Petter Reinholdtsen

First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released
27th July 2010

I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step completed.

This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this release is to test the user application selection. To have a look, install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know. Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your language of choice, please let us know too.

In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus, artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.

The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to much.

Changes compared to the lenny based version

  • Everything from Debian Squeeze
    • Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in combination with some new artwork
    • Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
    • OpenOffice.org 3.2
    • Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
    • Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
    • Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
    • Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
    • Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
    • 3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
    • Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
  • Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished). Enabled for:
    • PAM
    • LDAP
    • IMAP
    • SMTP (sender verification)
  • New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
  • Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is fetched from LDAP.
  • New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
  • General cleanup (not finished)

The following features are not working as they should

  • No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used for testing.
  • DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot, and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
  • The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
  • The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
  • The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
  • Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
  • The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
  • Some packages lack translations. See http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status, and help out with translations.

To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use

To download this multiarch dvd release you can use

There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we get closer to the final release.

The MD5SUM of these images are

  • 3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
  • 22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso

The SHA1SUM of these images are

  • c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
  • 2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso

How to report bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla

Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org

Tags: debian edu, english, nuug.

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