Status for Debian Edu based on Squeeze

Issues to test

(Please don't add the status of those tests here, do that below. This list should cover a generic list of issues to test.)

/!\ FIXME: the following instructions what to test include 2 things which should bemoved to the manual, please a bug to be filled. Please help+fix this!

Issues to fix

Critical

Important

Nice to have

Fixed issues

Translation status

We should make sure all the programs listed on http://www.slx.no/en/take-a-tour are available on our most used languages. Here is a summary of the current status:

Program name

Norwegian Bokmål

Norwegian Nynorsk

German

Spanish

Traditional Chinese

French

Iceweasel

OK

OK

OK

?

OK

OK

GCompris

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

KTouch

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

KAlgebra

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Kig

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Kgeography

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Celestia

Missing

Missing

partial

?

?

OK

Stopmotion

OK

Missing

OK

?

?

OK

Scribus NG

Partly

Missing

OK

?

?

OK

Gimp

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Digikam

OK

Missing

OK

?

?

Partly

Kino

OK

Missing

OK

?

?

Partly

Blender

Missing

Missing

Missing

?

?

?

Inkscape

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Rosegarden

Missing

Missing

OK

?

?

OK

Audacity

OK

Missing

OK

?

?

OK

Hydrogen

Missing

Missing

OK

?

?

OK

OpenOffice.org Writer

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

OpenOffice.org Calc

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

OpenOffice.org Impress

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

OpenOffice.org Draw

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

OpenOffice.org Base

OK

OK

OK

?

?

OK

Duplicate targets

It is a goal to only provide the best application for a given task, and avoid several applications for the same tasks. Here is a list of duplicates currently being installed.

video player

Both kaffeine, mplayer, gnome-mplayer and dragonplayer is installed and show up in the KDE menu Multimedia. mplayer is a dependency of gnome-mplayer, which in turn is a dependency of gecko-mediaplayer used by iceweasel for inline video playing and in our task list. dragonplayer is a dependency of kde-standard, which is recommended by kdebase, which is in our task list. kaffine is recommended by education-desktop-other in our task list.

Improvement 2010-07-30: Made video player selection depend on desktop type. Set it to dragonplayer for KDE and totem for Gnome/LXDE. Kaffeine is no longer installed by default. Still several players because geckos-mediaplayer pull in gnome-mplayer and mplayer.

video editor

both kino and kdenlive is installed and show up in the KDE menu Multimedia. Both are recommended by education-desktop-other in our task list.

package manager

Both adept and synaptic is installed and show up in the KDE menu under System. adept | synaptic is recommended by education-desktop-other and pulled in that way, while synaptic is recommended by system-config-printer, which is recommended by printer-applet, which is in our task list.

Improvement 2010-07-30: Changed our tasks to install synaptic by default, and hope this will cause adept to not be installed.

LDAP viewer and editor

Both luma and jxplorer is installed. Both are in our task lists.

Scanner control

There are two scanner applications in the KDE Graphics menu. One is called acquireimages from the kipi-plugins package recommended by the education-desktop-kde package in our task lists. The other is skanlite recommended by education-desktop-other in our task list.

PDF and Postscript viewer

Both gv and okular is installed and showing up in the KDE graphics menu. okular is a dependency of kde-standard in our task lists. gv is a dependency of maxima which is a dependency of wxmaxima which is in our task lists.

PAM is set up to use both LDAP and Kerberos

Both libpam-ldapd and libpam-krb5 is installed. libpam-krb5 is recommended by education-networking and in our task list, while libpam-ldapd is recommended by nslcd, which is a dependency of libnss-ldapd, which is in our task lists.

A bug against nslcd (591773)) is reported to ask for the recommend from nslcd to libpam-ldapd to be changed.

Improvement 2010-08-09: Added cfengine rule to purge libpam-ldapd after tasksel is done installing packages, which solve the problem for us.

Mathematical function plotter

At least three different function plotters are installed by default. grace is recommended by education-mathematics, kmplot is a dependency of kdeedu which is recommended by education-desktop-kde, and gnuplot is recommended by education-mathematics.

Mathematical geometry viewers and plotters

Also some geometry viewers with similar functionality as plotters mentioned above are installed by default. A very subjective review (Bjarne Nielsen, 2010-12-04):

?GeoGebra: ?LooGeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Looks intuitive and useful.

Dr Geo: Looks as it wants to do the same as ?GeoGebra, but less intuitive.

Geomview: Geomview is an interactive 3D viewing program for Unix. Geomview lets you view and manipulate three-dimensional objects: you use the mouse to rotate, translate, zoom in and out, and so on. Seems to be able to do some advanced stuff, but not very intuitive, and not very nice gui. Maybe it should be in another category than mathematics?

Grace: Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System and M*tif, successor of ACE/gr (Xmgr). ?GeoGebra and Kig looks nicer and seems to do mostly the same.

?GraphThing: Does not seem very useful to me, compared with the others... No updates since 2006.

Kig: It is meant as a better replacement for such free programs as KGeo, KSeg and Dr. Geo and commercial programs like Cabri.

Cantor: Cantor is an application that lets you use your favorite mathematical applications from within a nice KDE-integrated Worksheet Interface. It offers assistant dialogs for common tasks and allows you to share your worksheets with others. Four backends are curently available: Sage, Maxima, R and KAlgebra. Someone with more knowledge will have to review this, but KAlgebra seem to be the only "backend" that is installed by default.

?GraphMonkey: Plotting tool. Simple gui, but works ok.

KMplot: Plotting tool, intuitive and useful.

KAlgebra: Installed, but not in the menu?

IMHO ?GraphThing, Grace, Dr Geo, ?GraphMonkey and possibly Geomview could be removed. If Cantor is kept, maybe adding r-base could be useful.