Features
Contents
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Features
- New in Debian Edu 6.0.4+r0 Codename "Squeeze" released 2012-03-11
- New in Debian Edu 5.0.6+edu1 Codename "Lenny" released 2010-10-05
- New features in Debian Edu 5.0.4+edu0 Codename "Lenny" released 2010-02-08
- New features in Debian 5.0.4 upon which Debian Edu 5.0.4+edu0 is based
- New features in the "3.0r1 Terra" release 2007-12-05
- New features in the "3.0r0 Terra" release 2007-07-22
- Features in 2.0 release 2006-03-14
- Features in "1.0 Venus" release 2004-06-20
- More information on even older releases
New in Debian Edu 6.0.4+r0 Codename "Squeeze" released 2012-03-11
FIXME This section need to be restructured, each dot point classified and the text compressed.
User visible changes
- Everything from Debian Squeeze
Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in combination with some new art work
- Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
OpenOffice.org 3.2.1
- Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
- Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
- Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
- Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
- Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
- Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
- Translation updates for the templates used in the installer. These templates are now available in 28 languages!
- Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is fetched from LDAP.
Add link to http://linuxsignpost.org/ on the start page shown to new users.
- Speed up LTSP client boot.
- New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
- Package changes
- Add Interactive geometry tool Geogebra version 3.2.42
- Add RDP server to the thin client server profile to provide a Linux desktop for Windows clients.
- Install openoffice.org-kde by default ensure OOo uses KDE file dialogs in KDE.
- Change video player setup to install different players in KDE (dragonplayer), Gnome (totem) and LXDE (totem).
- Change default package manager from adept to synaptic, to avoid getting two graphical package managers installed by default.
- Add the normal KDE tools freespacenotifier, kinfocenter, update-notifier-kde to the default KDE installation.
- Replace network-manager-kde with plasma-widget-networkmanagement in the standalone KDE profile
- Install usb-modeswitch on laptops to handle dual mode USB devices.
- Add cifs-utils to the default installation to ensure SMB mounting can work in any profile.
- Dropped octave, gpscorrelate, qlandkartegt, viking, starplot, kig, kseg, luma, and valgrind from the default installation and the DVD to make room for higher priority packages.
Infrastructure changes
- Now using Kerberos for password checking. Enabled for:
- PAM
- LDAP
- IMAP
- SMTP (sender verification)
- PXE boot setup now work when installing from the DVD. Provide new script pxe-addfirmware to insert hardware firmware in PXE images to support more hardware models.
- New tool notify-local-users to send desktop notification to all logged in users on a machine. Useful for thin client servers.
- New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
- Disable the idle job and user killer for roaming workstation profiles.
- Remove all hard coded settings on workstations, and configure workstations and roaming workstations using settings detected from the environment using DNS, DHCP and LDAP.
- Correct the boot sequence settings on a main-server to ensure a more robust and correct boot.
- Change SSL certificate name used by the LDAP server and adjust clients to use the new name to be able to enable certificate checking on clients.
- Switch PowerDNS to use strict LDAP mode, to allow us to simplify the LDAP setup used for DNS.
- Simplify autofs LDAP rules to make sure they work with extra home directory partitions exported from the main-server without any changes.
- Package changes
- Replace LWAT with GOsa as the LDAP administration interface.
- Drop libnss-mdns from stationary profiles, to make sure DNS is the authoritive source of host names.
New admin tool: GOsa2.
- The 10.0.0.0/8 network is now used instead of 10.0.2.0/23, and the default gateway is now 10.0.0.1/8, not 10.0.2.1/8.
- The dynamic DHCP range was extended on the backbone network to around 4k IP addresses, and around 200 IP addresses for the thin client network.
The DHCP network for 10.0.0.0/8 has been renamed from barebone to intern
- There are (currently) no pre-defined host entries for client systems in DNS any more (staticXX, ..., dhcpYY...)
- Full Samba NT4 domain support for Windows XP/Vista/7
- MIT Kerberos5 used for user authentication
- All Nagios checks now work properly after installation.
Access to Debian repositories is always done via a proxy on the main server - read more about the implementation details using DHCP and WPAD
All LTSP servers are now also RDP servers by default
NFSv4, but without added Kerberos privacy/integrity/authentication. The machines still have to be added to the workstation netgroup to be able to mount the home directories
Default start page for Iceweasel is now fetched from LDAP at installation and boot time for networked profiles. Set to http://www.skolelinux.org/ for Standalone installations.
- The home0 partition is now mounted nosuid, to increase security.
Documentation and translations
- Translation updates for the templates used in the installer. These templates are now available in 28 languages!
- The Debian Edu Squeeze Manual has generally been cleaned up and improved. A proof-read with corrections was done by a native English linguist.
- The Debian Edu Squeeze Manual is now fully translated to German, French and Italian. Partly translated versions exist for Danish, Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
- Improved French and Danish language tasks.
- Updated default web page content.
- Add new Japanese translation of welcome web page.
Installation changes
- New version of debian-installer
- Since we no longer allow root to log in using gdm/kdm, create a user in LDAP during installation of a Main Server, and set this user up as GOsa² administrator. Also grant this first user sudo access and enable the Debian Edu menu reordering by adding it to the teacher group.
Device access for all users are handled by PolicyKit, and no extra group memberships are needed to get access to devices.
- Added code in the installer to select suggested profile combinations by default based on the detected environment.
- New profile: roaming workstation
It is now possible to directly copy the .iso images onto USB sticks
- A warning is now issued when installing on too small disks for the profiles selected.
Regressions
Support for powerpc architecture dropped from netinst installation CDs. It is still possible to run Debian Edu on powerpc, but installation is less automated
- Drop gtick in the defaut installation, because it do not work on thin clients (BTS #566335
Unclassified changes
Root logins are denied for both KDM and GDM - see Getting started for information how to create a temporary local user
- More tests in the test suite, and correct some of the tests that failed earlier.
- The LDAP server is now able to handle more clients after increasing the server's file descriptor limit from 1024 to 32768.
- GOsa² now updates DNS and NFS exports immediately when a system is updated in LDAP, making diskless workstations work right after they are added to the required netgroup.
- Change KDE/Akonadi configuration to reduce the disk footprint of every user from 144 to 24 MiB.
- Reinsert local NTP clock on the main-server to ensure clients and server sync clocks also when disconnected from the Internet.
- Enable automatic extending of full file systems on the Main Server by default. This can be disabled in LDAP.
- Add code to re-enable stopped CUPS queues every hour on the Main Server, and flush all CUPS queues every night. Both can be disabled in LDAP.
- Provide script sitesummary2ldapdhcp to update or populate GOsa² with system objects using information gathered by sitesummary, to make it easier to add new computers to the network.
- Now we disable (at least some of the) non-working features in GOsa² to avoid confusing system administrators.
- Provide network blocking / exam mode by default, controlled by LDAP. In addition to network blocking, changes to the Squid proxy configuration is needed.
- Now we provide a KDE menu entry for changing the password in GOsa².
- Changing passwords using PAM is now working (using a workaround for bug #656309 in libpam-krb5). This will only update the Kerberos password, and not the Samba and GOsa² (LDAP) password.
- Make sure to report an error and abort the installation when trying to use the netinst images without a working Internet connection, instead of silently installing a broken system.
- Change partitioning for Standalone installs, to have separate /home/ and no /usr.
- gosa (2.6.11-3+squeeze1~edu+1) from the upcoming 6.0.5 Debian point release, with:
- Fix DHCP host removal. Closes: #650258
- Backport user generator unicode character transliteration. Closes: #657086
- Clients set up to shut down at night will now stay up for at least an hour if they are turned on manually between 16:00 and 07:00.
freerdp-x11 is installed by default as RDP and VNC client. (Previously rdesktop was installed instead.)
- Make backup system more robust in handling LDAP database dump and restart.
- Improve handing of removable media on thin clients. Show desktop notification longer when inserting new media and provide an option to start dolphin when such media is inserted.
New in Debian Edu 5.0.6+edu1 Codename "Lenny" released 2010-10-05
Everything that is new in Debian 5.0.5 and 5.0.6, which includes support for some new hardware. 5.0.5 and 5.0.6 are maintenance releases and generally don't add new features
- Several bugfixes, including fixes for Skolelinux bugs #1436, #1427, #1441, #1413, #1450 and Debian bugs #585966, #585772, #585968, #586035 and #585966 plus several which were not filed
Merge new web pages from Squeeze - the text is the same, but it provides a new translation for zh, compete translations for all included languages (de, es, fr, it, nb, nl, ru, zh), and a rename of the .no page to .nb to reflect the language used
- Debian-edu-install: Slovak translation added, updates to German, Basque, Italian, Bokmal, Vietnamese and Chinese translations.
- Debian-edu-doc: improvements to Italian, Bokmal and German translations as well as overall content and layout
- Sitesummary: various improvements; most notably, several Nagios checks were added to monitor system health
- Shutdown-at-night: fix #1435 (did not work with the LDAP host groups populated by lwat).
New features in Debian Edu 5.0.4+edu0 Codename "Lenny" released 2010-02-08
Everything that is new in Debian 5.0.4; see the following paragraph for details.
More than 80 applications relevant for education are included based on user feedback and user statistics (through Debian Edu popularity contest). The full list of packages is given in the task overview page.
Improved student desktop with educational software shortcuts to GCompris, Kalzium, KGeography, KMplot, KStars, Stopmotion and OpenOffice Write and Impress.
- Dynamic desktop icons and menu options that adjust based on user group.
Gnome added as a supported desktop; see the Installation chapter to learn how to install with GNOME instead of KDE as desktop.
- Support for more than 50 languages.
- Improved system for user administration and machine identification.
- Improved diskless and thin client setup.
- New startup menu letting users choose diskless workstation, thin client or workstation.
- A diskless workstation option is installed but not activated by default on all servers with the thin-client-server profile.
- Main-server is set up as a PXE server for booting thin clients and diskless workstations, and for installing to clients' hard or flash drives.
The configuration for DNS and DHCP is stored in LDAP and can be edited using lwat. The DNS server has been switched from bind9 to powerdns.
- LDAP server for directory services (NSS) is now located using a SRV record in DNS instead of hardcoding the 'ldap' DNS name. LDAP server for password checks (PAM) is still using the hardcoded 'ldap' DNS name.
- Multi-architecture (amd64/i386/powerpc) net installer CD.
- (Most) Packages are downloaded over the Internet.
- Multi-architecture (amd64/i386) installer DVD capable of installing without network.
PulseAudio is provided in addition to ALSA and OSS for sound on workstations and diskless workstation machines.
The Barebone profile has been renamed to Minimal, to better reflect what it is.
- The Nagios3 configuration is now automatically created by sitesummary.
The per-user file ~/.xsession-errors is now truncated automatically when the user logs in to avoid filling up the home directory partition with a log that grows indefinitely. The user can disable this by creating ~/.xsession-errors-enable. The system administrator can configure the system to redirect the file to /dev/null by editing /etc/X11/Xsession.d/05debian-edu-truncate-xerrorlog.
- To ease installation of Debian Edu on hardware needing non-free firmware, the CD and DVD include the following firmware packages: firmware-bnx2, firmware-bnx2x, firmware-ipw2x00, firmware-iwlwifi, firmware-qlogic and firmware-ralink.
New features in Debian 5.0.4 upon which Debian Edu 5.0.4+edu0 is based
- New Linux kernel 2.6.26 supports more hardware
With this release, Debian GNU/Linux updates from X.Org 7.1 to X.Org 7.3 (which includes support of newer hardware) and now includes the desktop environments KDE 3.5.10 and GNOME 2.22. Updates of other desktop applications include Iceweasel (version 3.0.6, which is the unbranded Firefox web browser) and Icedove (version 2.0.0.19, which is the unbranded Thunderbird mail client) as well as upgrades to Evolution 2.22.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, and Pidgin 2.4.3 (formerly known as Gaim). SWI-prolog is back.
- Installation from CD/DVD from within Windows
- Switched from sysklogd to rsyslog as the syslog collector.
For more information see the page New in Lenny on wiki.debian.org
New features in the "3.0r1 Terra" release 2007-12-05
- Much improved documentation with updated translations to German, Norwegian Bokmal and Italian
- Includes more than 40 bug fixes, improvements and security updates that came to our attention after the 3.0r0 release
New features in the "3.0r0 Terra" release 2007-07-22
- Based on Debian 4.0 Etch released 2007-04-08.
- Graphical installer with mouse support
- Boot splash with usplash
- LSB 3.1 compatible
- Linux kernel version 2.6.18
- Support for SATA controllers and hard disks
- X.org version 7.1.
- KDE desktop environment version 3.5.5
OpenOffice.org version 2.0.
- LTSP5 (version 0.99debian12)
- Automatic tracking of installed machines using Sitesummary.
- Automatic configuration of munin using data from Sitesummary.
- Automatic version control of configuration files in /etc/ using svk.
- File systems can be extended while the file system is mounted.
- Support for automatically extending file systems based on predefined rules.
- Local Device Support on thin clients.
- New processor architectures: amd64 (fully supported) and powerpc (experimental support, installation media only boots on the newworld subarchitecture)
- Multi-architecture DVD for i386, amd64 and powerpc
- Regression: the CD-install requires Internet access during installation. Previous versions could be installed from one CD without Internet access.
Regression: webmin is now removed from Debian because of problems supporting it. We've added a new web based user administration tool named lwat, which doesn't has the same functionality as wlus, the old user administration tool. But wlus requires webmin.
Regression: swi-prolog is not part of Etch, but was part of Sarge. The HowTo teach and learn Chapter describes how to install swi-prolog on Etch.
Features in 2.0 release 2006-03-14
- Based on Debian 3.1 Sarge released 2005-06-06.
- Linux kernel version 2.6.8.
- XFree86 version 4.3.
- KDE version 3.3.
OpenOffice.org 1.1.
Features in "1.0 Venus" release 2004-06-20
- Based on Debian 3.0 Woody released 2002-07-19.
- Linux kernel version 2.4.26.
- XFree86 version 4.1.
- KDE version 2.2.
More information on even older releases
More information on even older releases can be found at http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/news.html.