openSUSE Education community is proud to announce openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e: Linux for Education based on openSUSE 11.2 . Li-f-e flavor bundles the best of softwares openSUSE has to offer, such as most popular Desktop Environments, educational application, development suites, multimedia, great user experience out of the box, and a lot more that is expected in a modern Operating System.

Some highlights of what makes this a very special distribution:

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Just back from the combined openSUSE 11.2 and Ubuntu Launch party. We had over 120 people attending the event, much more than we had expected. Luckily we had enough of pizza slices and DVDs for all

The event started with the welcome by Prof. Vupul Kalamkar, PhD of Bachelors of Computer Application Department, Faculty of Science, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara. The first presentation was by Kartik Mistry,  Debian Developer on how to get started with contributing to Free Software world.

Next up was my talk featuring all the goodies we have packed in openSUSE Edu Li-f-e based on the latest openSUSE 11.2. A very passionate discussion on “user friendliness” of GNU/Linux distributions vs M$ Windows erupted when asked from the audience what was preventing them from using Linux, hopefully we were able to convey the ease of use by demonstrating many softwares that are present on Li-f-e and live demonstration of coding java, and C# by Nitin. How much easy can it get then getting IDEs such as MonoDevelop, Netbeans, Eclipse and compilers of all major programming languages out of the box.Some videos were also shown, among them Shayon’s(he is the the dude behind the camera in all pictures) promo and the stylish arrival of the geeko ending the presentation with this great video.

The hybrid iso technology was really a WOW! factor, many participants didn’t know something like this was possible and were thrilled with seeing it in action.

There were few laptops getting Linux installed, some running Ubuntu and some openSUSE, tons of live USB sticks were created and every participant went home with Ubuntu and the Li-f-e DVD.

We ended the event with a lucky draw, 3 Ubuntu t-shirts, 2 openSUSE Li-f-e t-shirts, and 2 USB sticks with Li-f-e installed on them were the prizes. Kartik Mistry had a random number generator script picking numbers, unfortunately it kept calling people who had already left or repeating numbers, so we went old fashioned with everyone present writing their names on a piece of paper and esteemed faculties of MSU BCA doing the honors of drawing the name of the winners.

Some of the pictures from the event.

We surely had a lot of fun…

This appeared in todays The Times of India country’s number one English newspaper.

Be there for the launch party in your town.

You, your friends and family are all invited to the double bonanza launch party of Ubuntu Karmic and openSUSE 11.2.

• When: 14th November 2009, 5 pm onwards
• Where: B.C.A. Dept., Faculty of Science, The M.S.University of Baroda, India Map
• Agenda: openSUSE 11.2 and Ubuntu Karmic launch party, check out two of the most popular Linux distributions while having a party, bring laptops, USB sticks or your computer box for installation.
• RSVP here

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Thanks to hard work of faculties and IEEE student branch of DA_IICT, ifest turned out to be good event. Here are some of the pictures from the event:

Li-f-e at iFest @ DA-IICT

openSUSE Education team from Baroda: Samyak Bhuta, Biswajyoti Mahanta and me, were all wearing either Li-f-e or openSUSE t-shirts, many students got the latest edition of Li-f-e based on openSUSE 11.2 installed on their USB sticks. DA-IICT will also be hosting iso image and presentations on their internal network for everyone on campus to download.

The sessions were interactive demonstrations of Li-f-e, http://susestudio.com, and Blender(by Biswa) the presentations openSUSE-Edu-Li-f-e.pdf and Blender.pdf used are available here.

Here is openSUSE Education Li-f-e: Linux for Education t-shirt for your viewing pleasure only

Designed and modeled by Samyak Bhuta

We will be proudly wearing this when presenting Li-f-e at ifest celebrating 125 years of innovation, imagination, implementation and engineering with IEEE at the DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India on 2 November 2009.

“The best online Distro store” TuxDVDs in India has made available openSUSE and openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e: Linux for Education DVDs along with tons of other great distros.

If you are in India and would like your favorite distribution shipped at very low cost head here.

I am happy to announce that the very first working hybrid iso of openSUSE Education Li-f-e DVD created on openSUSE Build Service is now available for testing.
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I’ll be conducting a full day workshop organized by Baroda IT Association (BITA) on “Opportunities with Linux & Open Source Technology” for it’s members on Saturday, 29th August 2009.

Quoting from the circular sent out:

Friends, it is the time to click on current opportunities with Linux. As you would be knowing that the Higher Secondary School of Gujarat(India) Board Syllabus are now covering Linux, Open Source Technology, Open Office etc….Again, Government also believes and is promoting open source platform. It is high time to capture such business, and so this TECHNOLOGY should be well understood by the BITA Members.

Potential customer-base comprising of more than 5000 Schools, thousands of students, lots of home PCs – today and in near future, there will definitely be a lot of increase in the need of dual-platform in Computer systems. Are we ready for that?

We will be having hands-on sessions on openSUSE-Edu: Li-f-e (Linux for Education) distribution, participants will get to take home a copy too.

More information and participation form (if you are a BITA member) here.

openSUSE Li-f-e: Linux for Education DVD and the KIWI-LTSP has been updated.

The changes from the last release:

Lif-e:

- All openSUSE updates including the latest stable kernel 2.6.27.25
- Nvu is replaced by Kompozer
- New KIWI-LTSP images
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