[kde-edu]: freeduc and similar projects

[Marc Heyvaert]

Hello,

I know this seems to be off-topic at first :)

I tested the freeduc-cd tonight. Version 1.4.1 

I could start it with lang=nl after fiddling around
with the knoppix boot parameters, but i still had a
querty keyboard, not azerty what it should be
(wouldn't even dare to think about the option for 
Belgian azerty :)  My point is that starting the cd is
not straightforward and no good publicity for linux.
But perhaps this is down to knoppix?

After this I had some sort of dutch system, but with
many strings still untranslated.

After quiting, my PC wouldn't restart (screen remains
black). After trying for about 10 times, booting (to
Windows XP on this one!) was ok again. My point here
is that this live CD is not a straightforward thing.

The software on the cd is a strange collection... I
would imaging that for a CD with serious space
limitations there would have been a strict choice of
programs. But you get a lot of things twice! You have
OpenOffice + the office suit from Gnome + Scribus. You
have KStars and some (old) star chart generator + some
other space related stuff. There are some drawing
programs with overlap, 2 calculators. Very few KDE
programs really. Some from the kdeedu module.

Overall I find this CD very disappointing. The
presentation looks nice, but is really unusable! You
get all the programs grouped in a logical (?) way, by
subject, but the program names are hidden. You get
some generic names.

There is no distinction by age group, field of
interest, etc. Customisation of look and feel is very
basic.

I feel that it should be possible to put something
together based on nearly 100% KDE, so with a strong
bias towards the educational needs.

The menus should be less confusing than the standard
KDE menu though and the user should be presented with
different preconfigured menus, so that a choice based
on age group, type of school, etc should be possible.
It could be a showcase for the kdeedu module, and for
some other neat stuff in KDE.

My questions: has such a project been tried before?
Are there other live-cd's geared towards education
that are more KDE-like? Do you think this KDE-edu
live-cd would be feasible as a project?

Regards,

Marc

P.S. As I'm going on holiday for a week and starting
the day after tomorrow, my participation in this
thread may be slightly delayed.


	
		
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