May 2004 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Take up?
by Ben Higginbottom 13 May '04

13 May '04

>What is the general feeling about non-gpl software for Linux? It vary's greatly, there are GPL purists such as Stallman who want everything to be free and pragmatists who belive a person should be able to use any license they want and rate the program in accordance with what it provides rather than the licence it is under, the perfect example would be the bitkeeper cvs system used for kernel development. >Our software is written in C++ and as I understand it, not being a programmer, it >could be re-compiled (with some effort) but we're never going to be giving it >away. Depends very much on the compiler that was used and whether or not it supports cross compilation. Unsurprisingly visual C++ is rather poor in this regard whereas gcc excells. And then you have the issues of the licences of any libraries that were used. If the code followed the C99 standards pretty closely and the coders wrote for flexibility, then there shouldnt be too much of a problem in porting it. >Our business model is we sell software (and CNC machines) then >provide free tech support, sometimes for decades. Changing to free >software and expensive support would seriously upset our established customers. >School budgets being the strange things they are you could almost >guarantee that when something goes wrong, or new, in-experienced staff arrive and >need help, there is nothing in the 'support' budget. Our way means that once >the budget has been approved and the software and kit bought, that's it. It >may be old-fashioned but it works for us, and seems to suit our customers. The GPL is essentially a defensive license designed to make people play fair, but there are many other open or at least free licenses such as alladin that restrict the use of the software in certain enviroments. What you should be asking is what benefits would you gain from opening up the software, do you make money from CNC machines and the Software or CNC machines as well as software; does the software have any use outside of driving your machines; do you think that its release will develop into an active community that will add value to your primary product of CNC machines and so on. As for takeup in education, universities have been using unicies from the year dot, for example the Bill Gates building at cambridge dual boots with red hat and every computer science department will be using it to teach operating systems, most CS freshers dual boot their machines and by second year will ahve likely migrated. Polytechnics are likely to be a different story, as are the non technical university departments. Regards, Ben

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Flexidata 3
by Ben Higginbottom 13 May '04

13 May '04

>I think that is overly pessimistic. I have to be, new software - especially an office suite can only be rolled out at schools over the summer so that the teachers have time to learn it and it has to work near flawlessly, as if anything goes wrong with it there will be hell to pay. >If you have E-learning credits to burn, I have ways of doing it without >having to buy a lot of software you don't particularly need. I'm sure Mike will be interested in any suggestions you have :) >No. We had a meeting as a result of the conference but it didn't involve >Mike, I assume because he didn't put his name forward? you'd have to ask him, I think he's on the list. Regards, Ben

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Crocodile Clips
by Ben Higginbottom 13 May '04

13 May '04

>You don't need to tell me about the demerits of Access >- I have been convinced of that a long time ago. What >alternative could I use (if any)? I need something >that can even be tailored to year 7's. There are quite a few DB frontends such as mergeant, knoda and rekall/totalrekall, however none are really simple although they will do the job at A level. As for the really simple stuff, its in development but as of this moment the only alternative I've found is Flexidata running under wine. >As far as the macromedia suite is concerned, I just >cant get it installed with wine -- even though I have >read reports posted from people who say they can. Have >any of you tried this and won? http://www.frankscorner.org/ has information regarding getting it running under wine and macromedia are porting their apps over to linux. Infact I think they have recently released a version optimised to run under wine in the meantime. >Do you know of any decent GPL school Administration >system replacement I can get my hands on? Schooltool, but thats not really ready yet, weve decided to go with CMIS for the next 3 years at the cost of £20,000 a year due to their webbased eportal system rahter than windows based client software. Unfortunately the company wrote eportal with IE specific javascript, and although its only a minor feature (navigation tabs) and a quick fix, they refuse to change the code. Regards, Ben

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Flexidata 3
by Ben Higginbottom 13 May '04

13 May '04

>What about Rekall which runs on windows and Linux and is GPL. We are >dicovering the wonders of the OpenOffice database for our KS3 ICT. Rekall I think is quite good, but the head of IT here didnt think it was as userfriendly as it needed to be and as a result the 4th years end up using win98 for the next two years. He thinks it'll be good enough by next year but thats too late for us. OOo's Db frontend is in a similar situation, fine if your comfortable with SQL, but not for teaching a pack of 12yr olds. Regards, Ben

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Q1 - Q2
by adrian.wells 13 May '04

13 May '04

Hi Guy's & Guyesess Thanks to everyone that replied on and off list - some very good ideas there. So as not to miss-lead, this is for a company not a school - they'll just have to pay more! :-) Kind regards Adrian

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Flexidata 3
by Ben Higginbottom 12 May '04

12 May '04

At the recent open source in education conference in london there was apparently a lot of discussion in regards to a simple database frontend (at the time I was stuck in a samba course I should have been teaching) anyway, as some of you might know Trinity High School in Manchester is moving to a dual boot enviroment as of september, and with Chris leaving for an even better paid job everything has ended up being dumped on me to do. One of these 'little jobs' was to see if I could get an access clone called flexidata runing under wine, and well it doesnt just run under wine, it practically gallops. Just about every feature works exactly as well as it does in its native enviroment and its approved by the NC as an access alternative for teaching upto 3rd years. The only problems it has are the help files are in the mshelp format (but talking to the developers they are moving towards a HTML format) and that the demo you can request for free from the flexible software website is required to be in the machine whilst you run it, and for some reason its incapable of identifying the CD in the drive, thankfully the developers gave me a license key for a CDless installation. A schools site license costs about £300 and you can learn more here: http://www.flexible.co.uk/FlexiDATA3.html Regards, Ben

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Flexidata 3
by Ben Higginbottom 12 May '04

12 May '04

>With regard to the database, its also worth looking at the proposals for >the dba development of OpenOffice.org 2.0 due out towards the end of >next term. You can download a very early build of OO.o 2.0 from Thanks Ian, I am aware of the roadmap but even if they start grafting in code directly from TotalRekall (not a simple process given the way its been written) they are probably going to sail past they release date and it'll probably be a year after that before it'll be really usable for students, especially the lower years. Flexidata is something that can be used today, and it can burn up the e-learning credits and will do the job until theres a GPL alternative, plus the open attitude of the developers towards Linux suggests any migration would be far less painful than a move from access and mdb's. >If any schools were interested in making a donation to this project >contact me. Maybe we could start a petition to tap into the DfES >innovation fund. You did talk to Mike Chapman at the conference didnt you, he has a 'small' budget towards such a project as well as the attention of the people at the DfES for what were doing at Trinity. Regards, Ben

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Crocodile Clips
by Ben Higginbottom 12 May '04

12 May '04

>Does anyone know of an alternative to crocodile clips, >have looked everywhere even on the old posts on the SuSe >mailing list to no avail. gEDA, Ksim, Klogic spice and Kfilter all run natively on Linux and are free in one way or another. Eagle runs well under wine but is really a layout package with some simulation plugins. None however are what you might call suitable for pupils, but the following sites might be of use: http://sal.jyu.fi/index.shtml http://www.linuxeda.org As Chris has already said, CrocClips runs well under wine, and please dont mind Thomas, he just needs to be LARTed on occasion :) Regards, Ben

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Introduction
by Joanna Harris 12 May '04

12 May '04

Right, Intro 19 year female, Technician at a school that hates open source but basically runs projects at my partners school, which soon should be moving to dual boot (has basically linux everything else, from CCTV to Firewall, Proxy to main servers) Have been using Linux for 5 years, was introduced in sixth form when we used Corel!! Now use only Linux at home with no other OS in sight. Started www.linuxschools.org.uk which isn't up right now....problem with hosting company, but I hope it to be a good reference to people wanting to run Linux/open source in schools. urmmm, I think that is it....just me, an insane geekess. Jo

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Q2 - Linux Mail Server
by Ben Higginbottom 12 May '04

12 May '04

>Can anyone recommend a LINUX mail server with a nice GUI front end. SLOX, we've just moved over to it as a step towards a dual boot enviroment by september. Everything but online update is done from a web frontend, all the standard mail clients can access it and there are many other useful features, such as a calendar, forums, project manager and soon. Educational pricing is around £250 and includes 50 client licences. Compared to exchange its an absolute steal. There's also squirrelmail, which is completely free, however isnt at all easy to administer when compared with slox. Theres an online demo on Suse's site if your interested. Regards, Ben

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