Sunday, August 15, 2010

KONGONI-66

KONGONI sounds Congo for me taking the name from the wildebeest, the mascot of GNU systems.

It is Slackware based and does not violate GNU agreement nor ship proprietary software.

It has gnash for Flash which is very very good alternative.
It has it own installer.

KISS- Kongoni Integrated Set Up System.

P.I.G.= Ports Installation GUI which means programs are downloaded as source files thus saving download time (it took me a considerable time to download KDE 4 to test) and packages are built automatically as in the habit of Debian tradition in the good old days.

Only blemish is that it forgot to mention the password for Kongoni.

I used my intuition
to type live and it worked and saved me time.

These little things guys and girls always forget (Brainy Chaps are sometimes absent minded like me).
Well done.
I will like it because it keeps old and well tested traditions going on for the next generation to see!

Linux for Education

There are two additional things I want the Linux distribution to achieve.

One is
excellence in games.

The other is excellence in education.

To achieve the first one needs lot of dedication.

I have delayed concentrating on the games for the time being with the exception of children's games with educational value.

But being involved in education it is my duty to concentrate on education first especially science.

There is a plethora of educational packages in Linux.

What is lacking is placing them in an organized manner with some specialization into categories.

But I prefer them to be categorized them into

1. Introductory

2. Intermediate

3. Advanced

4. Based on careers, Engineering, Medicine, Statistics, Physics and Chemistry, 3D Imaging (Blender) etc.

5. For sheer fun (not one's own career)

For children there are many ADIOS, QUIMO, KNOPPIX for KIDS, OLPS, Debian Edu, Ubuntu Edu etc.

Then again, these should be categorized according to the age levels of children and in increasing level of difficulty.

This is where games with educational value will shine.

I hope Linux guys with educational background would look into this area in a more concerted and organized manner.

ScientificLinux-5.5-65

There are only few Linux distribution that are developed for Higher Education in mind.
Based on Rehat Scientific Linux is one of them. Fermi Linux is another also based on Redhat.
Debian also has produced DVD for this purpose.
Out of all the three in addition to DVD Scientific Linux has series of 5 CDs and a Live CD. I have downloaded the five 5.3 CDs and they are pretty good. I prefer the Cd series since downloading the DVD is next to impossible with our Telecom.
I tried someone from outside to (all little knowledge) download it and post it to me for the past 12 months and failed.

Then for my luck Scientific Linux 5.5 produced a DVD which was around 2 GB and with some difficulty after 3 days of trying I manged to download a full DVD and test it.
It is pretty good and stable with almost all the Linux packages necessary for educational purposes and if one is missing the facility for downloading it from a repository.

This is one of the best in the heavy weight category even though I prefer a lighter weight product.