Title: Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
Tags: english, debian edu
Date: 2013-07-03 14:00

<p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
today.  This is the release announcement:</p>

<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2013-07-03</strong></p>

<p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>

<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>

<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
desktop contains
<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
and Xfce desktop environment.</p>

<p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
Squeeze release.</p>

<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
<ul>
  <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
  <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
    submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
    brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
  <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
    they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
    menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
  <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
    multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
    X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
    too.</li>
  <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
    are too few to make the package useful.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
<ul>
  <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
  <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
  <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
    up for some language options.</li>
  <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
  <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
  <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
    d-i is doing it.</li>
  <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
    debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
  <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
    script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
    Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
  <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
    installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
  <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
  <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
    and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
  <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
    work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
<ul>
  <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
    available yet (698840).</li>
  <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>

<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
  <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
</ul>

<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>

<p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
  <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
</ul>

<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>

<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>

<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>