[K12OSN] Preparing K12Linux F11

[Joseph Bishay]

Hello,

I hope everyone is doing well.

>>        Warren Togami wrote:
>>
>>            Hey folks,
>>
>>            Fedora 11 is soon to be released.  Sometime after that I
>>            will spin a new K12Linux Live Server ISO image.
>>
>>            http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/ltsp/k12linux/f11/beta1/
>>            Currently the beta is under 1GB in size.  Would folks
>>            prefer that the image include OpenOffice and educational
>>            apps?  The image would likely be around 1.5GB in that case.
>>
>>            Please reply here with a list of packages already in
>>            Fedora that you would like to be included in the image.
>>             Around mid-June I will spin up a release candidate for
>>            folks here to test.
>>
>>            (It seems we shouldn't include Tuxtyping, Tuxmath and
>>            Tuxpaint because they are impossible to use over the
>>            network right?)

We have a small deployment and this allows us to use such programs.  I
would hazard a guess that many of the deployments of LTSP are smaller
ones and thus can run such programs.  They're also very crucial for
the younger grades.

>>            * I am thinking to make the K12Linux F11 Live Server ISO
>>            x86-64 only as this is the majority of deployments.  32bit
>>            clients are supported by the 64bit server.  32bit servers
>>            are still possible if you install K12Linux on top of the
>>            standard Fedora 11.

I know for myself and some others, that our servers are going to stay
32-bit because of the cost of upgrading it to anything more than that.
  My question is this -- is the plan to have K12Linux by default a
cutting-edge system? I.E.: You need 64-bit servers, gigabit-network,
excellent, modern thin clients?  If that was the case it makes sense
to have it only 64-bit.  But I would imagine a lot of people using
LTSP are not at all in that boat and were drawn to it for exactly the
opposite reasons. So what's the vision?

>>        OpenOffice.org is an absolute must, because of all the MS
>>        Office files that teachers sling around.  Remember that one of
>>        the big selling points of GNU/Linux distros is that "it
>>        already comes with office."  This really can't be considered
>>        negotiable any more than the kernel can...if it's to be taken
>>        seriously in a North American K-12 environment.
>>
>>        As for the educational apps, some should be included, e. g.
>>        ChildsPlay.  After all, there's gotta be something "K12" for
>>        "K12Linux" to demo.  :-)

What about the option that used to exist with the older K12LTSP --
after the initial installation there was a desktop folder script the
administrator would have that contained a series of scripts to
download educational/extra software.  It basically was a front-end for
yum.  That's still an incredibly cool demo feature -- double-click
additional software, double-click 'get OpenOffice' or 'Get ChildsPlay'
- wait a moment, and it's ready to go!

Thank you.

Joseph