Technology Recycling for Excellence in Education
More Tools For the Revolution
I've never been completely satisfied with the performance of our main family computer, a Dell desktop. I've used a couple of versions of Ubuntu, and most recently have been using OpenSUSE. Still it has always seemed sluggish and occasionally exhibited some odd quirks. I've read in a couple of places that certain older Dells were so optimized for Windows that they never perform perfectly with Linux. I don't know if that is true, but this particular machine seems to bear that out. So I've always been on the lookout for something better. Now I think I have found it.
For a long time I've kept a copy of Puppy Linux in my laptop case. Puppy is a tiny (under 100mb) Linux distro that is remarkably full-featured. I've always thought of it as kind of a "toy" operating system, and mostly useful as a rescue disk in case of the inevitable Windows crash. Then I read that Puppy 4.0 (Dingo) had been released a couple of months ago.
I downloaded and burned a CD and tried it out. I was absolutely blown away. This is a serious, serious operating system. The downloaded file is only about 80mb and unpacks to somewhere around 100mb. Once the live CD is running, you can install to your hard drive or make a bootable USB thumb drive, which is fantastic for a rescue system. Installing to the hard drive took no more than 10-15 minutes. Compare that to over an hour for OpenSUSE, or a good half-hour for Ubuntu.
Puppy is fast! On bootup the whole thing loads itself into your RAM. So there is no delay in reading/writing to the hard drive. This means everything is ready to go when you are. Our old Dell is running like a brand new machine.
Contrary to what you might expect, this is no bare-bones distro. It comes with a nice basic office suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, email client, chat/IM client, and calendar/organizer. The SeaMonkey browser is a direct descendant of Netscape and includes its version of Composer, so you can edit and publish webpages as well as browse them. As soon as I installed Puppy I went straight to YouTube (the ultimate test for the family computer) and amazingly everything just worked! No searching for the proper Flash plugin or other add-ons. Download a few extra games from the Puppy repository using the very easy package installer, and Dad's a hero once again.
So why am I going on and on about Puppy when ProjectTREE uses Edubuntu (now renamed Ubuntu Education Edition)? Because thin-client school labs aren't the only way to get more technology into the hands of students and low-income families. They may not even be the best way, they're just one approach that has found some success. In order for Web 2.0 to truly transform education, we have to have a variety of approaches, all with the same goal--ubiquitous computing. For some that means going to the big-box store and buying a Windows or Mac machine loaded up with all the goodies. For others it means using the community-access computer at the library and storing their assignments in the cloud on Google Docs or Adobe Buzzword, then downloading them at school. For still others it means taking older hardware, donated or purchased at little cost, and using an innovative approach to OS and software apps to make it run like a newer machine. Hardware manufacturers are starting to take notice, with the new class of mini-laptops running Linux at about half the price of standard laptops. Those are great, but with software like Puppy, our students don't have to wait for mini-laptop prices to come down. They can afford technology now.
Find out more about Puppy Linux at www.puppylinux.org
For a long time I've kept a copy of Puppy Linux in my laptop case. Puppy is a tiny (under 100mb) Linux distro that is remarkably full-featured. I've always thought of it as kind of a "toy" operating system, and mostly useful as a rescue disk in case of the inevitable Windows crash. Then I read that Puppy 4.0 (Dingo) had been released a couple of months ago.
I downloaded and burned a CD and tried it out. I was absolutely blown away. This is a serious, serious operating system. The downloaded file is only about 80mb and unpacks to somewhere around 100mb. Once the live CD is running, you can install to your hard drive or make a bootable USB thumb drive, which is fantastic for a rescue system. Installing to the hard drive took no more than 10-15 minutes. Compare that to over an hour for OpenSUSE, or a good half-hour for Ubuntu.
Puppy is fast! On bootup the whole thing loads itself into your RAM. So there is no delay in reading/writing to the hard drive. This means everything is ready to go when you are. Our old Dell is running like a brand new machine.
Contrary to what you might expect, this is no bare-bones distro. It comes with a nice basic office suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, email client, chat/IM client, and calendar/organizer. The SeaMonkey browser is a direct descendant of Netscape and includes its version of Composer, so you can edit and publish webpages as well as browse them. As soon as I installed Puppy I went straight to YouTube (the ultimate test for the family computer) and amazingly everything just worked! No searching for the proper Flash plugin or other add-ons. Download a few extra games from the Puppy repository using the very easy package installer, and Dad's a hero once again.
So why am I going on and on about Puppy when ProjectTREE uses Edubuntu (now renamed Ubuntu Education Edition)? Because thin-client school labs aren't the only way to get more technology into the hands of students and low-income families. They may not even be the best way, they're just one approach that has found some success. In order for Web 2.0 to truly transform education, we have to have a variety of approaches, all with the same goal--ubiquitous computing. For some that means going to the big-box store and buying a Windows or Mac machine loaded up with all the goodies. For others it means using the community-access computer at the library and storing their assignments in the cloud on Google Docs or Adobe Buzzword, then downloading them at school. For still others it means taking older hardware, donated or purchased at little cost, and using an innovative approach to OS and software apps to make it run like a newer machine. Hardware manufacturers are starting to take notice, with the new class of mini-laptops running Linux at about half the price of standard laptops. Those are great, but with software like Puppy, our students don't have to wait for mini-laptop prices to come down. They can afford technology now.
Find out more about Puppy Linux at www.puppylinux.org
Add a Comment
About
Empowering Women
Badge
© 2009 Created by Jerry Cobbs on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of ProjectTREE to add comments!
Join this Ning Network