Linux goes to school with NethServer

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9

It is very important to make a difference between infrastructure and applications. I think you are in the first stage, setting up an infrastructure.
Nethserver seems (hey I’m a newb here :wink: ) to be capable of infrastructure quite well. On the applications side there is now owncloud to store data and make it available through webdav and SOGo groupware.
There are so many useful applications around as already mentioned in the startpost. Most of them only need a LAMP stack to run.

I don’t know how hard it is to install a custom installation of an application as a VHost in Apache on a NethServer? I come from Zentyal and there (I can only speak for Zentyal until version 3.2) I could install anything as long it ran in Apache and didn’t touch Zentyal config files. An application doesn’t have to be a native module.

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Probably not much, it should be down to create a new ibay with Apache and setting the correct routes inside NethServer.

What I would love to achieve is not to demandate the installation of these tools manually to the administrator, but to provide it packaged in RPMs and provide its configuration via NethServer web gui if needed. This would be a complete integration and ease of installation, and an effective addition to NethServer assets. Unfortunately packaging with RPM is not really straightforward as I expected, web gui interfaces have to be developed and all the process is going to take some time. Still, it would be a giant leap for anyone that will want to start with a school project.

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I’m totally with you on that one, you have taken the point!
We should get off to a good start as you suggested: small steps and setups.
Thanks guys, I’m not an expert about that but the discussion is very interesting.

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Agreed. Especially when the community grows (preferably with some devs :smiley: ) the extra community modules can be added. I am also busy with Linuxschools project. All those candy are already available with Linuxschools including Samba4 and AD support, but the distro lacks packages and a structured development path. In a way it is a solid project but only has very few developers and the community is … small and not well led.
In a perfect world NethServer would have the features of the LinuxSchools project and Linuxschools would have the community of NethServer… :wink:

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[quote=“robb, post:12, topic:2132”]
NethServer would have the features of the LinuxSchools project
[/quote]My team uses Zentyal and being a government entity is a bit difficult to change certain decisions.

They tell me :

To change bring us something better than what we have with Zentyal

Without flattery , I know Nethserver itself and with the community support is already better. :beers:

The dependence on the desktop on a server seems novel but is contradictory.
As a graphic designer I should defend the opposite but I’ve learned that with this tribe.

Our proposal LinuxSchools/School Intranet, in the case of Venezuela, should provide easy guides for children to learn to use the server from the shell :key: . This does not exempt a proposed module for desktop as we discussed in other threads.

And the problem is not just the children , is the desktop dependence even suffer some tutors , including me :neutral_face:

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I hope I understand correctly but you need a desktop for a server environment? Even with Zentyal I never ever used the desktop environment and I was very pleased they finally came with an option to install without a desktop. Using the webinterface combined with SSH was more than enough to maintain any Zentyal server. I think the same counts for NethServer.

IMO a server should just serve. It should be almost invisible, transparent for end users. At the same time all services provided by the server must be stable, reliable and always available. In such a case, enduser don’t get to work on the server, only with the services provided by the server. And as a sysadmin, you don’t need a desktop environment on the server. So why bother having one?

The ONLY server that really needs a desktop is an LTSP server (for obvious reasons).

I mailed you privately about LinuxSchools project. I feel very reluctant to talk about another project with more or less the same goals and target audience in these forums since I don’t want to deliberately move members to another project. However, since LinuxSchools project is already 12+years old, very actively developed and especially aims at educational environments, it is a lot further when it comes to educational features. I am happy to tell more about this privately, but I am not going to advertise this over here.

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I fully understand that it is not necessary. But notice when I introduced recently NS warned me immediately:
And the desk?
and then the conversation turned into a loop (not necessary but NS has no desk in Zential if available)
… uh :neutral_face: … but for what? :confused:

I’m totally agree with your vision.

I am very grateful to have your support since Linux School, a project with remarkable history and experience.

Then we build from our email correspondence certain details. We sounds good, then shared general affairs of progress by this route :v:

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Interesting project suggested by @gecco:

http://pinet.org.uk/

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Anything pi is good… especcially with raspberries on it… (jummeh… :wink: )

Nice project. I have done some testing with rpi. Mainly as mediaplayer. It is a great small computer, but IMO could do with a bit more memory. Even the rpi2 has too little to perform adequately as a pc replacement or even as thin client.

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Can we 'NethServer-fy this (clearly written!) howto install of Chamilo?


It even provides a howto to compile php5-xapian libraries.
Chamilo is one of the best Electronic Learning Environments. The last version of Chamilo LMS is 1.10.2 and can be downloaded here: https://chamilo.org/chamilo-lms/
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I’d like to move forward on this, how can we start and go ahead?
Installing Chamilo? Who want to tackle this challenge? I’m very interested in this topic, @syntaxerrormmm @apradoc @robb @rothere I’m not an expert but I can lend a hand.

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There are several specific educational tools that can be integrated with NS. To be more specific, there are several branches of applications that are needed to cover a complete set of educational applications.

  • Electroning Learning Environment
  • Student Management System
  • Creating (interactive) Learning Objects
  • …

Nice to haves:

  • digital signage solution to stream info to monitors/TV’s throughout the school building
  • Computer management and monitoring tool
  • …

For each category we should make a small list of possible options. Then finally have a set of features that have to be met for each option.
Features that must be met:

  • Opensource
  • Central accounting system. Preferably using Samba accounts and possibly kerberos ticket for SSO
  • Multiplatform so the client used is not depending on an OS. Webbased is probably the easiest way.

My personal preference would be NOT to use a java based solution. It would give a huge extra overhead on the server. In educational situations, there is often just 1 server. That server will have a hard time serving all te options already, so cutting on resource hungry services might be the best starting point.

Options for each Branch:
(ELO) Chamilo, Moodle
(SMS) Schooltool, Openadmin for Schools,
(Authoring tool) Xerte online Toolkits
Client monitoring tool: Epoptes (linux only) iTalc (multiplatform)
Besides these specific educational tools, I think the ‘standard’ tools are already available in NS:
LDAP management
Samba/Filesharing
Owncloud
Printserver
DNS
Gateway/UTM
…

Please add what I missed… (probably a lot)

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Did you ever seen this SMILE Project, from Standford?

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Good idea, I will second Moodle though. Can someone that tried both suggest which are strengths and weaknesses confronting the two?

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:wave: Greetings to School tribe in the great tribe Nethserver . .

I 've been a little absent involved with a community project in my city, where we combine technology, planting, harvesting , culture and free knowledge on urban spaces , and where the proposed community intranet is present. :pig2: :herb: :japanese_ogre: :corn: :notes: :video_game:

At year’s end we corresponded to change the leadership of projects for which it was not prudent to migrate the server platform.

This year :date: the change of server platform is a point that - along with the other free software projects that converge on the intranet - we will present scenarios about the inconvenience unexpectedly prove the continuing Zentyal based servers, because the changes from version 3.5

[quote=“robb, post:20, topic:2132”]
Please add what I missed… (probably a lot)
[/quote]Hey Robb , I would like the Millennium Falcon could settle our intranet lol , but … anything

Millennium_Falcon_Cross-Section.JPG1827×956 347 KB

Our toys are:

  1. Jokte! CMS Content Management System derived from Joomla! 2.5 . It is a Latin American initiative for continuous releases and against planned obsolescence . Coming Jokte! it gives young people a fun and easy way to program applications based on PHP from the Joomla Platform 11.4. It is used as an information portal for school , activities, lectures and overall presentation of the intranet resources
  2. Chamilo LMS Our virtual campus. Currently we continue with the version 1.9 .*

[quote=“robb, post:1, topic:2587”]
…, 30th and 31st of Jan there will be fosdem in Brussels. I am talking to a lot of people now to meet there.
One of them will be Yannick Warnier. He is the main dev of Chamilo.
[/quote] We saw an interesting material posted by Yannick about enabling MOOCs with Chamilo . We are interested in this method for the education of the communities surrounding schools
3. Kiwix is an offline reader for web content. It’s software intended to make Wikipedia available without using the internet.
4. Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books
5. Zoneminder an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any CCTV or security cameras attached to a Linux based machine
6. Fdroidserver F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
applications for the Android platform. This repository FOSS Android is for students who have received from the Venezuelan State, a tablet Canaima, can then have various software applications in the school server without :sunglasses: any dependence with GooglePlay
7. Icecast server for streaming multimedia. Radio School. How can I forget? :smirk:

Schooltool Something similar is being developed by staff Fundabit , May be in Odoo
We really like Openstreetmap for the near future . Also we consider Sogo soon.

Hey @Jim Interesting proyect. Thanks for share! :+1:

Soon I will present the structure of the Zentyal server hoping the tribe can give me some help with suggestions for migrating to Nethserver 7. :pray: ( In the name of God Neth ) :pray:

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Today, I was looking to backup my photo galery because I will change of hosting provider.

Making the backup, I see in the app catalog two software in relation with school, two web hosted apps, so I think it’s relatively easy to add to the Nethserver apps:
1- Claroline is an Open Source eLearning and eWorking platform allowing teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web. Translated into 35 languages, Claroline has a large worldwide users and developers community.

2- Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites

What do you think to add these two software to Netserver be “school friendly”:smile_cat:

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Emiliano, nobody is holding back anyone to have multiple choices for a category of applications served by NethServer. I can imagine that both Chamilo AND Moodle can be made available as a module.

Although on another platform, I have been busy installing Chamilo. Base install works like a charm, but I have diffuculty to get the LDAP/Samba authentication to work. (if anyone has ideas about this, please say so… I am currently a bit stuck on this)

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Oh, that’s for sure and I also agree. But I was proposing to focus on one of the two platforms at first try, just to avoid the situation in which the two platform will get incomplete support because we leaved the developer’s attention on where they want.

[quote=“robb, post:25, topic:2132”]I can imagine that both Chamilo AND Moodle can be made available as a module.
[/quote]
Sure thing :smile:
In my opinion, both must be supported as modules by NethServer, though I would much more like to focus on one, verify it is completely supported, then switch to the other one. If we don’t focus on one before the other, we risk to “half support” both, and user experience will lower.

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Choosing an LMS is something that should be done by the team of teachers that needs to work with the LMS, not by the administrator of the server.
I have some experience with both platforms. Moodle has a (much) larger userbase and documentation is better. This will make that possible problems can be solved easier with the help of the Moodle community.
Look and feel of Chamilo is more modern, more intuitive. This makes it as a platform for the teachers and students a lot easier to use.
The bigger part of the Chamilo community is Spanish speaking, but the developers also speak English quite well aswell as French. I feel the Chamilo community is quite inactive. Something I try to change :smile: I am a moderator on the Chamilo forums.

I think a good choice of an LMS is first to make a list of requirements you need that the applications must be able to do. Then compare both LMS’s and see which of the two is best for your situation. (this works like this for any application)
Finally install and testdrive if the application actually works as you expect.

I’d love to see an educational repository where all educational applications are available for NethServer. One-click installs for all of them with LDAP/Samba authentication. (even better with kerberos for SSO)

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On NS ???

I started to document apache authentication, see the LDAP part it might help you:

http://wiki.nethserver.org/doku.php?id=developer:authentication_through_apache#ldap_authentication

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