distro anyway.
One advantage of Seanix for my situation are my spellbook of network management scripts I call PREEN. Preen maintains RSA keys between the nodes, allows them to SSH back and forth, updates configurations for the entire network at once, and coordinates system shutdowns, among other things. It also handles all the handshaking that must go on when someone changes his or her password.
It also synthesizes a custom passwd,shadow,and group file for every computer. Some machines running samba need the machine accounts. The new mail server runs everyone as a virtual mailbox, so I have no local accounts (for users) at all. Still others are workstation, and they download the user accounts for the expected population of users.
Stallman wasn't kidding when he said 90% of software is used internally and never published,
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming