Blogs

Edubuntu Long-Term Support

Earlier this year, the Edubuntu project released its very first Long Term Support (LTS) version. Edubuntu 12.04 LTS will receive security updates and critical updates for 5 years.

So far Edubuntu 12.04 LTS has received great reviews and we believe it's the best Edubuntu release to date, not just in terms of the product that's been released, but also project-wise.

Here are some of the things people have been saying about Edubuntu 12.04 so far:

• "The truth is, you wont know how great Edubuntu is until you try it." - peeweepc.com
• "All in all Edubuntu 12.04 is an excellent release in every respect and carries the contribution of FOSS to the World and Humanity in the field of Education further." muktware.com
• "Edubuntu is quite simply the best and the most popular education-oriented Linux distribution around. " - techsource
• "While the system isn't perfect, Edubuntu is ready for what it promises. Even though it lacks organization and description of programs, the distribution is an almost complete tool for education."

- guiadopc.com (Quote translated from Greek)

Edubuntu's First LTS Point Release

The Edubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Edubuntu 12.04.1. This marks the first LTS point release for this LTS lifecycle. The point release includes all the bug fixes and improvements that have been applied to Edubuntu 12.04 LTS since it has been released. It also includes updated hardware support and installer fixes. If you have an Edubuntu 12.04 LTS system and have applied all the available updates, then your system will already be on 12.04.1 LTS and there is no need to re-install. For new installations, installing from the updated media is recommended since it will be installable on more systems than before and will require drastically less updates than installing from the original 12.04 LTS media.

• Information on where to download the Edubuntu 12.04.1 LTS media is available from the Downloads page.
• We do not ship free Edubuntu discs at this time, however, there are 3rd party distributors available who ship discs at reasonable prices listed on the Edubuntu Martketplace

Although Edubuntu 10.04 systems will ask for upgrade to 12.04.1, it's not an officialy supported upgrade path. Testing however indicated that this usually works if you're ready to make some minor adjustments afterwards.

To ensure that the Edubuntu 12.04 LTS series will continue to work on the latest hardware as well as keeping quality high right out of the box, we will release another 3 point releases before the next long term support release is made available in 2014. More information is available on the release schedule page on the Ubuntu wiki.

The release notes are available from the Ubuntu Wiki.

Thanks for your support and interest in Edubuntu!

New Website

We have a new Edubuntu website!

It might not look like much yet, but we've blown off some dust and did a good spring cleaning. The site now runs on Drupal 7 and all the plugins have been updated to the latest versions.

We've also replaced our old commercial theme that didn't support Drupal 7 by our own homemade one based on the default Drupal theme.

Edubuntu Deployments Page

We're planning a bunch of really nice things for the new site. The first is the deployments page which we're introducing today!

We receive on average 2 queries a week via the Edubuntu contact page asking us who uses Edubuntu and where it's deployed, so we thought it'd be a good idea to make it easy for people to report their deployments and let other see where Edubuntu has been installed.

We're very excited by it and would be thrilled if you could add your deployment there as well!

Ubuntu Developer Summit

Next week, it's time again for another Ubuntu Developer Summit. The week where the next version of Ubuntu (and also Edubuntu) is planned out.

For Edubuntu we're planning a bit further ahead than the next release. We have some ideas that can't be implemented in a 6 month cycle so we'll be breaking it down into smaller bytes that we can start working on in the meantime.

Schedule

The full schedule is available here, there are a bunch of sessions that relate to Edubuntu.

Edubuntu-specific sessions are:

• Edubuntu plenary, Tuesday afternoon at 14:30 as part of the Ubuntu Flavour Plenary
• Edubuntu plans for Precise, Friday morning at 10:00.
• Edubuntu Zentyal Integration, Friday afternoon at 16:15.

Note: Above times are subject to change, please check the schedule regularly for changes.

Remote Participation

If you'd like to participate but can't be there in person, remember that it's also possible to participate in UDS remotely.

Have fun!

Originally posted to the edubuntu-devel mailing list by Stéphane Graber.

Call for Translations

We're now just 3 weeks away from the final release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
(and its flavours).
Ensuring our installation experience and default desktop is as well
translated as possible is one of Edubuntu's goal for this release.

We're almost there and it already looks great compared to our previous
releases, yet I'm sure we can have it even better.

Current packages of interest sorted by priority:

edubuntu-live

Deadline: 19th of April
Link:
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/edubuntu-live
Note: Can't be translated post-release, part of installer

ubiquity-slideshow-edubuntu

Deadline: 19th of April
Link:
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/ubiquity-slide...
Note: Can't be translated post-release, part of installer

epoptes

Deadline: 12th of April
Link: https://translations.launchpad.net/epoptes
Note: Can't be translated post-release, translations are upstream
(non-langpack)

ltsp

Deadline: 19th of April
Link: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/ltsp
Note: Can be translated post-release but is used in live environment and is difficult to update post-release

Other new Edubuntu packages with translations in Launchpad are listed below, these are lower priority than anything above as they're translated through langpacks and aren't as visible as the 4 above:
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/pastebinit
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/arkose

Thanks again for all your help and I'm definitely looking forward to the best translated Ubuntu and Edubuntu ever.