Re: [school-discuss] killer apps, ISO files and introduction

["adil khan" <adilkhan1234@xxxxxxxxx>]

hello every one

i am here in india have started  a prograamme educational software
awareness programme

need your valuable advice on this project

having problem that school forge and other programme are not hindi
language can i start to translate it some where also internet
connectivity is not avil in most of the schools also systems are of
old config its like hell

how yet i and my friends have decided to change it any how is
translating wiki will also help???

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I've been lurking on this list for years, but hope to be more of an
> active participant now that I've become a part of two very exciting
> projects. One is a position at York University in which I am to design
> open source based communities to enable academics to share research,
> courseware, and open discourse. Another is working with a company that
> is designing a netbook-type device+infrastructure specifically for use
> in the developing world (picking up where the OLPC left off, so to speak).
>
> A little background: I've been involved in open source since 1995 and
> "open systems" for a decade before that. I wrote more than 100 Linux
> columns for ZDNet and I was a founder of the Linux Professional
> Institute. I also helped create (and still participate in) the Canadian
> Association for Open Source and the new user's SIG of the Toronto Linux
> User Group.
>
> I'm just getting introduced to Moodle as a courseware
> development/sharing tool and it does indeed look to be the outstanding
> tool in its category. This is not the same case as with Drupal, which
> (while being my own CMS tool of choice) is merely the leader in a very
> crowded field -- many Drupal sites could also be implemented in Joomla,
> Plone or other tools. And there does not -- at least that I have seen so
> far -- seem to be a proprietary tool equivalent as good as Moodle, in
> the manner that Sharepoint exists as a counterpart to Drupal and other
> open source CMSs.
>
> So I would agree that Moodle is a 'killer app' in this regard. And it is
> making significant progress, being adopted widely by some institutions
> (for example, http://moodle.yorku.ca/). What I think is happening is
> that Moodle started in the world of post-secondary and is slowly making
> its way into secondary institutions -- and only after that into K12.
>
> I must say that I am puzzled by the desire for people to build and make
> available custom ISOs of Linux distributions, rather than allowing
> people to obtain a generic distro and add a few extra bits.
>
> It may be too much to ask people to dump the Linux they're using, or
> even to reboot their system, just to try a new complete OS... especially
> when the ISO is just a mainstream distribution with a few custom RPM or
> DEB) files added on. One of the strengths of Linux and many
> distributions is their modularity -- that feature is destroyed by
> insisting that people download and boot a whole new ISO just to try out
> some new software or artwork. Even Edubuntu is no more than Ubuntu with
> a few educational packages and themes added on...
>
> My own preference would be for people to provide the specific RPMs or
> DEBs available for download -- either directly or (even better!)
> creation of a repository that can be monitored so that users can always
> have access to the latest version. Then all you would need to do would
> be to provide a small text script that people could execute on their
> existing systems to load the unique components. It also helps to be
> aware that not everyone yet has high bandwidth, and it's easier for many
> to obtain a CDROM of the OS and just download the addon bits.
>
> Matt, what specific changes/additions have you made to PCLinuxOS? Are
> they available separately, or is the only way to get them on the ISO file?
>
> - Evan
>