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 * it has been a major contributor to rewriting the Debian-Installer.
 * it has conducted extensive development and testing of thin clients and diskless workstations as a part of the new LTSP version 5.
It is a valuable medium to test and develop many technologies:
 * '''Debian-installer:''' it has been a major contributor on rewriting the Debian-Installer.
 * '''LTSP v.5:''' it has conducted extensive development and testing of thin clients and diskless workstations on LTSP v.5.
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== Achievements for the future ==
 * This goal is later extended to reach out to all languages though in schools around the world.




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What is it?

DebianEdu/Skolelinux is an operating system intended for educational use and a Debian Pure Blend . As skole [skuːl] is the norvegian word for school, Skolelinux's literal translation is "school linux". It has been created as an overall free software computer solution designed to fit on school's resources and needs and is currently being internationally developed by a large international and growing community.
It is an advanced network solution that provides a terminal server environment suitable to most educational scenarios and it comes with most of its services pre-configured out-of-the-box. It allows both a technical and non-technical installation process depending on the user needs and expertise and highly simplifies middle to large system deployments and configurations.

A bit of history

Skolelinux seed appeared during a warm summer day in 2001 when a group of four computer-savvy people started debating about the computer situation at schools and how much they disliked the predominant market domination of proprietary software. They dreamt of a better scenario where Norwegian students could enjoy software natively translated and where they could have access to the source code to be able to learn from it. They were also conscious about schools' problems with all high costs and restrictions that proprietary software impose.

With great enthusiasm and high computer skills, they started working and officially founded Skolelinux project on July 2, 2001. Twenty-five computer programmers and translators combined efforts to improve and promote educational software. Naturally, some of this pioneers were more interested about software itself and some others about providing as much native translations as possible.
More or less at the same time, Raphael Herzog started the Debian Edu project in France to create an education-related meta-packages collection until 2003 when the two projects merged.

Soon DebianEdu/Skolelinux importance grew and it associated with the "Free Software in Schools" organization (earlier called "Linux in schools") which was founded on July 16, 2001. During 2002 german teachers, developers and translators joined Skolelinux. In 2003, Skolelinux was included step-by-step as a standard part of Debian and since then many developers from around the world have collaborated to the project. During 2009 was tested on a pilot phase at eleven Norway schools and it was introduced in Hamburg schools too.

Nowadays the project has established cooperation with many other free educational software projects such as LTSP, gnuLinEx, Edubuntu, K12LTSP, KDE, Gnome, Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

DebianEdu or Skolelinux?

At some point during the spring and summer of 2001 both DebianEdu and Skolelinux projects started as an attempt to create a GNU/Linux distribution for educational purposes. Raphael Herzog started DebianEdu project as a member of a group called IIRC with objective to create education-related meta-packages and Skolelinux started from a Norwegian group as a project intended to create a CD distribution. After some minimal collaborations, the french group left package maintenance to the norwegian group which started to include them on their CD. By that time people all over the world were contributing but was at that point that both projects effectively became one. Some say that DebianEdu is the name of the project, and skolelinux is the name of the distribution but in practice nowadays both name actually refer to the same project.

Project objectives

  • Create a complete solution: provide a complete educational free software solution suitable for real scenarios.

  • Reduce technical barriers: The best way to reach wide spread is by easing instalation, use, maintenance and administration. We make it easy and working out-of-the-box.

  • International scale: as part of a collaborative project it is essential to offer as higher native translation level as possible.

  • Educational software ecosystem: it is necessary to locate, package and classify any educational free software.

  • Teaching documentation: it is important not only to provide a great platform but to provide documentation on how to better use it for teaching.


Why consider it?

Advantatges

  • It is Free software: not only in price but also the way schools are allowed to use it. This is ethically important to an educational environment as it should avoid being an arena where piracy is accepted or encouraged but a place that promotes the making and sharing of knowledge. This project provides user-friendly licences that gives rights not responsibilities.

  • Provides control: users can decide themselves when to upgrade both hardware and software and so, they are able to remain independent from suppliers' influence.

  • Economical savings: Teleplan, an independent agency created areport (only norwegian) concluding that it can help saving up to 60% thanks to its eased maintenance when compared to a traditional workstation infrastructure. Note that saving money does not mean zero cost.

  • Rock solid: it is a stable and reliable system that just works. Additionally, it is less vulnerable to worms and viruses.

  • Solves real needs: it is made by schools and for schools and so, it becomes inherently designed to fit real scenarios.

  • Highly supported: as it is part of Debian, it benefits from a large and vibrant community that means lots of momentum, development and guarantees that it will stand strong and around us for a very long time.

  • Ecological: it helps lowering ecological footprint as terminal servers enable reusing of old hardware to become thin clients and have also proved to be more power efficient than a traditional independent workstation infrastructure.


Opinions and articles

Take a look at some interesting ?opinions and ?articles

Many schools using Skolelinux are currently listed on the DebianEdu Wiki. This case study of implementing Skolelinux at a school in Greece is typical of user experiences.


Who is behind it?

From the Skolelinux side

Skolelinux's staff

Skolelinux has three employees. One has responsibility for development and documentation and two have responsibility for user administration and the international aspects of Skolelinux.

SLX Debian Labs

Skolelinux has received a loan of NOK 4 mill. from the foundation "SLX Debian Labs". SLX Debian Labs has its own board and its own organization number.

The institution "SLX Debian Labs" is financially responsible for the Skolelinux project. SLX Debian Labs sponsor FRISK to fund the development of Skolelinux through an joint agreement.

Skolelinux's member organization

FRISK (Free software in Schools), formerly "Linux i skolen" (Linux in school), has an independent member organization with its own board and organization number. It is an idealistic organization, arranging and promoting the use of free software in Norwegian schools.

The "FRISK" (Free software in schools [Norwegian nonprofit organization]) member organization is an interest community, which takes care of the actual development in tandem with the larger Debian-Edu community across the world. FRISK have about 120 developers, with an active core of about 30 developers, a board and are always welcoming new people.

From DebianEdu side



Where are we now?

Current achievements

Existing solution is now able to simplify administration and maintenance by providing:

  • User centralization: allow students to access their home directories with its custom settings to the computer services with a single user and password on any machine of the network.

  • Proxy caching: enables to supervise how the Internet is used and Internet downloaded files caching helps providing a faster surfing experience.

  • Resource sharing: hardware like printers can be shared and made available anywhere in the network.

It is now able to reduce costs by:

  • Use of free software: there are no licenses to pay.

  • Enabling reusing hardware: old hardware is often reused to serve as thin clients.

  • Being power efficient: as few servers are use, they can optimize its computation power better than lots of workstations.

  • Less maintenance: as there are fewer "smart" machines operating on the infrastructure, it is less likely for them to fail and when that occurs it is easier and faster to restore it.

Is is now able to fit real scenarios by:

  • Relevant software: it is being distributed with a huge collection of relevant educational software.

  • Widely translated: it has reached a formidable number of native translations.

  • Use of free software: allows modifications to better suit special needs.

Is now necessarily documented to:

  • Empower users: allows users to solve their problems and help others in a growing international community.

  • Amplifies teacher's skills: by enabling them to improve their teaching methodologies.

It is a valuable medium to test and develop many technologies:

  • Debian-installer: it has been a major contributor on rewriting the Debian-Installer.

  • LTSP v.5: it has conducted extensive development and testing of thin clients and diskless workstations on LTSP v.5.

More detailed information can be found on the Product-pages.

How can I contribute?

Join the team

Please help us help kids learn to share and tinker, by donating some money to the project. We use them for developer gatherings and other project activites.

Other things you can do