>From Vagrant Cascadian on Thursday, 2004-12-02 at 14:58:50 -0800: > i'd like to get a short description of the advantages (and weaknesses) > of a debian-edu/skolelinux network... > > <snip> > > i am largely interested in diskless terminal technologies, but i imagine > there are other big advantages with skolelinux that would interest > schools.
>From my point of view, diskless terminal technologies are the big technological advantage of skolelinux. The other major advantage is the very active developer community, with its close ties to Debian. > i'd also be interested if anyone had some sort of presentation or > demonstration materials i could use... There is a live CD called skoleknoppix: ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/skolelinux/knoppixes/skoleknoppix/ Unfortunately, this CD does *not* include the diskless terminal technologies that are of most interest to you. Skoleknoppix is basically a KDE 3.1.5 based skolelinux workstation. The default language is Norwegian, but you can boot it into English with the boot option: knoppix lang=us Skoleknoppix also supports the following languages: de, fr, it. A related live CD project I have been working on is called Snofrix: http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix.html http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix/html/us/programs.html Download: http://www.skolelinux.no/~conrad/snofrix/html/us/download.html Snofrix is above all designed to make Linux attractive to children. The main difference between skoleknoppix and snofrix is the inclusion of many games in snofrix, at the expense of latex and the developers' tools that are included in skoleknoppix. > some issues i've had with GNU/Linux advocacy in the past were with java, > flash, and who knows what other "latest plugin fad of the year". how > does skolelinux handle those sorts of issues? Since it is not permitted to redistribute flash, you must download it separately, whether you use skolelinux, skoleknoppix, or snofrix. It can be done more or less automatically, but you have to initiate the procedure. Some java support is included, although I do not know what its limitations might be---it is not SUN's version of java. Conrad
