I must be crazy

[Riffer]

Inspired by a couple of threads on building your own distro or variant got me pondering.

You see I'm a High School teacher in Canada whoes district is still fighting the Mac/Windows war. I'm the lone Linux guy. And while they let me experiment in my classroom "to see if linux can be use by students", I know its a dead end. Nobody else is remotely interested in Linux (other then the IT guys). So I've decided to do a presentation to the board.

After reading the thread on building an Ubuntu office edition, I realized that here was something the Ubuntu and Linux had to offer that neither Windows or Apple can. To be able to taylor an OS to our needs. Its a very exciting thought and it may have the WOW factor for my presentation.

I guess you guys can see where this is going. I would like to build a variant and I was hoping that I could get some advice, suggestions and perhaps some help on building this variant. My next post will be on what I think this variant should look like.

[schauerlich]

Since you're a teacher, Edubuntu might be a good place to start. RemasterSys can help you customize your distribution.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/creating-custom-ubuntu-live-cd-with-remastersys.html

[bufsabre666]

yeah a when i was a sophomore in high school a few years ago they were having this battle, i tried to put linux's name in the hat but no dice, so it would be fantastic in my eyes if you could do this and you can be an example to other school districts and maybe more will realize that linux is a very viable choice

god's speed

[Riffer]

OK here is what I was thinking. That this would be for stand alone machines, with apps for basic computing needs; word processing, internet, perhaps a simple photo editor and the like. This is for a library or classroom setting. I would like it to be secure yet be able to have guest users, therefore everything must be locked down. The only thing thast can be accessed is perhaps a floppy drive and/or usb port for a usb stick.

Suitable for older machines, PIII with 256 megs Ram (PII and a 128 would better). No sound, limited networking (internet and perhaps access to a network printer). I would like it with no login screen, no automatic updates, no propriety drivers etc. And oh yes as much as I hate it the desktop to be fairly close to Windows.

I was thinking of starting this using the "mini.iso" and building from there. Perhaps using Fluxbox as a window manager, Abiword for the word processor and maybe Ephiphany for a browser?

Thoughts?

[CREEPING DEATH]

Gnome doesn't require a lot. Ubuntu has gotten loated with a lot of services/daemons that are fairly useless. I'm working on stripping them out so it'll run well on 256 MB again but some family issues are delaying me. And I was already planning on making an educational version!

CD

[loell]

might be better using either EDE (http://equinox-project.org/) or XPDE if you like to have a lightweight windows look alike desktop.

[bufsabre666]

well im not a huge fan of flux but i am of xfce, on low powered computers and i know it runs very well on a p3 with 192 ram that i own

[yssida]

There was one Debian based ditro by the Philippine government which had government/office edition for use by agencies, and one for education, to be used by public schools. It's good to be poor sometimes. Poor governments turn to Linux since it doesn't lock you in with licenses and serials.

[Riffer]

Gnome doesn't require a lot. Ubuntu has gotten loated with a lot of services/daemons that are fairly useless. I'm working on stripping them out so it'll run well on 256 MB again but some family issues are delaying me. And I was already planning on making an educational version!

CD

I love Gnome and there is that HOWTO for locking down the desktop. If you wouldn't mind sending me a copy of your stripped down version it would be great.

[Riffer]

might be better using either EDE (http://equinox-project.org/) or XPDE if you like to have a lightweight windows look alike desktop.

I'll check these out, thanks.

[tgalati4]

Don't forget to plaster the school emblems in the splash and background screens.

[Martiini]

Since linux is a free version of UNIX (by and large) and UNIX has been used in banks and governments for 30 years, linux should be ok.
microsoft and apple make desktop OS-s for personal use.
If use google (who also run linux based servers btw) you can see that hundreds of schools use linux
http://www.debian.org/users/
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/ReferenceSchools
etc.
ubuntu is a version of Debian linux so edubuntu might be good choice.

Since you're a teacher, Edubuntu might be a good place to start. RemasterSys can help you customize your distribution. Remastersys is VERY easy to use .. for cusomizing