Re: Gnome for Educational Usage

["Kevin Vandersloot" <kfv101 psu edu>]

Hello. To the best of my knowledge there is not a group trying to do an
educational version of GNOME. That being said, a lot of the things you
describe can be done already (though maybe not in so easy a fashion). For
instance you can get rid of the ctrl-alt-Fn shells by editing /etc/inittab
(If I remember correctly).  You would also want to patch gnome-core to
remove a lot of the menu entries and initial panel applets etc (maybe there
is a way to do it without recompiling). Ximian GNOME (http://www.ximian.com)
has a nice default layout that is much easier to use than the standard
GNOME. My point here, though, is that there is no central place to do what
you want.

Some of the administration should hopefully get better in GNOME 2.0
including the ability to clamp down on the users ability to change things.
The usability team is also working on providing a nice default desktop that
is much less cluttered and easier to use.

Personally I would love to see GNOME being used in schools. It is beyond me
why KDE users would laugh at you. Perhaps you could write back with more
specifics of what you want to accomplish and the problems that you
anticipate. I think it would be definitely possible to make GNOME usable for
the children especially if it is just a kiosk thing you want.

Regards,
Kevin

----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Jezorek
To: gnome-list gnome org
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 10:55 PM
Subject: Gnome for Educational Usage


Has anyone tried or know of a project that is working to simplify the Gnome
interface for educational purposes. I posted a similar quesiton to the KDE
Edu group and I got laughed at I feel.

Here is the situation.

We are working on building a distribution that will be used in educational
groups. K-12 mostly it will be packed with various educational applications,
games, administration packages . We are wanting a very simple interface with
as much point and click as possible. We are wanting to run Gnome in a kiosk
kinda mode that will disable scripting access, shell ALT-F2 kinda things.
The reasons behind this is, we feel that a kid will break what they can
break without meaning to. Also we are wanting them to have a very smooth
transition from Windows to Linux (so school systems can avoid licensing
issues) The goal is not so much as to teach children Linux but to get Linux
into the school systems with minimal fuss (they can later learn the workings
of Linux once its in the school ) but we know in order to get Linux into the
schools it has to be very easy to use. Most schools are administered by a
teacher or something of this nature we want it easy to do. For more
information reply to this with questions so I can answer them

Matt Jezorek
http://www.bluelinux.org/
matt bluelinux org