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Using Linux Edubuntu

Welcome to Edubuntu

Welcome to the world of Edubuntu, a Linux distribution designed for schools and other educational environments. Built on the popular Ubuntu, it is a complete operating system that includes an office suite, web browser, many educational applications, and much more. Edubuntu is designed to allow a teacher or network administrator to be able to setup a complete classroom quickly and easily. Edubuntu is committed to the principles of free and open source sofware which means it is free of charge and will always remain that way. Open Source software aims to preserve the freedom to use, copy, make changes and distribute those changes. This means Edubuntu can offer higher quality software at no cost, while allowing everyone to modify Edubuntu to fit the exact needs of their particular environment.

Edubuntu is comprised of several key technologies, one of which is the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) which allows you to boot thin clients from an Edubuntu LTSP server. For educational environments, LTSP lowers hardware costs by enabling the use of older machines as thin clients, as well as reduced administration overhead by having only to install and maintain the software on the server. When a workstation fails, it can simply be replaced without data loss or reinstallation of the operating system.

Any good educational platform should provide applications specifically for it's target audience and Edubuntu is no exception. For the younger crowd, just starting out with computers, Gcompris offers a fantastic early learning environment. For slightly older pupils, there are a number of games and activities from the Tux4Kids and KDEEdu projects and for those in high school and older, there is a full office suite as well applications for instant messaging, graphics, sound and video. And that is just by default! Edubuntu also includes access to thousands of other high quality open source programs at no cost.

The Edubuntu Difference

  • Compatible - Most education computers are some mix of Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and Linux. In this setting, you need an operating system that plays well with others. Edubuntu does that. Edubuntu servers can happily coexist on the same network as other operating systems, OpenOffice.org can open and save Microsoft Office formats, such as Powerpoint, Word and Excel documents and you can even install Edubuntu and another operating system on the same machine. Need to share files between Edubuntu and other operating system or connect to a remote server? Edubuntu does that too.
  • Secure - Security has become a key challenge for educators and the team behind Edubuntu recognize this. Often schools lack the specialized IT staff or time to lock and cleanup computers. Edubuntu, being a Linux-based operating system, enjoys the security advantages of its Unix-like and open source heritages. This translates into higher quality code and less spyware and viruses that plague other operating systems. In addition, Edubuntu has a strict, proactive security policy, meaning many common problems such as open ports or misconfigured software, are much less of an issue. Finally, Edubuntu is a true multiuser operating system, making it easy to allow users to complete their tasks without compromising the system.
  • Managable - With teachers and school IT departments deploying and administering an increasingly large number of computers, time spent managing individual computers is scarce to non-existant. Edubuntu, by using LTSP thin client technology, makes deployment and management simple and easy. A single server is all that is needed to setup, manage and administrate an entire class of computers. The Edubuntu team also recognizes that not every school's setup is the same. As such, Edubuntu is easy to customize for your unique needs, whether it be a simple rebranding or the addition or removal of programs. Hence Edubuntu can reduce the amount of time you spend administrating your computers.
  • Cost Effective - With ever increasing demands on budgets, it seems expensive technology is often last on the list. Edubuntu can help you offer what your students increasingly require from computer technology, without breaking the bank. Edubuntu is and always will be free to acquire, use and modify. Need to setup another machine? Or another 100? Just install them! No more expensive OS upgrades and licenses, or only having specific programs on some computers. By being built on Open Source software, schools are welcome to seek whomever they wish to help them support their computers and are not locked into getting help from the vendor. Edubuntu can also help you save hardware costs, by allowing you to redeploy older machines as thin clients using LTSP technology.
  • Well Supported - Edubuntu support is available from both the Edubuntu, and larger Ubuntu, communities. Many of the authors of the software included in Edubuntu can be contacted directly via mailing lists and IRC channels, including the Edubuntu developers themselves. There are many forms of support available, on mailing lists, wiki websites, IRC channels and bug trackers. There is also a special support group for using Edubuntu in schools. Should you want paid support, Canonical, who funds Edubuntu and Ubuntu development, can offer assistance, or you could find a local company who offer similar services. With Edubuntu, the choice is yours.
  • Built for Education - Above all, what sets Edubuntu apart from other operating systems is its unwavering focus on the educational needs of children all over the world. Edubuntu's motto is "Linux for Young Human Beings" and every development decision and application has that goal in mind. Edubuntu comes with translations for many languages and localization features that allow people from all over the world enjoy their computing experience as well as acessibility features to help disabled users. Using the live CD means pupils are able to boot their home computer into Edubuntu and use exactly the same applications that they are using at school. The LTSP server software allows teachers and administrators to create a low cost computer lab so that students can have access to the educational opportunities that Edubuntu and the Internet can provide.

Applications

Edubuntu builds to be a complete and ready to use educational environment. As such, Edubuntu comes pre-installed with a complete office suite, teaching and learning programs, pre-school resources and much more across a range of categories. Here is a brief summary and some screenshots for the most popular Edubuntu packages, and if you need more, Edubuntu has thousands of additional applications ready for you to install.

Office Suite

OpenOffice.org is a complete office suite similar to the Microsoft Office suite. It features a word processor, as well as spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, database, and mathematical formula applications. OpenOffice.org can open and convert most Microsoft Office documents and has support for many different languages.

 
















 

Web Browser

Firefox is the incredible successor to the hugely popular Mozilla browser. Amongst its many features are tabbed browsing, which makes viewing multiple sites a breeze, pop-up blocking, live bookmarks and great accessibility support. Combine these with its fantastic customisation engine and you have the most powerful web browsing at your fingertips.

Email, IM and VoIP

Moving beyond the simple web browser, Edubuntu also comes with an email client and personal information manager, Evolution. Video conferencing with Ekiga as well as instant messaging and chat with Gaim provide communications tools that teachers and students need in an Internet age.

Graphics

In the graphics deparment, diagrams and flowcharts are a breeze with Dia. Xsane provides an easy to use scanner interface. 3D modeling and animation are Blender's specialty. Image editing similar to Adobe Photoshop is done using the GIMP. Scribus provides layout and publishing capabilites similar to Adobe Illustrator.



Sound and Video

For all your video and audio play and editing needs, Edubuntu provides several programs including Rhythmbox for music playing and Serpentine for burning audio CDs. Sound Juicer rips audio CD tracks to your computer. Totem is an excelent video and movie player and you can use Kino to edit video clips. Sound Recorder can be used to record audio clips to your computer.





Science

  • Explore the stars - KStars is a Desktop Planetarium that provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky. The program includes details for 130000 stars, 13000 deep-sky objects and all of the planets. KStars has an easy to use interface, so it can be used by everyone, from amateurs through to astronomy experts. You will also find a great deal of general information regarding telescopes and other astronomy related matter.
  • Research the periodic table - Kalzium is a package for discovering and researching information about the periodic table and the elements. It includes pictures for most of the 111 elements present, along with more detailed information including atomic models, spectrum analysis, chemical data and energies.
  • Test your chemistry skills - Atomix is a puzzle game, the purpose of which is to make up the molecule displayed from the pieces scattered throughout the level. You can only move them up, down, left and right and they don't stop moving until they hit something.





Mathematics

  • Program in Logo - KTurtle is a Logo programming language interpreter. The Logo programming language is very easy to learn and thus it can be used by young children. A unique quality of Logo is that the commands or instructions can be translated, so the 'programmer' can program in his or her native language. This makes Logo ideal for teaching kids the basics of programming, mathematics and geometry. One of the reasons many children warm to Logo is due to fact that the programmable icon is a small turtle, which can be moved around the screen with simple commands and can be programmed to draw objects.
  • Create geometric constructions - Kig is a allows teachers and students to create high precision geometrical constructions. These can be built on and used to explain concepts like perpendicular bisectors, tangents and arcs.
  • Plot mathematical equations - KmPlot is a mathematical function graphing and plotting package. KmPlot has a built in a powerful expression parser and you can plot different functions simultaneously and combine their terms to build more complex mathematical functions. It supports functions with parameters and functions in polar coordinates. Plots may also be printed with high precision.
  • Calculate percentages - KPercentage is a mathematical application that helps pupils improve their skills in calculating percentages. Percentages are split into three types and KPercentage tests pupils on these in three training modes. In addition to this, there is a random mode which will pick questions from each of the three percentage question variations.
  • Practice Fractions - KBruch is a small program to help pupils practice calculations involving fractions. There are four different types of fraction exercise:
    • Exercise Fraction Task; where pupils have to solve a given fraction task
    • Exercise Comparison; where pupils have to compare 2 given fractions sizes
    • Exercise Conversion; where pupils have to convert an already given number into a fraction
    • Exercise Factorization; where pupils have to factorize a given number into its prime factor
  • Play at Math - TuxMath is an educational arcade game starring Tux, the Linux mascot! Based on the classic arcade game "Missile Command," Tux must defend his cities by solving arithmetic problems.


























Drawing

  • Tux Paint - Tux Paint is a free drawing program designed for young children. The program provides an easy to use interface with fun sound effects and an encouraging cartoon mascot that gives help to children while they are painting.
  • Generate Fractals - Xaos is a fractal generator with a whole host of extra features for teaching pupils about fractal patterns.
























Language

  • Practice Spanish verbs - With KVerbos you can practice Spanish verb conjugation. The program comes with a large set of over 9,000 Spanish verbs that you can choose from to begin your verb training. The package also keeps track of previous scores so that pupils can identify where their strengths and weaknesses are. Some exercises also have a time limit to raise the level of difficulty for more advanced users.
  • Play Hangman - KHangman is the classic hangman game with pupils try to guess a word, letter by letter. At each miss, the picture of a hangman is added to. After 10 incorrect tries the game is over.























Basic Skills

  • Generate and give tests - KEduca is an educational testing package, allowing teachers to create tests for pupils to take. KEduca includes a module for constructing and saving new tests, as well as a separate module for loading and running the exams. Questions can be enhanced with images, multiple choice answers with varying grades, and time limits.
  • Learn touch typing - KTouch helps pupils to learn to type quickly and correctly. With many different modes and detailed reporting, KTouch truly makes learning touching typing easily.
  • Gcompris - Gcompris is a suite of over 80 educational games and activities for kids age 4 to 10 to learn with. These include:
    • computer discovery: keyboard, mouse
    • algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image
    • science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation
    • geography: place the country on the map
    • games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku
    • reading: reading practice
    • other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing






















Common Questions

How is Edubuntu related to Ubuntu?

Edubuntu is based on, and is indeed dependant on Ubuntu. As packages are updated in Ubuntu, they are also updated in Edubuntu, as they share the same repository. This also means that they both have the same release cycle, which occurs roughly every six months. You will also find that many Edubuntu developers are also developers for Ubuntu too.

I don't know much English, can I also get help in my language?

Of course you can, as well as this document being translated into several other languages, there are a few Edubuntu localisation teams around the world as well as a huge number of Ubuntu localisation teams. If you think you can help, why not join up to your local team?

How Can Get Involved?

Edubuntu is built by a community of people, most of whom are volunteers. Edubuntu welcomes the advice and feedback from as many different people as possible. It's what makes this project work. There is a need for help in every area - documentation, developing, testing, advocacy, support, so if you want to get involved please do. Just email the Edubuntu mailing list or join the #edubuntu IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.







'Unix & Linux beats Windows' - says Microsoft!

Posted by Paul Murphy @ 4:13 am

Ok, that headline may be a bit overblown - but Microsoft Research has released part of a report on the "Singularity" kernel they've been working on as part of their planned shift to network computing. The report includes some performance comparisons that show Singularity beating everything else on a 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon-based machine.

What's noteworthy about it is that Microsoft compared Singularity to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP - and almost every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants.

For example, they show the number of CPU cycles needed to "create and start a process" as 1,032,000 for FreeBSD, 719,000 for Linux, and 5,376,000 for Windows/XP. Similarly they provide four graphs comparing raw disk I/O and show the Unix variants beating Windows/XP in three (and a half) of the four cases.

Oddly, however, it's the cases in which they report Windows/XP as beating Unix that are the most interesting. There are three examples of this: one in which they count the CPU cycles needed for a "thread yield" as 911 for FreeBSD, 906 for Linux, and 753 for Windows XP; one in which they count CPU cycles for a "2 thread wait-set ping pong" as 4,707 for FreeBSD, 4,041 for Linux, and 1,658 for Windows/XP; and, one in which they report that "for the sequential read operations, Windows XP performed significantly better than the other systems for block sizes less than 8 kilobytes."

So how did they get these results?

 

The sequential tests read or wrote 512MB of data from the same portion of the hard disk. The random read and write tests performed 1000 operations on the same sequences of blocks on the disk. The tests were single threaded and performed synchronous raw I/O. Each test was run seven times and the results averaged.

umm…

 

The Unix thread tests ran on user-space scheduled pthreads. Kernel scheduled threads performed significantly worse. The "wait-set ping pong" test measured the cost of switching between two threads in the same process through a synchronization object. The "2 message ping pong" measured the cost of sending a 1-byte message from one process to another and then back to the original process. On Unix, we used sockets, on Windows, a named pipe, and on Singularity, a channel.

So why is this interesting? Because their test methods reflect Windows internals, not Unix kernel design. There are better, faster, ways of doing these things in Unix, but these guys - among the best and brightest programmers working at Microsoft- either didn't know or didn't care.

And if they're the best and brightest, what do you think happens when the average Microsoft programming whiz gets asked to program for Linux?

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 6.06
LTS of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu - codenamed "Dapper Drake".  The Release
Candidated includes installable live Desktop CDs, server images, alternate
text-mode installation CDs and an upgrade wizard for users of the current
stable release.
 
We consider this release candidate complete, stable and suitable for testing
by any user. We would especially recommend that current Ubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy
Badger") users and developers use the upgrade procedure described below.
 
6.06 LTS will be the first Ubuntu release with long-term support: three
years on the desktop, and five years on the server.
 
 
Upgrade information for Ubuntu and Edubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") users
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
  * Make sure you have good bandwidth since the upgrade requires
   that you download several hundred megabytes of new packages!
 
  * Because this is the Release Candidate, you need to invoke the
   update manager explicitly.  To do this, press Alt-F2 (or open
   a Terminal using Applications -> Accessories ->Terminal)
 
      gksudo "update-manager -d"
 
   This step will not be necessary on the final release.
 
  * Make sure you are up to date - click the "Check" button. If you
   are connected to the network the update manager should now tell
   you about the 6.06 LTS ("Dapper Drake") release
 
  * Further information about this upgrade procedure is given at
 
Upgrade information for Kubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") users
------------------------------------------------------------
 
  * In Adept go to Manage Repositories and change "breezy" to "dapper"
 
  * Click "Fetch Updates"
 
  * Click "Full Upgrade"
 
  * Click "Commit"
 
To Get the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Release Candidate CD
------------------------------------------------
 
Download the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Release Candidate here (choose the
mirror closest to you):
 
  United States:
 
  Europe:
 
  United Kingdom and Rest of World:
 
Please download using Bittorrent if possible.
 
The final version of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is expected to be released in early
June. At that time, we will mail pressed CDs free of charge to people
who have made a request to one of the Shipit services.  This is the first
release with Shipit CDs available for Kubuntu and Edubuntu.
 
  * https://shipit.ubuntu.com/  (Ubuntu)
  * https://shipit.kubuntu.com/  (Kubuntu)
  * https://shipit.edubuntu.com/  (Edubuntu)
 
About The Release Candidate
---------------------------------------
 
The purpose of the Release Candidate is to solicit one last round of
testing before the final release.  Here are ways that you can help:
 
  * Upgrade from Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Edubuntu 5.10 to the Release Candidate
    by following the instructions given above.
 
  * Participate in installation testing using the Release Candidate CD
   images, by following the testing and reporting instructions at
 
 
Feedback and Helping
--------------------
 
If you would like to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your future needs,
take a look at the list of ways you can participate at
 
 
Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn
this release into the best release of Ubuntu ever.  Please report
bugs through the Launchpad Malone bug tracker:
 
 
If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but
aren't sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode,
on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:
 
 
 
More Information
----------------
 
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a
reputation for making things "Just Work" out of the box, a fast
and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent
packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine
available from the network, and professional technical support from
Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the world.
 
You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on
our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you're new to Ubuntu, please
visit:
 
 
Kubuntu is a user friendly operating system based on KDE, the
K Desktop Environment. With a predictable 6 month release cycle
and part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu is the GNU/Linux distribution
for everyone.
 
 
The Edubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to schools,
through its customised school environment.
 
 
To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to
Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at:
 

 

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