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View Full Version : How many schools do you know of using edubuntu



earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 04:29 PM
I know that one of the reasons that ubuntu was started up was to make a free platform for schools to use to save them a lot of money. So how many schools do you know of that use edubuntu, and If you know of one what can you tell us about it, dose the school use it on all there computers or just some, how do the kids like it, how do the staff like it?

Brunellus
December 1st, 2005, 04:35 PM
None.

Although Yorktown High School, the "home" of edubuntu, is actually not far from me. I don't count that, as I only knew they were using edubuntu from the edubuntu site, and I have no information about how the school actually uses it.

BWF89
December 1st, 2005, 04:50 PM
0

Our school district uses Macintosh for everything except CAD and a couple of the programming languages.

jnoreiko
December 1st, 2005, 05:28 PM
A teacher friend told me that UK schools can't switch to linux because exam boards insist on MS software. Primaries probably can use linux, but that would rule out secondaries and 6th forms. :(

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 07:46 PM
university of toronto uses debian but thats the better choice for the com sci department, that or ubuntu, we would have no use for edubuntu, since as i understand its more of a pre uni school distro.

Its to bad I would like to know how the schools react to it.

commodore
December 1st, 2005, 08:49 PM
My school sux too mad. We don't use any GNU/Linux. Not even Mac. We have used and probably use on M$ Windows. Fortunately there was a project started in Estonia (the country I live in) that makes GNU/Linux available for schools. Unfortunately they're using Mandriva :(

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 08:54 PM
hey mandriva is a step in the right direction

aysiu
December 1st, 2005, 09:30 PM
I thought only schools in South Africa were going to use Edubuntu... at least any time soon.

Aren't most people in these forums from North America, Australia/New Zealand, and England?

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 09:35 PM
Mostly thats where people seem to be from, and Edubuntu is a SA project but that dont stop other schools from using it.

bored2k
December 1st, 2005, 09:38 PM
What is edubuntu?

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 09:40 PM
Edubuntu is a version of Ubuntu suitable for classroom use. Edubuntu delivers a turnkey solution that enables time-poor educators with mid-range technical skills to set up an online learning environment with as few clicks as humanly possible, and administer that environment without having to significantly expand their technical skills. Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting are Edubuntu's principal design goals.

Edubuntu gathers together the best available free software and digital materials for education.

Edubuntu and Ubuntu are not meant to be seen as distinct projects; Edubuntu is part of the Ubuntu project, and they are both part of one development team that contributes to the whole. Edubuntu is Ubuntu with a different default setup.

Thus, as part of the Ubuntu community, Edubuntu is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. For those reasons:

*

Edubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
*

Edubuntu comes with full professional support on commercial terms from hundreds of companies around the world, if you need those services. Each new version of Ubuntu receives free security updates for 18 months after release, some versions are supported for even longer.
*

Edubuntu uses the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable for as many people as possible.
*

Edubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or help improve the current development release.
*

The Edubuntu community is entirely committed to the principles of free software development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Creating an operating system is challenging, but it's also great fun. Read further in this document to learn how you can participate in the Edubuntu Project, and about the free software projects that produce the key components of Edubuntu.
http://www.edubuntu.org/

also i guess this http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuInstallations answers my Q

aysiu
December 1st, 2005, 09:42 PM
Mostly thats where people seem to be from, and Edubuntu is a SA project but that dont stop other schools from using it. I'm not saying it's stopping others from using it--I'm just trying to explain why so many poll results say "0."

For most schools in the aforementioned geographic areas, I don't think it's a matter of stopping them from using Edubuntu. I can guarantee you over 99% of schools in those areas have never heard of Edubuntu. A few more may have heard of Ubuntu. Still more may have heard of Linux.

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 09:48 PM
I new the results would be mostly 0, was just hopeing for at least one 1 and a review of it in a school env, I have installed it at home but I dont have the needs that a school would have.

would just be intresting is all to see a first hand review and since this is the only ubuntu community that I am part of I made a post, also if anyone knows of any SA reviews would be cool to see. other than the ones that come up with (Edubuntu review) as a google search but there are some none SA places running it acording to the wiki.

Turgon
December 1st, 2005, 09:53 PM
We dont have any edubuntu boxes in my school, but we do have 6 computers with fedora core 4. Most people like them very much, and I haven't heard anyone having any problems with them.

aysiu
December 1st, 2005, 09:59 PM
Having taught in both public and private schools (of varying degrees of wealth--only in the US, though), I can say that all schools really need are

OpenOffice
Firefox

...at least the ones I've worked at. The biggest need for computers in school are for word processing:

1. For poor schools, they need it to let students type papers, as those students may not have computers at home with which to type papers. And handwritten papers suck for everyone (teacher and student).

2. For rich schools, word processing computers in school are handy for doing in-class essays, which are sometimes the only way for an English teacher to know a student has not plagiarized, especially if the topic is one for which the student could not possibly have prepared for in advance.

Some schools may need something PowerPoint-like--OpenOffice should be good enough for that. Some schools may have their students do internet research or use the libraries' internet resources (access to periodicals databases)--that's where Firefox would come in handy.

Other than that... some richer schools may have a graphic design class or two, in which case, they'd probably get a few Macs with Adobe Creative Suite (I highly doubt those schools would go for training students in GIMP and Inkscape).

earobinson
December 1st, 2005, 10:06 PM
I got a buddy that leaned gimp in highschool he when to highschool in SA but before edubuntu came out.

What about thinks like attendance programs and the like, cuz when I used to skip class a computer will call home and leave a message saying "earobinson skiped 3rd period class at 1:30" or whatever the case may be.

And setting up a mass network of edubuntu boxes.

We also had C++ and java classes at school, but u of t is able to teach them using debian so schools both rich and small should be able to do it.

edubuntu has much more than just typing they have everything check it out http://www.edubuntu.org/tour.html

BWF89
December 1st, 2005, 10:48 PM
Some schools may have their students do internet research or use the libraries' internet resources (access to periodicals databases)--that's where Firefox would come in handy.
I have a question about that.

Our school recently upgraded all our old iMacs G3's to the new iMac G5's and eMac G4's. When we started useing the computers we noticed that they had Safari, Firefox, and Netscape installed on them. (Most of the kids seem to be useing Netscape)

Does Apple install Firefox and Netscape onto their computers by default along with their Safari browser so they can't get sued for anti-trust? If not the only other option is that our school installed them which goes to show how far the Firefox is spreading.

xequence
December 1st, 2005, 11:02 PM
Zero.

SweetDreams
December 1st, 2005, 11:03 PM
The Orland Park public Library uses Ubuntu, but I'm not sure if it uses Edubuntu.

aysiu
December 2nd, 2005, 01:32 AM
Does Apple install Firefox and Netscape onto their computers by default along with their Safari browser so they can't get sued for anti-trust? If not the only other option is that our school installed them which goes to show how far the Firefox is spreading. Your school installed them, not Apple.

commodore
December 2nd, 2005, 04:35 PM
The most used software in our school is Microsoft Office so I think openoffice.org is very important.

Making special school OS' is not a good way to learn comping IMO. Edubuntu is meant for use in school, but when the kid goes home he probably doesn't have edubuntu (cause it's a school OS) so he can't do anything with the knowledge he got from school. IMO the best way to learn anything is to use it.

earobinson
December 2nd, 2005, 09:43 PM
The most used software in our school is Microsoft Office so I think openoffice.org is very important.

Making special school OS' is not a good way to learn comping IMO. Edubuntu is meant for use in school, but when the kid goes home he probably doesn't have edubuntu (cause it's a school OS) so he can't do anything with the knowledge he got from school. IMO the best way to learn anything is to use it.
ture but if you install Edubuntu you will see it is exactly the same as ubuntu but it has more school progams that come with it. Check out the screenshots on the site it will give u and idea of what it is.

public_void
December 2nd, 2005, 11:41 PM
I read this interesting article about schools and the problems with switching to Linux or Mac. It seems its more about users adapting and software compatibility. Whilst it would be great to change it seems it creates more problems than people need. It also raised the point of lack of knowledge about Linux in general, both for teachers and system admins.

hboshoff
February 17th, 2006, 01:31 PM
I am currently the sole voter who knows of one school, and it is because I set up Edubuntu there. ;-)

It happens to be in South Africa, but Edubuntu is not a South African distribution. Distrowatch.com puts its origin as Isle of Man; same as Ubuntu. The posters on the edubuntu-devel mailing list are from all over.

I quote below the message I posted to the list in January, which gives some idea of technical matters and the response at the school:

<start quote>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:41:28 +0200
From: "Hendrik Boshoff"
Subject: User story: Edubuntu lab running 43 clients --- needs some tuning
To: <edubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com>

Today was the first day of our new school year, and we had a server and 43 client machines running standard Edubuntu at the Laerskool Unika (http://www.unika.virafrikaans.com/) in Johannesburg . The server is brand new and fairly high end, and the clients quite old, mostly PII 266 MHz and Celeron 333 MHz with 64 MB of RAM. There was no instruction to speak of, but the 7th grade children enjoyed the games and the novelty immensely.

I am very excited about the possibilities of Edubuntu, and I want to thank everyone involved in creating this environment. Unika's lab does not have Internet connectivity yet (apart from a makeshift dial-up) but the number of applications available in the Universe is mind boggling.

Our server has a dual Xeon 64 motherboard with CPUs running at 2800 MHz, and 4GB ECC RAM. Hard disks are 3x 73 GB SCSI 10 000 rpm in a RAID5 configuration. The Gigabit network card connects to a 3Com switch with 24+2 ports (100 & 1000 Mbps). The other wideband port connects to a second switch, and the 43 client machines all have 100 Mbps NICs.

The mixed group of 43 clients all boot fine, mostly using a stiffy (regrettably, but it works) for the first phase. Four of them default to 640x480 screen resolution, which is below what I regard as the absolute minimum of 800x600 for running Gnome.

I have been working *many* hours (with help from my children aged ten and thirteen) during the last six weeks' holiday mainly to get the hardware reconditioned, the various NICs to boot, and testing which video cards would run X. It was nothing like the Edubuntu blurb claiming an educator could get a lab up and running in an hour with donated machines (http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuWiki). I am proud to have kept 75 machines out of the landfill however, having passed 35 working P1 166 & 200 boxes on to another school. One current minimum for an Edubuntu client seems to be 64 or 48 MB of RAM, although this may depend on the video card. Has anyone managed to boot a client with only 32 MB?

Of course I want to get the maximum out of this setup, and it seems to need some tuning. Can anyone suggest tools for finding the bottlenecks?

The lab has not really been given a stress test, but it easily supports a class full of learners playing games. When OpenOffice Writer is activated on only a single client, it takes about 10 seconds to load. If ten clients try at the same time, it gets so slow that it seems to hang.

Looking at the system resources, the network seems far from saturation at about 200-300 Mbps, and the memory far from used up at about 1.5 GB out of the 3.5 GB available. However, the CPU bar often goes to 100%, and stays there for long stretches.

So it would seem that the server CPU is the limiting factor. Firstly, we are running the 32 bit version of Edubuntu software on a 64 bit CPU, because of the mixed environment problem in Breezy. I am a bit wary of running Flight 2 of the next release in a production environment. That should improve after April. Secondly, I need to know whether the second CPU is used at all. How can I find out?

What else can you suggest to speed things up? Lowering the colour depth from 24 bit? Who has run an Edubuntu lab of roughly this size, and how is it configured?

I still have use for some Edubuntu posters and other promotional material. I am currently the only evangelist around here :-). At some point I want to invite teachers from other schools to come and see what can be done with old hardware.

I look forward to the live CD of Edubuntu, which I want to give to every pupil in the school for home testing, and I would like to see a DVD distribution with many more packages.

Thanks for any input.

Hendrik Boshoff
<snip>

simon_is_learning
February 17th, 2006, 01:49 PM
I know that my scool use OpenOffice instead of MS WORD.
Simply becouse my teacher thinks that windows is crap and wich that our principal would replace all computers with Macs. Today only the sound and video studios are using Macs.

Why we use windows is becouse of two reasons.

Adobe Creative Suite (PS, Illustrater, Golive)
They where cheaper.

We do have a Linux-server (RED-HAT)
with SAMBA
my teacher is a suse-fanatic...

If Wine would be stable and fast - we would switch in a minute. But more likely - we will end up with all Mac.

earobinson
February 17th, 2006, 04:09 PM
@hboshoff really cool!

hesee
February 17th, 2006, 05:29 PM
My twelve years old brother said they have linuxes in school computers, but couldn't tell which distro. But it was KDE desktop, so can't be Edubuntu? Might be Kubuntu,mandriva, suse, or something. The funny thing is that they have dual boot with xp's, but no one uses xp :)

briancurtin
February 17th, 2006, 07:01 PM
The Orland Park public Library uses Ubuntu, but I'm not sure if it uses Edubuntu.
orland park, illinois?

Master Shake
February 17th, 2006, 08:10 PM
orland park, illinois?

Good question! Inquiring minds want to know! (Orland is a 35 mile shot from me, striahgt up rt. 45

aysiu
February 17th, 2006, 08:23 PM
I read this interesting article about schools and the problems with switching to Linux or Mac. It seems its more about users adapting and software compatibility. Whilst it would be great to change it seems it creates more problems than people need. It also raised the point of lack of knowledge about Linux in general, both for teachers and system admins. It's not really that big a deal. I was a teacher in public and private schools for five years, and I could say every school I worked in would have benefitted from having switched to Linux.

The poorer schools had few computers to begin with, and they were mainly used in the library for searching the web--a simple Kubuntu with KDE in kiosk mode would have sufficed.

The richer schools had faculty who were--while not very open to technology in general--adaptable to whatever they thought were the available options. Hell, I adapted to OS 9 when that was the only computer the school would provide me with. If Linux was the only available option, that's what people would use. Educators are used to being underfunded, so when the school administration says, "We're using this because it saves us money," no one says, "Well, spend the money, then, dammit!" I know teachers who have to buy school supplies (pencils, paper, binders, etc.) out of their own salaries (luckily, it's now a tax write-off).

Students are already there to learn, and they have a high turnover rate by definition. If one or two classes have trouble adapting, good for them for learning, and then subsequent classes will know Linux straight from the get-go.

Faculty and students in the schools I worked at had needs that OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, and GIMP could easily satisfy. Staff sometimes had more complicated needs, but Crossover Office would be a lot cheaper than all those Windows upgrade licenses. And no school I worked at used pirated software for fear of license audits.

Klaidas
February 17th, 2006, 09:16 PM
Sadly none :(

C J Pro
February 17th, 2006, 11:58 PM
Well, none using edubuntu. My school has one Ubuntu PC and runs on Novell Netware servers. If they were to switch to (ed)ubuntu, they would have to kill the accelerated reader and math programs, OPAC and current school management system. Seeing as we run 200 computers for each server (and there are 5 school servers and 1 administration server) the ability to do thin clients is impossible. So right now, unless someone is willing to, we are stuck on Windows.

mättu
February 18th, 2006, 04:07 PM
I use ubuntu & plain debian:
- got about 15 older machines for free (300-1000 MHZ etc)
- put them in my classroom
- installed debian / ubuntu
- enjoy it.

ok. We cant't play around with lots of these commercial learning-software-cd's but use the computers for work. In the ears of some collegues this sounds strange.
We browse the internet for information, play mathematically interesting games (reversi, some do go etc), make presentations, use internet-forums...
I programmed some sort of a very simple webserver-based tool to write a newspaper.
We use this computers for fun as well. Often kids play games or writefor the newspaper.
We will see what comes next..

And we use them not too often. Hey, it's primary school, not a computer-hacker-class. ;-)

:m)

Jedeye
February 18th, 2006, 04:21 PM
0 - not just ebuntu but any linux distro... would be cool if more schools would jump on

GTropic
March 29th, 2006, 10:20 PM
I would like to move our district computer labs to Ubuntu, but I don't have much experience with Linux. I would need to have Ubuntu work with my existing Netware servers, but again, I don't have much experience with Linux. Inexperience is what is holding my district back from having Linux in our labs.
If anyone could help me find a Ubuntu netware client, I would appreciate it.

awakatanka
March 29th, 2006, 10:58 PM
The schools i have installed some PC's are all windows( we only deliver the hardware ;) ), the programs they use are also windows only and written specially for them. Math,Language and some more special programs that replaced some teaching books.

shamrock_uk
March 30th, 2006, 11:21 PM
None unfortunately.

We're considering trying to roll it out to our school in Kenya, but one CD may well prove to be a large limiting factor to us. Internet access is very hard to come by, has a huge waiting list and costs an awful lot of money - a DVD version containing the universe repositories would really be useful.

benplaut
March 31st, 2006, 12:54 AM
i admin 15 at my school. Only 3 are for student use ATM (3 servers, 5 clients each. the servers are up), but i'll have more time to spend on it once i get back from break.

drizek
March 31st, 2006, 01:23 AM
None unfortunately.

We're considering trying to roll it out to our school in Kenya, but one CD may well prove to be a large limiting factor to us. Internet access is very hard to come by, has a huge waiting list and costs an awful lot of money - a DVD version containing the universe repositories would really be useful.


Order the universe DVD from debian or just download it yourself and burn it to a DVD or two.

drizek
March 31st, 2006, 01:32 AM
Oh, and as for my school we dont have any linux computers.

However, a few of my friends use linux so we started rounding up all the old throwaway computers from the IT people and frankensteining them together to make some usable ones.

Tomorrow we will install Kubuntu dapper on a

700mhz P3
768mb ram
2x 15gb hdd
8mb ATI Rage w00t (Im gonna bring in my old mx 440 if i can find it)

We also have a couple IBM thinkpads with P2's and 64mb ram. They dont have harddrives though so we just boot them off of DSL or puppy.

The teacher who is "overseeing" us teaches web design/graphic arts and only uses photoshop/illustrator/dreamweaver. Obviously we cant put linux on hte class computers, and he says he doesnt have the time to learn to maintain linux on the class server. At least he installs firefox on all the computers though...

benplaut
March 31st, 2006, 02:42 AM
i'd give gnome or xubuntu (ONLY if it's dapper. 4.2 frankly kinda sucks :P ) a try. They have plenty of ram, but that proc might have a hard time with kde.

Regardless, whatever works...

drizek
March 31st, 2006, 03:36 AM
I dont know when you last used KDE, but performance now is as good or better than gnome, so it should work fine. Breezy ran semi-well on a 1ghz p3 with 192mb ram. Since dapper is a lot faster, and since this has a lot more ram, i think it will work just fine. (For the record, gnome was just as slow as KDE on the 1ghz, so it wasnt a KDE issue. Gnome just dies when it has less than 256 ram.)

And ive found my mx440. It has 128mb of ram so ill see if i can get XGL on there too.

A 6 year old dell xps with a big hole in the front made up of random parts is going to be faster and have more features than a modern pc running windows vista.