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Trisquel Edu

Trisquel Edu is a fully free operating system designed for all kinds of educational centers, from primary schools to universities. It is built on the LTS branch of Trisquel, and includes a set of educational packages and classroom management tools.

Educational packages

The default installation comes with the GNOME desktop and very few user applications, making it easier for the teacher to have the exact set of programs needed for the students. The programs can be easily installed using a graphical application that includes the following educational bundles:

  • Image and design
    • Gimp - Bitmap Image editor
    • Inkscape - Vector image editor
    • Scribus - Publishing tool
    • Dia - All purpose diagram tool
    • Xsane - Scan utility
  • Text and HTML
    • Emacs - Advanced editor
    • Screem - HTML editor
    • Scribus - Publishing tool
    • Gobby - Collaborative text editing
    • Lyx - TeX document editor

Management tools

The main Management tools included in Trisquel Edu are iTALC and LTSP.

iTALC - Intelligent Teaching And Learning with Computers

iTALC is a classroom control tool that allows the teacher to remotely view the display of every student in a handy grid. The teacher can interact with the displays (which are updated in real time) in many ways, like remote control, locking, remote program execution, etc. It can also be used to display the selected user screen with a projector, or broadcast it to the other students' monitors.

LTSP - Linux Terminal Server Project

LTSP is a thin-client environment, composed by a computer (or a set of computers) serving a network-bootable GNU/Linux image, and a set of thin clients that will load the image from the server using pxe. The image consists in a minimal client capable of starting a remote X11 user session against the LTSP server. The thin clients are diskless, as all the data is stored and managed in the server. With all of this, you can get the following advantages:

Easier management: Only one computer needs to be managed, the server. It contains all the users, programs and data files, and the diskless clients have no configuration and thus no maintenance is required. The students can start the session from whichever client. If you install a new program in the server, it is instantly available from every client, and the users do not ever need to restart the session.

Scalability: If you need to connect a large number of clients, a set of servers can be set to work together. Depending of the kind of applications to run, a standard server can be used from 30 to 50 simultaneous clients.

Reusing old computers: You can use any computer from the last 10 years or so as a client, as far as its hardware is supported with GNU/Linux and it is capable of booting with pxe.

Low power consumption: If instead of old computers you choose dedicated hardware, you can get fanless and diskless thin clients that are cold, silent, cheap, easy to maintain, and run with less of 10 watts of power, 1/10 part of a standard CPU unit.