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Jigish Gohil

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Promoting openSUSE-Edu: Li-f-e

June 14th, 2009 by

Dear IT Store In-charge

This is about introducing a new Operating System tailored for Education purpose.

We have demonstrated openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e(Linux For Education) OS at many stores/malls here in Baroda (India), the store managers were very thrilled to see this new technology. Gujarat State Education Board (GSEB) has introduced Linux and Open Source in curriculum from this year, session starts Monday 15 June 2009. Kerala and Tamil Nadu States are already using linux for few years now. Apart from schools and government offices running Linux, most IT colleges have Linux in their course too.

We would like your stores to keep at least one laptop/desktop running Li-f-e: Linux for Education OS running to give your store an extra advantage of being the place to get this OS free of cost. Linux and hardware that comes preloaded with it will be in massive demand as there are millions of students that will come in contact with Linux through their course curriculum.

The OS is free of cost, you are free to make as many copies you need, it can be run directly from a DVD without installation, it can also be installed very easily on a separate partition to get dual boot system running amicably along with Windows system. The OS is virus free and comes packed with hundreds of applications required by students as well as everyday user.

Details about the OS is here: http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live

We believe this has tremendous potential of increasing sales of hardware from your stores and attract lot more happy customers. Our aim is to get the best technology to the students who will be coming in contact with this technology for the very first time, your store will greatly benefit by the goodwill this gesture will generate.

Kind regards

Jigish Gohil
On behalf of openSUSE-Edu Team

Posted in Education, Marketing | 1 Comment »

Transcoding/Ripping Cluster using KIWI-LTSP

June 11th, 2009 by

We had a bit of High Performance Cluster (HPC) setup already to do distributed build using Icecream on KIWI-LTSP, now Mathis has written a “howto” use KIWI-LTSP for clustered ripping and transcoding, another kind of HPC use of LTSP network. Ready to run LTSP server is integrated in openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e DVD making it very easy to do such setups.

“Since the transcoding process can take a long time, the work can be split into several fragments which then can be processed by other machines on a network. The best way to accomplish this is to set up a server which controls the transcoding process, from which the (diskless) clients can boot.”

So why openSUSE KIWI-LTSP for this job? This is what Mathis had to say: “well, I just needed some OS to boot from the network, luckily it was LTSP,  so I saved some time gathering parts for an OS since openSUSE also provides the dvd::rip and transcode packages and KIWI-LTSP automatically resolves the dependencies, this is an extra point for it…”

It could  serve digital  studios as well or convert your DVD collection to use on home media center PC very quickly 😉

Posted in Documentation, Education, Server, Wiki | Comments Off on Transcoding/Ripping Cluster using KIWI-LTSP

Coming soon on the servers near you: Easy-LTSP-NG

June 2nd, 2009 by

Easy-LTSP, an easy to use GUI to configure LTSP‘s lts.conf file was developed as a part of Google Summer of Code ’08 by Jan Weber. It was written in C#, it was decided to use C# at that time to accomplish a complex task in a very short period of time given for GSOC. Thanks to it setting up LTSP on openSUSE is just a few mouse clicks.

Easy-LTSP was designed to work on any distribution, but unfortunately it is not integrated anywhere other than openSUSE, discussing with the upstream LTSP developers suggested the slight reservation could be due to it being written in C#. We wanted to add new features to the GUI to take care of all the exciting new development we have in KIWI-LTSP so it was felt that the rewrite will be much better option than to extend the current code, as it is anyway being written from scratch why not use something like Python which would be easier to attract more contributors and increase possibility that users of all distributions running LTSP server can benefit from it inclusion in their prefered distro.

Here are the screencaps of the “Next Generation” Easy-LTSP(click image to see full album):

The code is in very initial stage, many things do not work yet, these screenies would give some idea where the design is going. If you are a developer interested in hacking get the source from here, drop us a line if you want SVN commit access. If you are a user and have some suggestions or an idea how this tool should be like file an enhancement request on devzilla here.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Education, Server, Usability | 1 Comment »

openSUSE-Edu: looks pretty too

May 30th, 2009 by

What has openSUSE-Edu project been up to these days?

More Live Images:

openSUSE-Edu team has been working hard to polish the various image “flavours”. The latest addition to the images is openSUSE-Edu-Desktop. This image contains the latest GNOME with many useful educational applications.

Samyak Bhuta, our designer came up with a new theme for this image, called “Classroom”. Click on the image below to see whole album and theme brief:

Sugared up openSUSE

David “Nubae” Van Assche, has been busy as a bee 😉 bringing most comprehensive Sugar suite to openSUSE, you can find Sugar, Fructose, Sucrose, Honey and all other sweet tooth  satisfying goodies in our repository. Try “Tam Tam Jam”, even grown ups will be whiling away hours having fun. Sugar can be installed on standard openSUSE 11.1 giving another session at login just as KDE/GNOME. Live CD is also under development, if you want to check out things to come get openSUSE-Sugar-live-unstable iso from here(mind the -unstable).

Here are the activities to look forward to enjoy with your children:

Thanks Nubae, Alsroot and all the Sugar developers for the great work.

KIWI-LTSP

We have KIWI-LTSP, easiest to run Linux Terminal Server based onthe latest LTSP5 and openSUSE’s KIWI imaging technology on openSUSE-Edu-Live-Li-f-e DVD. Just click on the icon on the desktop to get fully working LTSP server with tons of Education application, things can’t get simpler than that to set up a classroom running openSUSE in minutes 🙂

Future plans for openSUSE 11.2:

  • Integrate stgraber’s ltsp-cluster work, simple load balancing cluster is already supported, but is limited to small cluster of upto 5 servers
  • Jan weber is currently rewriting Easy-LTSP GUI for LTSP management in python, the idea is that now more distributions may feel comfortable including it getting all the benefits we have been enjoying for some time now. Watch out for the Easy-LTSP-ng, get the source if you would like to work on it.  Feedback, suggestions always welcome
  • Use new clicfs images for the NBD and AOE root

openSUSE-Edu Testing Team

We are forming a testing team to keep very high standards for all the applications shipped on openSUSE-Edu medias. Here is what you  need to join the party:

  • Fast net connection to download and test new images
  • Good bug reporting(fixing would be big advantage) skills
  • Lurk on IRC Freenode #opensuse-edu to squash bugs that can be fixed quickly

If you are interested add yourself to the list here:

http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Team

Events

The project will be represented at LinuxTag 2009, spotting the booth should be easy, there will be “Geeko” and people wearing cool openSUSE-Edu t-shirts 😉

Ciao

Let’s make openSUSE-Edu the best Li-f-e experience.

Posted in Artwork, Education, GNOME | 1 Comment »

New look openSUSE-Education

May 14th, 2009 by

This community week we got a couple of new contributors to openSUSE-Education project, we got artists to come up with new looks for live images.

One of the first theme is called Li-f-e(Linux for Education).

Education Desktop

Li-f-e theme consists of elements representing knowledge. Green background is selected to identify it with openSUSE colors. Pi is on the welcome screen. Two neon lines represent “strokes of brilliance”. openSUSE-Edu logo is rendered luminescent: spreading light of knowledege or acting as a beacon of learning. This theme is created by Samyak Bhuta. This theme is in openSUSE-Edu-KIWI-LTSP-live-unstable iso, get it to see it in action.

Complete screenshot set of the theme and more ideas are here: http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live/Screenshots

On the side note, this is my first post on “lizards“, this would be my new blog, so update your feed bookmarks if you would like to keep updated about what I am sharing here.

Posted in Artwork, Education | Comments Off on New look openSUSE-Education

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