[01:24] <cprofitt> hey pleia2
[01:24] <sbalneav> Evening all
[01:24] <cprofitt> hello sbalneav
[07:50] <ball> hello jsgotangco
[12:47] <khabi> hi
[12:47] <alkisg> Ηι
[12:47] <alkisg> Hi
[12:47] <khabi> I need advice on Edubuntu
[12:49] <khabi> Edubuntu or Xp pro with educational software for a primary school computer room
[12:49] <khabi> Not sure whether it will worth the learning curve for myself and the teacher
[13:34] <khabi> hi
[13:37] <khabi> hi is any1 here
[13:39] <khabi> hellooo
[13:42] <highvoltage> hi khabi
[13:57] <mhall119|work> hi khabi
[14:26] <khabi> highvoltage
[14:26] <khabi> hi all
[14:28] <khabi> i need to set up a computer room and i looking at edubuntu
[14:28] <khabi> it is for a primary school.
[14:36] <mhall119|work> khabi: awesome
[14:39] <khabi> i need some advice
[14:39] <mhall119|work> ask away
[14:40] <khabi> why should go for edubuntu as apposed to a windows enviroment with educational software
[14:41] <mhall119|work> aside from price?
[14:42] <mhall119|work> you don't have to worry about licensing
[14:42] <mhall119|work> you don't have to worry about anti-virus software
[14:43] <mhall119|work> you don't have to worry about the kids breaking the system (don't give sudo access)
[14:43] <mhall119|work> you get free education games, and there are a _lot_ of them
[14:43] <mhall119|work> you get free upgrades, to the OS and the games, for life
[14:43] <mhall119|work> the upgrades aren't going to require throwing out your current computers and buying new ones
[14:44] <mhall119|work> now, from a more technical side:
[14:44] <mhall119|work> The kids learn a different platform, variety of experience is important to learning
[14:45] <mhall119|work> maybe not as important to primary school kids, but Linux knowledge was the #1 most desired technical skill in a recent study
[14:45] <sbalneav> Morning all
[14:45] <mhall119|work> from an admin point of view:
[14:45] <mhall119|work> you have full control over the computers
[14:46] <mhall119|work> if you don't like an app, remove it
[14:46] <mhall119|work> you can customize the interface, Sabayon lets you create multiple configuration profiles
[14:47] <mhall119|work> if you use LTSP, you can roll out a lab based on thin clients for much cheaper
[14:47] <mhall119|work> have I missed anything?
[14:47] <mhall119|work> Oh yeah, it's free
[14:50] <khabi> thanks
[14:51] <khabi> i have looked at some of the benefits you mentioned. I am also looking
[14:52] <khabi> at suggesting curriculum based on the software i install
[14:55] <khabi> Being free is a benefit but it comes at a price
[14:58] <khabi> Do you know of any South African Schools using the software
[15:02] <sbalneav> Many are using Linux.  I beleive the Shuttleworth Foundation has Linux desktops in many schoold
[15:03] <khabi> Are they really happy ? Getting support is a problem itself
[15:07] <khabi> mhall119
[15:07] <khabi> Are you there ?
[15:07] <alkisg> Support is many, many times better in Linux than in Windows
[15:07] <alkisg> In Windows I never got a bug that I reported fixed
[15:08] <alkisg> In Linux, I got a lot of them fixed, by either me or others...
[15:10] <alkisg> The same goes for feature requests - never on Windows, many times on Linux.
[15:10] <alkisg> And my students are much happier with Linux than when we had Windows
[15:14] <khabi> so you have implemented at a school
[15:15] <alkisg> 3 schools so far (by myself), and lots of others that followed an installation manual I wrote, yes
[15:15] <khabi> you have an installation manual ? Where can I find it?
[15:16] <alkisg> Sorry, it's in Greek, and it's specific to how we want to setup things here in Greece (that's why I didn't write it in English at the first place...)
[15:16] <alkisg> But there are lot of instructions out there
[15:16] <khabi> Should I go for ubuntu and install all the educational packages or edubuntu
[15:17] <alkisg> Whatever you like
[15:17] <alkisg> No big difference there...
[15:18] <khabi> Are you a teacher or the administrator?
[15:19] <alkisg> In Greece most computer teachers are also the administrators
[15:19] <alkisg> The schools are small, so they don't have extra staff for administration
[15:19] <khabi> I understand. Its good that I am speaking to the teacher because you
[15:20] <khabi> have first hand experience interaction with kids
[15:21] <khabi> I wanted your point of view. What age students do you teach?
[15:22] <alkisg> In the last 2 years with Linux, I was at schools with 12-15 y.o. kids
[15:22] <alkisg> This year I'm at 15-18 y.o kids
[15:22] <khabi> Thats great ! Tell me I am I disturbing you by asking so many questions ?
[15:23] <alkisg> No no problem it just may take a little time to answer sometimes cause I'm also doing other stuff...
[15:24] <khabi> Thank You ! What software do you use with 12-15 yrs
[15:26] <alkisg> I've ported 15 Gb of windows-based Greek educational apps that the ministry had, and I made a repository of them: http://ts.sch.gr/repo/
[15:26] <alkisg> So now all the schools can install them by just doing "sudo apt-get install gymnasio"...
[15:26] <alkisg> That repo had 1 Tb of traffic last month, so it goes pretty well.
[15:28] <alkisg> Other than that, we mostly use openoffice, firefox, kturtle etc, not a lot of kde-edu or other apps...
[15:30] <khabi> Interesting. Do the kids have internet access ?
[15:31] <khabi> Can I use software you have ported ?
[15:32] <alkisg> Yeah, the kids have internet access (we use squid for caching & access control),
[15:32] <mhall119|work> sorry khabi, had to step out for a minute
[15:32] <alkisg> and while you could use the software, it's in Greek.. :-/
[15:33] <alkisg> It's software specifically written for Greek textbooks...
[15:34] <khabi> ok thanks. you know the saying, "thats greek to me"
[15:37] <khabi> :-)
[15:37] <mhall119|work> there are others that are multi-lingual
[15:37] <khabi> I had no luck in getting squid to work.The learning curve to get up running
[15:37] <mhall119|work> gCompris has the ability to create lesson plans I think
[15:38] <mhall119|work> khabi: there are simpler proxies you can use for content filterin
[15:38] <mhall119|work> squid is good if you have a centralized server though
[15:39] <alkisg> getting squid to work is pretty easy (for basic stuff)
[15:39] <alkisg> You can also add 2 lines and make it cache updates,
[15:39] <alkisg> and you can force all the clients to go through it through gconf mandatory settings
[15:40] <khabi> do you use webmin for the reporting
[15:40] <mhall119|work> or iptables
[15:41] <khabi> i would like to have a try at setting up squid again
[15:42] <khabi> Where in greece are you from ?
[15:49] <alkisg> Ioannina
[15:53] <khabi> How do you centrally manage all the user accounts
[15:56] <alkisg> In LTSP, it's all in 1 PC so it's easy
[15:56] <alkisg> In standalone Ubuntu installations, I don't. I tell each team of students to sit on the same PC each time
[15:56] <alkisg> So I have the same accounts per class (e.g. 12 PCs = 12 accounts "classA")
[15:57] <alkisg> and I only tell the students to change the "real name", so I can see them with iTalc, and on the top gnome panel
[15:57] <alkisg> This way I can continue to work even when the local network or server is down
[15:58] <alkisg> ...and the students do have their own stuff, files, wallpaper etc that noone else can see
[16:04] <jbicha> today was magical: I actually saw tiny drops of rain fall from the sky
[16:09] <khabi> alkisq you stay in such an interesting place
[16:09] <alkisg> khabi: where do you live?
[16:10] <khabi> South Africa, Durban
[16:10] <alkisg> heh, sounds exotic to me :)
[16:12] <khabi> You will surprized how exotic it is ! you will here alot about Durban next  year
[16:12] <khabi> World cup is going to in South Africa
[16:17] <highvoltage> khabi: yes and in south africa we'll be tired of hearing about soccer
[16:57] <khabi> highvoltage
[16:57] <khabi> where in sa are u from
[16:59] <highvoltage> khabi: cape town
[17:20] <cprofitt> hey pleia2
[17:20] <pleia2> cprofitt: hey
[17:21] <cprofitt> still at UDS?
[20:12] <alkisg> I'm making an ubuntu remix with live ltsp on it, what's the correct phrase? "Ubuntu Greek Education Remix" or "Ubuntu Greek Educational Remix"?
[21:03] <Lns> Has anyone run into mime type issues in 8.04 where a .desktop file (type=link, to open a website in a browser) gets opened in gedit and not firefox/epiphany/etc?
[21:20] <Lns> nm, found that it didn't work because i had hacked my firefox.desktop ;)