PCLinuxOS Edu

[djohnston]

Size: 686MB
Md5Sum: 01748f6334b4fffa796507dc594b1d7f
Produced by: Melodie, Crow and the testers
User Level:  Children

Info: PCLinuxOS Education is constructed around the window manager Openbox and a few additional programs, to form what is an extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment. Maintained by an international community of developers, it comes with a beautiful interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. Openbox uses less CPU and less RAM than other environments. It runs especially well on computers with low hardware specifications, such as netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.

Features:
Kernel 2.6.38.8-bfs kernel for maximum desktop performance.
Full Openbox Desktop.
Nvidia driver support. ATI fglrx can be added later.
Multimedia playback support for many popular formats.
Wireless support for many network devices.
Printer support for many local and networked printer devices.
Addlocale allows you to convert PCLinuxOS into over 60 languages.
LibreOfficeManager can install Libre Office supporting over 100 languages.
OOo4Kids Manager can install OpenOffice For Kids in 17 languages.

Highlighted Applications:
GCompris - a high quality educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10
Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

-  computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, ...
-  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, cartoon making, ...

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 100 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

Childsplay - a collection of educational activities for young children and runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux. Childsplay can be used at home, kindergartens and pre-schools. A fun and safe way to let young children use the computer and at the same time teach them a little math, letters of the alphabeth, spelling, eye-hand coordination etc.
Childsplay is part of the schoolsplay.org project.

Omnitux - The project aims to provide various educational activities around multimedia elements (images, sounds, texts)
Types of activities

    Associations,
    items to place on a map or a schema,
    counting activities,
    puzzles,
    card faces to remember,
    ...
Multiple languages support :

    German
    English
    French
    Italian
    Polish
    Portuguese
    Spanish

Available for Linux and Microsoft Windows.

Gamine - the game for the youngest. Starting age of 18 months when your child starts climbing on your knees and messing around your desktop  with the mouse, hop ! Start Gamine,  and the child will have colorful shapes and music reacting to the moves of the mouse, leaving your desktop alone, and discovering that the move of the mouse has an action !

gTans - A tangram game offering plenty of possibilities, and very configurable
Tuxtype - to learn and improve typing while feeding Tux
Tux Paint - to draw and paint. A set of thumbs are installed, more can be installed later
TuxMathScrabble - a game to learn maths while playing scrabble with Tux

Scratch - An astounding programming language for everyone. While building stories and scenes, you will learn and teach development to young children, and many projects which can be downloaded for use can be found at the main site. Scratch: Create interactive stories, games, music and art - and share them online.

Okawix – Okawix is an offline reader that allow you to download the content of Wikimedia projects, with or without pictures, in order to then access it offline.
Okawix's library includes the 253 languages of the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks).

Other programs included
Firefox- Web Browser
PCmanFM - File and Desktop Manager

AbiWord – Word processor
Evince - Document viewer
Gnumeric - Spreadsheet
Galculator - calculator
Labyrinth - Mind mapping

VLC – media player for nearly any kind of multimedia format
DeadBeef – music player

MTPaint and MTPaint Screenshot – Painting and Screenshot Program
Viewnior – Graphic Viewing Program

File-Roller – Archive manager
Gnomebaker – CD/DVD Burning Program

Geany – Text Editor

PCLinuxOS Control Center
Synaptic package manager
Obconf – Openbox Configuration Manager

12,000 additional programs available from our Synaptic Software Manager after installation to your computer.

Hardware requirements
Processor
Modern Intel or AMD processor.
Memory & storage
RAM : 384 MB minimum, 1 GB recommended.
Hard disk : 3 GB minimum, 10 GB or more recommended if you plan to install additional software from our repository.
Video card
nVidia, ATI, Intel, SiS, Matrox, VIA.
3D desktop support requires a 3D instructions set compatible card.
Sound card
Any Sound Blaster, AC97 or HDA compatible card.
Other
CD/DVD drive required or PC capable of booting from USB


Normal user is school and password is school.




To install to hard drive, login as user root at the login screen. Password is root.




See this post about enhanced security on internal partitions.


PCLinuxOS Edu is not available in the repositories. Please download it from here:

pclinuxos-education-2011.08.iso
pclinuxos-education-2011.08.md5sum


PCLinuxOS Live USB Creator overview: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=82277.0

Linux Live USB User's Guide: http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/help/guide

Unetbootin installation instructions: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/#install

[melodie]

Bravo Johnston and many thanks for this great presentation !



I will add one more detail about the setup especially done for the security : PCManFM, the file manager, offers usually easy access to internal storage (partitions from other Operating Systems). I PCLinuxOS Education a specific setup in the policy prevents this by requesting the root password each time we want to access by clicking on the related icon in the side pane.

I don't know how you can add this in the presentation. (Linux fs would not be hurt while trying to add or remove files anywhere, Ntfs fs could be hurt).

Bravo to all who participated, and bravo to Texstar who provides a distribution where we can provide new versions while learning more about the way things work !

[djohnston]

I don't know how you can add this in the presentation.

By adding a link to your post.

[Just18]

Congrats to the Edu team!

...  my proof reading again ...  hope you don't mind ......  

Gamine - the game for the youngest. Starting age of 18 when your child starts climbing on your knees and messing around your desktop

Maybe missing word - 'months' ?

and to be consistent .....  CD/DVD drive requirement    

This is something I will recommend ....  thank you all.

regards

EDIT ....  to correct spelling 

[melodie]

Just19, perfectly right ! 18 months. and requirements...

Thank you !

[Crow]

Congratulations Melody it looks terrific!! Will try it.

If you make a .torrent I will happily seed.

[djohnston]

...  my proof reding again ...  hope you don't mind ...... 

Not at all. Thanks!

[Just18]

...  my proof reding again ...  hope you don't mind ...... 

Not at all. Thanks!

        ....  I am competing with Hootie

[melodie]

Hi,

Crow, unfortunately I don't have time for setting up torrents, but you are welcome to take care of it for the Edu, and for any or all of the other "Openbox gang" versions (here), and even more...

If you do, let us all know where the torrent file is/are.

Thanks !

[Crow]

I have never made a torrent but there is always a first time for most things   

[melodie]

I have never made a torrent but there is always a first time for most things  

Install Transmission, the most easy client, start it and look into the menus. Then for any needs you know where to find help.
Here is a tutorial with screenshots to use it to download, done with the first remaster to French I had done, back in 2009.

PS: look also here : http://linuxtracker.org

[djohnston]

I have never made a torrent but there is always a first time for most things  

After installing transmission, just open a terminal and cd to the directory where the iso file is. Then do transmission-create with these options:

 -p --private           Allow this torrent to only be used with the specified tracker(s)
 -o --outfile <file>    Save the generated .torrent to this filename
 -c --comment <comment> Add a comment
 -t --tracker <url>     Add a tracker's announce URL

SYNOPSIS
     transmission-create [−h] [−p] [−o file] [−c comment] [−t tracker] [source file or directory]


Creating the torrent file is not difficult. Finding where to host the tracker and the iso to be downloaded is the hard part.

[nixer]

Congratulations to all that worked on this project!  I look forward to using and presenting this to some local educators and students.

djohnston, that was an excellent presentation!

Waiting on the torrent so I can help seed it some.

[djohnston]

djohnston, that was an excellent presentation!

Thanks, but I just edited what Melodie wrote.

[melodie]

djohnston, that was an excellent presentation!

Thanks, but I just edited what Melodie wrote.

Hi,

You are too modest. You have done the main frame with the example of the other presentations, and I provided some improvements that you integrated and rewrote when needed. Therefore you deserve the compliments.

Regards,
Mélodie