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| Chapter 1. Introduction |
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About the Edubuntu Handbook |
Edubuntu is an operating system designed with education in mind. It is based on Ubuntu, a complete operating system that uses the Linux kernel and is freely available to anyone. As an education-driven operating system, Edubuntu provides a complete solution for:
An organisation or Education Ministry that is wanting to take full advantage of the benefits that open source software offers to the educational environment.
Educators and school personnel who would like to set up Edubuntu in a networked learning environment.
Home users who would like to have a standalone computer system that focuses on education for the younger members of the household.
Edubuntu gathers together the best available free software and digital materials for education.
Since Edubuntu is based on Ubuntu, the team behind Edubuntu is part of the growing Ubuntu community. The Ubuntu community is built around the ideals enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy:
that software should be available free of charge;
that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities;
and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.
For these reasons, Edubuntu makes the following public commitment to its community of users worldwide:
Edubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition;" we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
We include the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the free software community has to offer, to make Edubuntu usable for as many people as possible.
Releases are regular and predictable; a new one is made every six months. You can use the current stable or the development release. Each release is supported for at least 18 months and selected ones are supported for up to 3 to 5 years on a Long-Term Support (LTS) basis.
We are is entirely committed to the principles of open source software development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it, and pass it on.
Edubuntu is meant for anyone who wants a computer laboratory that makes good use of free software and the widest variety of hardware. It is designed to be easy to administer and is well documented. It can run on inexpensive, 10-year-old IBM-compatible computers as well as brand new I64-based systems. The growing Edubuntu community is working together to share ideas and solutions for bringing computing and communications power to teachers, students and community members everywhere.
One of the key technologies included is the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) which allows you to boot thin clients from an Edubuntu LTSP server. For educational environments, LTSP lowers hardware costs by enabling the use of older or less powerful machines as thin clients, as well as reduced administration overhead by having only to install and maintain the software on the server. When a workstation fails, it can simply be replaced without data loss or reinstallation of the operating system.
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| Chapter 1. Introduction |
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About the Edubuntu Handbook |