Re: OS for schools (was Re: Practicality of GNU project and libre movement)

[LM]

Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote:
> If the goal is to get a user-friendly system distribution for use by
> non-advanced users, then there's no need start anew, since Trisquel
> ([1]) is still active and accepting contributors. It even has a Sugar
> environment/flavor.

A primary goal is to be able to build the entire operating system from
source code (similar to Linux from Scratch).  This gives the students
a chance to find out more about how an operating system works, what it
takes to put one together and how to customize their systems however
they choose.  The second goal is to be able to supply lightweight
educational programs, games, utilities, hobby software, accessibility
tools, ebook readers and CC/public domain reading materials and
recordings.  That way, if a user has an older machine and/or poor or
no Internet access, etc., he/she can still perform educational
activities with the computer.

I'm finding less and less people who actually know how to program and
more and more people just using what someone else did.  Just had a
conversation with someone today about measuring if a program would
work well on an older computer and the other person's definition had
nothing to do with the actual source code itself or how complex it was
or what the dependencies were.  Being able to have the source code so
that you can modify it is one of the goals of the FSF.  The aim is to
encourage hobbyists/students to learn how to understand, modify,
customize, improve and share code rather than just using whatever
software they're given.