[PLUG] Fwd: Debian Edu / Skolelinux Stretch — a complete Linux solution for your school

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

Longish, but will be of interest to various folks on the list.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Debian Edu / Skolelinux Stretch — a complete Linux solution for 
your school
Resent-Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2017 19:01:42 +0000 (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-announce@lists.debian.org
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2017 14:40:36 -0400
From: Donald Norwood <donald@debian.org>
To: debian-announce@lists.debian.org

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Debian Project                               https://www.debian.org/
Debian Edu / Skolelinux Stretch — a complete Linux solution for your
school                                                  press@debian.org
June 18th, 2017                https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170618
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Do you have to administrate a computer lab or a whole school network?
Would you like to install servers, workstations and laptops which will
then work together? Do you want the stability of Debian with network
services already preconfigured? Do you wish to have a web-based tool to
manage systems and several hundred or even more user accounts? Have you
asked yourself if and how older computers could be used?

Then Debian Edu is for you. The teachers themselves or their technical
support can roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study
environment within a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of
applications pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from
Debian.

The Debian Edu developer team is happy to announce Debian Edu 9
"Stretch", the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux release based on the
Debian 9 "Stretch" release. Please consider testing it and reporting
back (<debian-edu@lists.debian.org>) to help us to improve it further.


About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
-------------------------------

Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux [1], is a Linux distribution based
on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
waiting for users and machines to be added via GOsa², a comfortable web
interface. A netbooting environment is prepared, so after initial
installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines
can be installed via the network. Older computers (even up to ten or so
years old) can be used as LTSP thin clients or diskless workstations,
booting from the network without any installation at all. The Debian Edu
school server provides an LDAP database and Kerberos authentication
service, centralized home directories, a DHCP server, a web proxy and
many other services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational
software packages and more are available from the Debian archive.
Schools can choose between the desktop environments KDE Plasma, GNOME,
LXDE, MATE and Xfce.

    1: http://www.skolelinux.org/


New features for Debian Edu 9 "Stretch"
---------------------------------------

These are some items from the release notes for Debian Edu 9 "Stretch",
based on the Debian 9 "Stretch" release. The full list is part of the
manual.

  * Plymouth is installed and activated by default, except for the 'Main
Server' and 'Minimal' profiles.
  * Icinga replaces Nagios as monitoring tool.
  * LTSP now uses NBD instead of NFS for the root filesystem.
  * A Japanese translation of the manual is now available.


Download options, installation steps and manual
-----------------------------------------------

A multi-architecture CD / USB stick image (647 MiB) for network booting
can be downloaded at the following locations:

  * http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-CD.iso [2]
  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-CD.iso

    2: http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-CD.iso

Alternatively an extended DVD / USB stick image (5.45 GiB) is also
available, with more software included (saving additional download time
during installs):

  * http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-USB.iso [3]
  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-USB.iso

    3: http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-9+edu0-USB.iso

The images can be verified using the file SHA256SUMS.asc containing
signed checksums of the images; see
http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/SHA256SUMS.asc
Once you've downloaded an image, you can check that its checksum matches
that expected from the checksum file; and that the checksum file has not
been tampered with. For more information about how to do these steps,
read the verification guide [4].

    4: https://www.debian.org/CD/verify

Debian Edu 9 "Stretch" is entirely based on Debian 9 "Stretch" ; so the
sources for all packages are available from the Debian archive.

Please note the Debian Edu Stretch status page. [5]

    5: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Stretch

When upgrading from Debian Edu 8 "Jessie" please read the related Debian
Edu manual chapter. [6]

    6: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Stretch/Upgrades

For installation notes please read the related Debian Edu manual
chapter. [7]

    7:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Stretch/Installation#Installing_Debian_Edu

After installation you need to take these first steps. [8]

    8:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Stretch/GettingStarted

Please see the Debian Edu wiki pages [9] for the latest English version
of the Debian Edu "Stretch" manual. The manual has been fully translated
to German, French, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian Bokmål and
Japanese. A partly translated version exists for Spanish. An overview of
the latest translated versions of the manual [10] is available.

    9: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Stretch/
   10: https://jenkins.debian.net/userContent/debian-edu-doc/

More information about Debian 9 "Stretch" itself is provided in the
release notes and the installation manual; see https://www.debian.org/.



About Debian
------------

The Debian Project is an association of Free Software developers who
volunteer their time and effort in order to produce the completely free
operating system Debian.


Contact Information
-------------------

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at
https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug