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Skolelinux Project Releases Version 1.0
jakobgrimstveit writes "After about three years of hard work, Skolelinux (with its own cute Tux-with-bag-mascot) 1.0 is released to the public. The distribution was started as a reaction to how much the Norwegian schools and the government relied on systems using closed source. Skolelinux is meant to be an easy way to set up a large and secure network of LTSP thin clients (normally PXE boot) for regular users. The Skolelinux-organization won the Norwegian Free Software Prize in 2002. The distribution is based in Debian GNU/Linux, and is also being used and evaluated [1] [2] several places in Africa due to its low demands for the client PC. Kudos to the developers and good luck!"
I would agree. All ways good to hear about new open source projects that have been worked on very hard.
This is truly great! I come from Norway and can hardly wait, though I will probably be done with schools like that before it gets common enough..
:) Firstly i don't like KDE, but then at least they could have used kde3.
But what is it with kde2?
Might have been to make resource requirements lower for the thin clients.. but..
Mohahah!
I work as the only tech guy on a whole large high school campus. I would just on this thing and do a test runw ith 3 computers, but theres a problem. The District Office is run by a bunch of Mac Zealots who will hear nothing of linux. Even though its free. It runs on old hardware we can get for dirt. And we don't have to buy anti-virus or patch it. We insist on getting iMacs! We are in a budget crunch and they can't get their head out of their asses and see the real picture. Assholes.
Skole means school in norwegian.
It's "SchoolLinux", not SkoleLinux... what the hell language is this guy speaking?
Norwegian, maybe?
>Skolelinux
sounds too much like
SKOAL linux (linux for rednecks)
or
SCO Linux (Linux for litigious bastards and masochists)
Joke, maybe?
That guy speaks norwegian, and the name really is "SkoleLinux". :-)
Hence one of the really good reasons to make your new distro based off of debian. Effectively, they get to pick what of the 9000+ packages are suitable for their users, provide additional bits and bobs of configs and so on that are specific for their desired userbase, without having to design a whole new setup/packaging format from scratch. Plus, if all else fails, this gives a really easy upgrade path...
Beware the psychokinetic mimes!
Sorry for the knee jerk reaction - I looked have now at the site. this distro only asks three questions to install, and set up a server. The architecture seems extremely well thought out for a school-type environment. Kudos to the SkoleLinux people for recognizing the need for a tailor-made solution, and easy to use solution and having the persevrance to create it.
Here's hoping SkoleLinux finds its intended audience. And stays maintained.
This is not a signature.
Well, this project has been going on for around three years. It's now being used by several schools here in Norway, and I can't imagine it'll go away too soon.
I'm glad to see geek software where it belongs: in schools helping kids to learn in this post-Columbine hell mouth. Young nerds need a chance to show everyone else that they are people too, and by demonstrating their Linux hacking skills, they may demonstrate their worth to their peers.
Du får nok lære norsk, din selvopptatte engelsksentrige tulling!
This is all the Norwegian you need to know (download the wav file!).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It's just SCO trying to prove they own Linux!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Skolelinux is Norwegian for "school linux".
Skolelinux also goes under the name "Debian-Edu" (as in Education), as it's a modded Debian distribution - tailored for schools.
I agree! It is good to see that there are people in the world that use programs and OS's such as Linux to help make the world a better place for others.
Like it has been stated before in other threads here, I hope that there will be a team of people to maintain the code so that way the schools that use this can flourish from their hard work.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
I personally like linux alot. But why make so many distros? Doesnt that just fragment the linux community itself more? Doesnt it also it harder to keep things up to date?
> Wow, yet another distro. One year from now, half the original contributors will have lost interest and no one will want to maintai it any more, and the poor users will spend their lives under the hood.
The number of schools showing interest for Linux and Skolelinux has surged.
http://www.skolelinux.no/testskoler.php?lang=en
The project is three years old, and now is when Linux is really starting to take of in Norway - not too long ago, Bergen became one of Europe's greatest switchers.
> Linux needs a couple of well maintained distros, not willions of roll-your-owns
Skolelinux is based on Debian, which is well-maintained and stable. Skolelinux is just adaptions and Debian made easy.
The municipality of Bergen has recently decided to move to Skolelinux (Sorry, Norwegian) and throwing out Windows and other UNIXes (Sorry, Norwegian again).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Posting anonymously since I'm bending the rules a bit.
There's another project regarding Linux on PCs in Norwegian schools. But it's not Skolelinux.
It's going into beta next week, and rollout before spring-break is over. So, with a little luck, when people get back to school after the break, they just might be using linux..
Det måtte jo bare komme ;)
I can't remember the rest of the words...
Well, its better than the Free Software Song anyway.
[Time to find out how US-centric moderation is...]
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
No, it's not, but the media in Norway always write it that way.
The name is "Skolelinux" - with a capital "S" and a small "l".
http://www.skolelinux.org/no/press/
Takk, takk, takk! Har ikke hørt den på mange år! Fantastisk (-: Forøvrig burde jo tross alt /.-ere generelt kunnet mer norsk. Insensitive klodder, for å si det slik..
For the norwegian impaired: This is an almost traditional sound clip on the Internet among norwegians. Originally taped in 1989, it is the recording of a father from the northern parts of Norway trying to (rather unsuccessfully) repair a laundry machine. He manages to continually swear for alomst three minutes, without much repeating. Outrageously funny (-:
Challange for norwegians proficient in english: translate this.
K12Linux.org is the Fedora distribution with LTSP already configured. I know many schools in the United States are using it successfully.
See topic.
It' nice to hear that Norwegians pioneer on a such linux distro as this. After all, the man who started it all (Linus Torvalds) is Norwegian himself and speaks Norwegian.
Jag kissar i mina kalsonger nar jag ser det!
You have laundry machines in Norway? Fuck, for that matter you have the Internet in Norway? Who knew?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
...in the world where so many people would never make an effort to learn new work environment.
Actually, Linus is from Finland, and he's part of the Swedish-speaking ethnic group in Finland, who are left over from when Swedes were the big imperialist power of the North. Swedish is close enough to Norwegian that they can mostly understand each other without having to resort to English (but Linus does speak English quite well :-), as opposed to Finnish which is significantly unrelated.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
looks like ftp server is ./ed...anyone got any mirrors for the iso?
Er det veldig mange norske som er moderatorer nå? ;)
Hadde ikke forventa å se +3 på den der
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Skolelinux got freeciv in their top10 recommended software. Sorry for the norwegian link but i couldnt find the top10 list in the english version.
Simpsons 11:11: Lisa: They must have programmed it to eliminate the competition - Bart: You mean like microsoft?
Atleast that site hasn't been Slashdotted, and is sure to load quickly. :)
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
It's actually "anglosentriske", not "engelsksentrige" - so looks like you should read up a bit on Norwegian yourself ;)
Am I the only guy that pictured Tux with a tooth missing and a big fat wad of tobbaco in his lip?
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Isn't that distrobution with the penguin with a wad in it's beak and brown stains on it's lower beak?;-)
You might be a Linux RedNeck if,
* You're 'fixin' to install the latest version
of the kernel.
* You wear a Stetson when you're programming.
* You have a SKOAL Can in your CD-ROM Drive.
* Your root password is "Bubba".
* Your outgoing FAXes, using efax of course,
have tobacco stains on them.
* You have a spit cup hanging from your
computer.
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
"Du får nok lære norsk, din selvopptatte engelsksentrige tulling!" means something close to "You better learn Norwegian then, you self-obsessed, anglocentric dork.".
:)
Seems like there is a lot of Norwegians with moderator points today.
Moderatorne er crack-hauer anyway...
Whooops- Norwegian is not my mother language but I've been here for a few years, so there's no excuse except that I wrote the previous post in "outrage". :-)
Still, I would avoid the "anglo-" as I don't like Latin contaminations in germanic languages (it confuses my few neurons left).
And again, I've been here long enough to know that there is no such thing as correct Norwegian... I'll just claim it's nynorsk. Or trøndersk. Or innvandrerdialekt.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
The Scandinavian languages are of Germanic heritage, while the Finish language is of Slavic heritage.
All the Scandinavians have no problems understanding or speaking the other ones languages. Understanding Swedish for a Norwegian is like understanding cockney for an Englishman.
...basicly, the mainstream press' angle was that very few had adopted it. Many of those that tested it have rejected it because they decided to go with an all-Windows network.
They have 93 schools out of ~3200, less than 3% that have tested it. Far far less that have gone into full-scale deployment. Not to get anyone down or anything, but it's hardly a raging success after three years.
Linux still moves like a glacier. You don't want to get in its way, regaining ground is pretty hopeless, but it's not like it is zooming past you. Let me put it this way: I think there's a good chance my future kids will still go to a Windows-using school... [Cue the "slashdotters not getting any, far less kids"-jokes]
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Our college is looking to move over to using thin clients and I was wondering if you had any testing results on how many terminals you can connect to a certain spec server. We were going to use suse but if this system is leaner/better then I'm sold :)
Det er ikke så vanskelig å lære norsk. Det som er vanskelig er å betale 56kr for en pils.
He he - husker en kompis hadde den på kasett da jeg var yngre. Vi lo oss halvt i hjæl hver gang :-D
Yes, we will definitely make torrents on a later occasion like this. :-)
i dont believe in skolelinux really, and i dont think i ever will..
The Scandinavian languages are of Germanic heritage, while the Finish language is of Slavic heritage. Actually, Finnish is a Finno-Ugrian language and is less related to any other European language than Persian or Hindi. See e.g. this article. Understanding Swedish for a Norwegian is like understanding cockney for an Englishman. Yes, this is probably true. However, few Swedes understand spoken Norwegian. (We have to blame TV for this one.)
Yeah, surprisingly, we do. And in most major cities, there are polar bears walking around. Not to mention the penguins. Bloody irritating, that's what they are.
The Internet connection is of course by smoke signals over to Sweden. Bit of a latency and rather poor bandwith, perhaps, but it's wireless. "Laundry machines" is what we call the kind of people that works by the frozen riveres, trying desperatly to clean clothes with snow.
Skolelinux is used by many more than the 93 that has told us that officially. They don't announce it because of the negative pressure from their ICT-department in the municipality. At least 5 municipalities has done fully migration to Skolelinux in all their schools. Thats a success because they starting using this Debian-based solution before it has reached 1.0 ...
:-)
We know that things takes time in spite of positively reports as the one from Statskonsult that concludes:
Skolelinux has taken the action plan "ICT in Education" seriously and made a product that is adapted to the school's situation and resources.
It's now the action with migrating begins
NORSAR - an array of seismographic stations listening for nuclear explosions in the USSR - was connected to a US network over a satellite circuit, around 1970. In 1979 the first production TCP/IP connection was made to US networks from the UK and Norway.
</trivia>
Linux consultancies and hardware vendors had to be "programmed" to become good providers for Skolelinux adopters. Not all of them were quick learners, mind you.
.... and the cponnection from Skole to school is not an obvious one to me.
Insensitive clod whatever.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.