THIS IS A DRAFT UNTIL SKOLELINUX 3.0 IS RELEASED

Press Package to be released to the media upon release of 3.0.

The press package contains the following pieces:

  1. A general press release announcing availability of Skolelinux 3.0. with media contacts from five countries and general information.
  2. Quotes from developers, media contacts and beta-testers.
  3. What about including some pictures, perhaps of a classroom using skolelinux or a screenshot of the desktop? [pere 2007-07-20]

The press package is available in English, Norwegian and other languages online at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/PressReleases/PressPackage/3.0/

Media information

This freely available 'press package' from Debian-Edu is made available as a part of the 3.0 ("Terra") release of our Custom Debian Distribution - Skolelinux.

For questions regarding the 'press package' or any content found within, please contact the Debian-Edu media contacts found here: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/PressReleases/PressRelease_DebianEdu-3.0_Terra

1: Press release

Debian-Edu: Skolelinux 3.0 Terra available for free download!

* Oslo - July 20, 2007

Skolelinux 3.0 is ready. This is an community release with comprehensive support from regional and national projects in Germany, Spain, France, Greece and Norway. The Skolelinux project is now a part of Debian under the name Debian-Edu. Several other projects have made additional functionality to Skolelinux tailored for national needs. Skolelinux now supports 50 countries.

Whats new in Skolelinux 3.0: - Full support for networked Thin clients, ?LowFat (diskless) clients, Workstations and Laptops. With the ?LowFat clients users got full PC functionality with extremely low maintenance cost. The use of ?LowFat clients gives full support for sound, video, USB memory stick's and DVDs without the need for a local installation.

- Skolelinux now got more than 80 applications selected for pedagogic uses, supporting more than 50 languages. Many new applications are introduced in addition to popular classic as GCompris, KDE-Edu, Iceweasel (Firefox) and OpenOffice.org.

- Installation is a breeze: Both the installation and source code for all software are now distributed on one DVD now supporting three different processor platforms as i386, Power and AMD64. This makes it more easy to choose hardware, and to study the recipes behind the software. Those with interest now got the freedom to learn, participate and share knowledge. Installation CDs are also available, but requires a working Internet connection for installation.

About Skolelinux Skolelinux is a complete tailored software solution for the needs of any educational institution or school. It is a ready computer system were the school does not need to piece together the components.

Skolelinux is the Debian Edu project's Custom Debian Distribution. It is installed in a great number of schools in Norway, Germany, France and other countries. Municipalities and Commercial Service Providers run Skolelinux across multiple schools, operated and maintained centrally. Service providers report that the "lowfat clients" require half the maintenance cost of other desktop alternatives.

The next milestone of Skolelinux development will be to merge the Debian-based ?LinEx distro into Debian Edu[2]. Currently ?LinEx is used by more than 250,000 students and public employees in the region of Extremadura in Spain.

In depth "Lowfat clients" is also known as Diskless workstations. They run applications locally on the client. All software comes from the server instead of locally from the client hard drive. Recommended minimum requirement for client machines is > 256 MB RAM and 800 MHz CPU. Skolelinux now got improved tools for system survailance and maintenence.

Roadmap for next merging of ?LinEx and Debian-Edu:

Please note that the documentation for the 3.0 Terra release is only available in English at the moment and contains some rough edges. We have considered releasing before the end of the summer holidays more important and we will fix those rough edges in the coming weeks, when we also expect more translations to show. Those fixes will be included in the upcoming 3.0 r1 release.

Contact information

For more information about Debian-Edu/Skolelinux please see or webpage at

Download information:

A complete list of improvements have been made available at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/ReleaseNotes

2: Quotes

Steffen Joeris, Developer - Germany:

This includes the new "Debian-Edu/Skolelinux 3.0" version and many things behind the curtain as well, such as new infrastructure, internal team structure, new contributors and a deeper connection to Debian."

Steffen Joeris, Developer - Germany:

Anders Kringstad Hanssen, Leader, Free Software in Schools - Norway:

Knut Yrvin, Relations manager, Skolelinux project - Norway: