While waiting for PCLinuxOS Education... :-)

[melodie]

Hello,

For who started to work on it in 2010, many thanks ! Thanks to Crow for all your research on the educational software, thanks to all who helped you then at the mypclinuxos.com forum. Thanks to all, to the graphists, Ruel24 who provided the beautiful background and thanks to Timeth who built the whole theme on it.

Thanks to Texstar for all the PCLinuxOS organization which permits being creative with new versions, and to his helpers who contribute to the specific PCLinuxOS programs.

For a reminder, there is a draft for the description is here:
PCLinuxOS Edu : Request of a presentation and doc

Thanks to djohnston who has taken care of writing it. I say a draft, because I am not sure we could not add things in the description, but this is up to Texstar (and to you if you have suggestions).

Now a little story

A few years ago, I think it was in 2008 I put hand on a Linux Education distribution built on a famous well known very popular distribution. It was a live, that could be installed and that was provided with Xfce as desktop. Nice look and nice programs... One day I did a copy and offered it to a lady who has 4 young children. I explained her, she said, ok, thanks.

Next time I saw her she told me her ex-husband came for a visit and she held the CD to him. He saw "Install". He installed. She had just lost all her system, datas, files, all the things she cared for in the hard drive. As she was not very patient she just went to a store and asked them to reinstall Windows. All datas was then definitely lost.

End of the story. I learned a lesson... I don't know what she learned, apart from not letting her former husband alone with her computer and an unknown CD.

Conclusion
I hope no one among the PCLinuxOS users will ever live that, so I have done a special setup in PCLinuxOS Education, which prevents this, with the help of other people.

Since this year we do have an install entry at boot in the Live CD's : in Education it will lead to the GDM login. There are no credentials here. Type "school" + "school" and you are in. Type "root" + "root" and you will get a README, that will let you know how you can install by clicking to the "Install" icon almost as usual, and why it is an unusual setup. The script written with yad, which installs draklive-install and launches it was provided my mimas.

Try to open any partition from within PCManFM as "school" or as user once installed, I hope you can't open any partition not explicitly mounted during the boot, thanks to the specific configurations in PolicyKit.conf and in file added to the /etc/hal/fdi/policy. You should not even be able to set it up to be mounted automatically at start from within the user configuration preferences in PCManFM: you can but it will stay inactive. (thanks to the setting in the file added to the /etc/hal/fdi/policy)

I want also to tell you that I feel the need for a documentation which could be provided as web page and as pdf, as a little booklet. Could we make a sub-project for Education around the idea of a specific documentation ? How to use the distro, as live, as live usb, and installed ? How to get informations about the system, and about the programs ? And any questions you can get from people who never saw Edu or even Linux before !

Thanks to all !
Mélodie

[melodie]

Hi,

Actually here after a few updates and reboots, it appears that the internal partitions in the hard drive can again be mounted without the root password, in spite of the configuration with "auth_admin" as argument in PolicyKit.conf.

I don't know what process is involved here... I will create a new topic to ask for help.

The security of the datas is not compromised, as far as Linux partitions are concerned. (There is no Windows install in that one machine to test on it).

I tried to access to user directories, there is still a policy that prevents it, and I tried to erase a few files from a partition containing an older install of Edu that I don't need anymore, no way. It won't be erased as simple user.

Still, I would prefer to see the first barrier to still be there.

[Davidsr]

Melodie, FYI, for my GKids I downloaded the PCLinuxOS Educational .iso version Sept 2011 and this is my results;
1. it loads fast into the Laptop while on the dvd. 2. My Laptop is Acer Extensa 4420, AMD 64 32bit Intel Core2 Duo 1.9GHz with 2GB memory, however the Educational OS EATS Memory!!! But not all the applications do. 3. The Desktop Icons will not always single/double click to start, found a couple will on triple click. Using the right mouse button then Open the application does work. 4. sound is tooo low. 5. Gamine has a problem. 6. Omnitux-love this. 7. gTans has a problem of staying off while trying to activate another application 8. HATE THE CLOWN FACE/MASK, do you know how many kids are scare of a clown-Please change this!!! 9. Childs Play, TuxMath and TuxPaint-Thank You. 10. sorry didn't record the other issues.
It's a OS will worth providing, again thanks. 

[melodie]

Hi Davidsr,

Melodie, FYI, for my GKids I downloaded the PCLinuxOS Educational .iso version Sept 2011 and this is my results;

Sorry but this is impossible, we are not in September 2011 yet.

1. it loads fast into the Laptop while on the dvd. 2. My Laptop is Acer Extensa 4420, AMD 64 32bit Intel Core2 Duo 1.9GHz with 2GB memory, however the Educational OS EATS Memory!!! But not all the applications do.

Your laptop being a Acer Extensa 4420 it is a    AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology: 64bits, and not 32bits. Therefore, I suggest you install the kernel-2.6.38.8-pclos3.a64 : AMD64/Opteron (K8) optimised linux kernel for x86 arch and reboot to this kernel.

/!\ The first reboot will take more time as the drivers will have to be installed to it, which is performed during first reboot. Next reboot will be as fast as any. Keep the former kernel minimum until you will have rebooted on the new one, or you will break the system. Then you might want to keep it a while, and once using the new one, after some time you can reboot to the bfs kernel to see if you find a difference. I had installed one on a friend's laptop who I had installed the Openbox version. The result was good. Before installing it, the applications looked slow, whereas an Openbox version is really light... so I found that was it not quite normal but the right kernel for that hardware solved the problem.

3. The Desktop Icons will not always single/double click to start, found a couple will on triple click. Using the right mouse button then Open the application does work.

If you want to open with single-click, you could configure it in PCManFM preferences. However I don't advice to do it, because then you will not be able to select a file without triggering an application to start, and do something with the file (ie : open it with a text editor, or with any application it is set to be opened with, through the file association).

4. sound is tooo low.

What about raising it ? There is a volume control.

5. Gamine has a problem.

Can you define the problem please ?

6. Omnitux-love this.

This one works well and you are happy about it ? This would be a good start...

7. gTans has a problem of staying off while trying to activate another application

What problem ? What output comes in a console if you start gtans from there ? What other application did you try to start ?

8. HATE THE CLOWN FACE/MASK, do you know how many kids are scare of a clown-Please change this!!!

That is strange, my son loved it the first time he saw it. That made him laugh. He was 10 when the project really started. You can change it yourself: with Openbox right-click Main menu > Preferences > Preferences > then a window opens, select the background. If none of the 3 available there pleases you, get any background y)ou like elsewhere, a picture, whatever, with a minimum pixel size matching your resolution. Then copy it to your home. The directory ready for that is $HOME/.local/share/wallpapers, but you can place it anywhere you like, either in /usr/share/wallpapers (you need to be root to copy it there) or any location that fits you in your home directory.

9. Childs Play, TuxMath and TuxPaint-Thank You.

Ok.

10. sorry didn't record the other issues.
It's a OS will worth providing, again thanks.  

I found an issue that bothered me more, and which I talked about here. The desktop must have performed the remaster while I was out, next I will test it and upload it if my internet connection does not go down. (It has been cut without notice today... never know why).

If you want to report about problems, you are welcome to do so, and if it seems to you that there are too many for you, please report them one by one, with the outputs and details about how it happens.

Regards,
Mélodie

PS: if you want the clown mask to be changed in the whole theme, I am afraid you will have to provide images and ask help to make a new theme. Then ask if a packager would be willing to make packages; Or you will need to learn to tweak the theme, it's not impossible but will take you a little time. And you will still need to provide the images;  Or you can look at the different themes available in Synaptic and choose one that fits you.