EDU Distro - was Re: [seul-edu] Linux in Elementry

[Samuel Hart <criswell@geekcomix.com>]

On Wednesday 22 August 2001  6:13pm, James Oden wrote:
> > This brings us full-circle then, doesn't it?  An Edu distribution would
> > prepare the UI for student use.
>
> Perhaps you don't need a entire distributions.  You could provide a CD with
> several rpms (or debian packages for debian systems) that is designed to
> overlay an existing system such as RH, Debian, Mandrake, ect. in such a
> way as to make it more k12 friendly.  At first I think realisticly you
> would want to target one distro to overlay.  At anyrate this strategy would
> allow you to concentrate for the most part on only on the educational
> objectives and not fuss with things like what kernel to use, filesystem,
> ect.
>
> Just a thought...james

Actually, I personally think a whole distro should be made, instead of simply 
overlaying an existing one. The biggest problem (IMHO) with existing distros 
is that they come with far too many server items that the average school 
would never need. Does each desktop /need/ a web-server? Do they need an FTP 
server? etc. etc. Anything extra that is added like this, increases the 
maintenance and security concerns (and that's something we /dont/ want)

Plus, if a distro was made with schools in mind, the installation process 
could be tailored to be as easy and straight-forward as possible to those 
working in the school (Progeny, RH, MD, SuSE, these all have relatively easy 
installs, but there are too many options that the averge educator would not 
understand and would confuse them [options such as "do you want shadow 
passwords?", "do you want to make a user now?", "what file system do you want 
to use?' etc. etc.]). Also, we can't assume that they will have a 
computer-literate person working on installing the software (even if they are 
supposed to be the tech support ;-) so it needs to be as simple as possible.

One of the things I have been thinking about (and that we plan on doing in 
Tux4Kids) is there needs to be multiple distros, each geared specifically for 
different needs and different skill-sets.

There would be one for the average school desktop machine, one for 
administrative systems, etc.

As a matter of fact, as a QND stop-gap solution, one could even make an 
installationless distro (a Linux system on bootable CD) that contains lots of 
different edu software applications and is easy to use (you just pop in the 
CD, and reboot ;-)

We at Tux4Kids actually have a /very early/ prototype of just such a distro, 
you can see screenshots of it here:
http://www.geekcomix.com/snh/o/m/e/g/a/01-02-16/shots.html
http://www.geekcomix.com/snh/o/m/e/g/a/01-02-19/shots.html

(Note, this project is currently on hold... We are waiting to see what can 
happen both from some of the other EDU software we're working on, as well as 
other kid-based distros, such as DebianJr ;-)

-- 
Sam "Criswell" Hart <criswell@geekcomix.com> AIM, Yahoo!: <criswell4069>
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