Today I received in the server an email, answering the "one week later email about please talk and share elive to the world", saying:
I am very satisfied with Linux Elive. I'm a Linux user for a short time and I'm still learning. Linux Elive helps a lot in learning. It will be a pleasure to contribute to you. I just want do this safely without taking any risk. It will also be a pleasure to share your wonderful work. A big hug.
So I think could be a good idea to make a special version of Elive for schools / universities, nothing too much complex, simply a selection of packages that may be more needed for schools, removing other ones like games, and maybe a Kiosk mode (this can be more difficult to implement), just to have a version with a good page saying "this system is made for schools, and is easy, and you will learn, ready to use"
Could be a reason (at least) to keep kiosk and game mode available.
It's basically about giving ownership and responsibility in place of taking away freedom through monitoring.
I do agree that with a school version extra stuff could be installed but that would depend on what kind of schools (and age groups) we're building for.
OTOH we could offer a basic, minimal version and a good tutorial/howto on what (newcomers are often overwhelmed) to install and which program/app choices we recommend, depending on the goal....thus allowing anyone to have what they want/need with the best, fast and stable software available.
I think the best way to attract (and keep) newcomers is to do a little "hand-holding" and give support without being condescending or throwing RTFM s.
Searching the net for good (or the best) linux apps can be quite time consuming and certainly daunting if you aren't even 100% sure what it is you're looking for....this is where the strange naming schemes of some apps are partly to blame.
Ergo:
The tutorial/howto has to be there first which (at the same time) allows us to define for ourselves what this (school)version should look like and contain.
Then we could offer up a ready made live-version as a showcase.
There are some solutions, with a more or less crapy all in one client-server approach. MusterLinux, UCS@School, ... But I don't know any solution to support singlesystems for homeschooling. This could be a real benefit in communication about the Elive school solution.
i did it right now, I have many unread threads on the forum that I don't have the time to be updated from
This EliveEdu can be an interesting project but for sure will need to have some "promoting impact", a way to tell this to the schools (maybe spamming their admin@school.edu emails? lol)
will be important to know in exactitude what are actually the needs for the schools, or what can be good for the OS to have to offer to them, so then it will be "the solution they were searching for"
To be frank:
I think it's a dead end to cater for schools, there's already too many contenders there and we'd be fighting Apple and M$ vendor lock-ins.
We need to target the users i.e students/pupils and offer some cool stuff as well as all the stuff they need to comply with school demands....for those having a laptop on loan from school: A good live-version that will run on said laptop, making it their own, albeit temporarily.
My youngest and eldest both did University with Elive on their Thinkpads where we had sessions installing R and other data related stuff as well as the necessity to get access to the uni VPN portal and such.
All of which can be handled in tutorials.
I don't think contacting the schools is the way to be. Because they are afraid of tech. But the kids can be a valuable taget group.
My son (16) needs a soulution to:
Zoom/Discord/Teams/... use any demanded conferencing tool
Open/read/change/print .pdf, .doc, .txt
Get a nice fast browser, that won't cache useless stuff**
An easy way to seperate private from school files/accesses
An easy Passwordmanager, best with android/iOS sync.
** his school used the system iServ. He opened a link to login every day. After the hollidays the link stopped working. Because the school updatet and the link www.school.de/iserv/class9b was changed to www.school.de/class9b, without tell it to anyone. 'Bookmarks' from hell (in fact he used the 'most visited list')
