Final release announcement draft
For English-only release announcements, the announcement mails go to...
English-only -- To: debian-edu-announce (at) lists.debian.org, debian-edu (at) lists.debian.org, debian-publicity (at) lists.debian.org, debian-devel-announce (at) lists.debian.org, linuxiskolen (at) skolelinux.no, admin-discuss (at) skolelinux.org, debian-edu-german (at) lists.debian.org, bruker (at) skolelinux.no, debian-edu-french (at) lists.debian.org, styret (at) skolelinux.no, press (at) debian.org, distro (at) distrowatch.com
Remember emails to debian-edu-announce@ must be signed by a Debian developer.
For translated announcements, the translated announcement mails are sent to these recipients...
English -- To: debian-edu-announce (at) lists.debian.org, debian-edu (at) lists.debian.org, debian-publicity (at) lists.debian.org, debian-devel-announce (at) lists.debian.org, admin-discuss (at) skolelinux.org, press (at) debian.org, distro (at) distrowatch.com
Bokmal/Norway -- To: linuxiskolen (at) skolelinux.no, bruker (at) skolelinux.no, styret (at) skolelinux.no, annonsering (at) nuug.no, pressemelding (at) nuug.no
German -- To: debian-edu-german (at) lists.debian.org
French -- To: debian-edu-french (at) lists.debian.org
Subject: First Jessie based Debian Edu release
The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0, which for the first time is composed entirely of packages from the Debian stable release Debian 8 "Jessie", update 8.5.
Upgrades from the beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to this final release are possible and encouraged!
Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete operating system for schools, universities and other organisations. Through its pre-prepared installation profiles administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which will work in harmony on the school network. With Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or days.
Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and installation instructions are available, including detailed instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password for the first user you are prompted for during installation must have a length of at least 5 characters, even for test installations! (For real installations please use longer passwords.)
Where to get it
A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting can be downloaded at the following locations:
http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8+edu0-CD.iso
- rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8+edu0-CD.iso .
The SHA1SUM of this image is: b82eea8a47f471a2ead0434279e2d3e2e66eed53
Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (5 GiB) is also available, with more software included (saving additional download time):
http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8+edu0-USB.iso
- rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8+edu0-USB.iso .
The SHA1SUM of this image is: cffac38cca13a7e6be5888c21088fd6b57398f88
Sources are available from the Debian archive, see http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.5.0/source/ for some download options.
Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages
Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian, Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists for Spanish. See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for online version of the translated manual.
More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the release notes and the installation manual.
Errata / known problems
Mounting of homedirs fails randomly. This is probably due to buggy nscd netgroup caching (791562). As a workaround disable netgroup caching (on tjener) in /etc/nscd.conf and remove /var/cache/nscd/netgroup. Run debian-edu-nscd-netgroup-cache disable as root to achieve this.
On workstations the automatic setup of remote printers (configured on tjener) fails (see discussion in 791995). To get it working, install the package libnss-mdns on tjener and on the workstation(s). If LTSP is used, install the package in the LTSP chroot as well.
It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via DHCP (780461).
The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (783087). Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the LTSP server to update the hostname immediately.
Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly more current and complete list.
Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0 Codename Jessie released FIXME 2016-06-XX
Software updates
Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
- Linux kernel 3.16.x
- Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10, LXDE 0.5.6
- new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
- KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of the others see the manual.
- the browsers Firefox 42 ESR and Chromium 51
LibreOffice 4.3.3
- GOsa 2.7.4
- LTSP 5.5.4
- CUPS print system 1.7.5
- new boot framework: systemd
- Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
- Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
- Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
- Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
- golearn 0.9
- tuxpaint 0.9.22
- New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
- Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in the release notes and the installation manual.
Installation changes
- Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically for the hardware present.
Fixed bugs
A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable from a user perspective:
Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect information is corrected (710362)
shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
Sugar desktop removed
As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not available in Debian Edu jessie.
About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school network. Directly after installation a school server running all services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational software packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop environment.
About Debian
The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen! You rock.