Linux in The News 4-17-23

Last Updated on April 17, 2023 by KC7NYR

First Look at Edubuntu 23.04: Ubuntu Desktop Packed with Educational Software

Edubuntu

Next week, on April 20th, Edubuntu is making a comeback as an official Ubuntu flavor as part of the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release, so I thought it would be a good idea to give you guys a first look at what’s included in this remake.

Previously known as Ubuntu Education Edition, Edubuntu was initially developed in collaboration with teachers and technologists as an official Ubuntu flavor designed for use in classrooms inside schools, homes, and communities, but the remake is being maintained by the developers of the Ubuntu Studio official derivative.

The last Edubuntu release as we knew it several years ago was released as part of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Now, Edubuntu is making a comeback as part of Ubuntu 23.04 as we can only hope that it’s here to stay for many years to come as the educational flavor of Ubuntu Linux to teach our children.

Edubuntu 23.04 is based on the Ubuntu Desktop flavor, which means that it features the GNOME desktop environment. Personally, I think a lighter desktop environment like LXQt would have been a better suit for Edubuntu to make it work smoothly on any computer, even those from 20 years ago, but the new maintainer probably wanted to stay to Edubuntu’s roots as the initial edition used Unity as default graphical environment.

So the new Edubuntu is basically Ubuntu Desktop with lots of educational apps. Some big names include the GCompris educational suite for children aged 2 to 10, Inkscape SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) editor, Scribus desktop publishing software, TuxPaint raster graphics editor for young children, Stellarium planetarium app, and Calibre ebook reader, organizer, and editor.

Also included in Edubuntu 23.04 are the LibreCAD computer-aided design application for 2D design, Gramps genealogy software, Tux Typing typing tutor, Dia diagram creation program, Chemtool app for drawing chemical structures, Gobby collaborative real-time editor, Drawing simple image editor, ulcc app for teaching children by pictures, Light Speed OpenGL-based program for illustrating the effects of special relativity on the appearance of moving objects, Fritzing CAD software, Laby tool to learn programming by playing with ants and spider webs, and PDF Mod simple PDF editor.

There are also several apps from the KDE educational suite, such as the Kalzium periodic table of elements, KTouch typewriter trainer for learning to touch type, Klavaro touch typing tutor, KGeography geography learning tool, KAlgebra mathematical graph calculator, KBruch program to practice calculating with fractions and percentages, as well as Kig interactive mathematics software.

Also from the KDE educational suite, there’s KLetters educational program to learn the alphabet and pronunciation, KmPlot mathematical function plotter, KWordQuiz flashcard program, KTurtle educational programming environment for learning how to program, Cantor mathematics and statistics, Rocs graph theory IDE for designing and analyzing graph algorithms, Step interactive physical simulator, as well as Marble virtual globe application.

Several games are included as well, namely the KHangMan hangman game, Blinken memory enhancement game, Jigzo jigsaw puzzle game, Ri-li arcade game, GBrainy brain teaser game and trainer, Atomix puzzle game, Kanagram game based on anagrams of words, as well as Tux Math arcade-style video game for learning arithmetic.

Edubuntu 23.04 also comes with a bunch of educational-oriented wallpapers to make things more enjoyable, and it uses the lightweight Geary email client by default instead of Mozilla Thunderbird, which is the default email client in the Ubuntu Desktop flavor.

Parents will find a couple of much-needed administrative tools, including a custom installer, that will help them customize the Edubuntu installation to make it appropriate for their children’s age and to hide certain apps from non-administrator users.

With the release of Ubuntu 23.04, Edubuntu will only be available for 64-bit (amd64) computers. Hopefully and if the community demands it, the new maintainers will also offer an ARM64 (AArch64) version for single-board computers or ARM laptops because they are the future of computing and also a lot cheaper and eco-friendly hardware.

In conclusion, it’s good to see Edubuntu making a comeback as an official Ubuntu flavor, and kudos to the Ubuntu Studio maintainers for bringing it back to the Linux community as we need more educational-focused GNU/Linux distributions for our children.

Source Credit: 9 to 5