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Custom Linux Distributions from Educational Institutions?

Posted by Cliff on from the linux-goes-to-college dept.

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.

6 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. RPI, hardware based by Tevye · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. we already do by roberto0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:we already do by asteinberg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Same here at Stanford, only it's called SU Linux. It's a modified version of Red Hat, supposedly "hardened", but I think the main difference is that it comes with built-in support for AFS and Kerberos, 2 things we use a lot here. I'm not sure how many people actually use it - I'm using Debian (which has packages enabling AFS and Kerberos, though it was a bit tricky to get working at first), and I know some other people using other normal distros (I've seen Gentoo, Red Hat, and Mandrake floating around), so I suspect it's mostly used for installation in some computer labs around campus that run Linux.

      --
      The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
  3. A "Profile" of Debian by gseidman · · Score: 2, Interesting
    It should be possible to produce special-purpose profiles of Debian. On the back burner of the Brown LUG is a subset of Debian, plus a couple of extra packages and at least one virtual package (or, possibly, a task). It would be provided in an on-campus repository.

    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.

  4. Linux québécois by henrygb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. It'll be a while at my school... by silvwolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.