[gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andrew Lowe]

Hi all,
     I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was after any 
input the list may have.

     I'm a tutor at a Uni in Australia teaching, amongst others, 1st 
year Engineering students. We teach them C. Last year we had a lab set 
up and as well, they could ssh into a Linux box from home so that they 
could do assignments. Now due to a bureaucratic change ssh access is now 
gone.

     I would guess that there would be under 1% Linux penetration with 
respect to home computers and I've tried, in the past, to help students 
set up a dev environment on Macs - a horrid experience, and lets not 
even mention trying to easily set up Win* with a dev environemt

     I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical 
environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our 
internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home. Does 
anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've looked at 
Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.

     Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

         Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 08.03.2014 01:54, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
> Hi all,
>     I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was after any
> input the list may have.
>
>     I'm a tutor at a Uni in Australia teaching, amongst others, 1st
> year Engineering students. We teach them C. Last year we had a lab set
> up and as well, they could ssh into a Linux box from home so that they
> could do assignments. Now due to a bureaucratic change ssh access is
> now gone.
>
>     I would guess that there would be under 1% Linux penetration with
> respect to home computers and I've tried, in the past, to help
> students set up a dev environment on Macs - a horrid experience, and
> lets not even mention trying to easily set up Win* with a dev environemt
>
>     I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home.
> Does anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've
> looked at Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.
>
>     Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
>
>         Andrew
>
>
systemrescuecd?

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andrew Lowe]

On 8/03/2014 9:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 08.03.2014 01:54, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
>> Hi all, I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was
>> after any input the list may have.
[snip]
...
...
...
[snip]
>>
>> Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>>
> systemrescuecd?
>
	"Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon booting 
has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do you copy 
everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The problem is that 
these are first year students in a common first year, they have not yet 
decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem, Mech etc and don't see 
any benefit in doing programming but have to pass the subject.

	My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight into 
the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor, a 
browser and gcc or clang.

	Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Yuri K. Shatroff]

On 08.03.2014 05:57, Andrew Lowe wrote:
[ ... ]

>>
>      "Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon
> booting has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do you
> copy everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The problem is
> that these are first year students in a common first year, they have not
> yet decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem, Mech etc and don't
> see any benefit in doing programming but have to pass the subject.
>
>      My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight
> into the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor, a
> browser and gcc or clang.
>
>      Andrew
>

Hi Andrew,
I could suggest you create a virtual machine image for e.g. virtualbox, 
with all the stuff you need.
This way you ensure the student has everything you expect him/her to 
have, and it may be more acceptable for layman to install an emulator 
with the image, while being able to use his/her own OS, than to reboot 
each time, and this setup allows to easily save configuration 
options/work results.


-- 
Best wishes,
Yuri K. Shatroff

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Thomas Mueller]

> > systemrescuecd?

>         "Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon booting
> has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do you copy
> everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The problem is
> that these are first year students in a common first year, they have
> not yet decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem, Mech etc and
> don't see any benefit in doing programming but have to pass the
> subject.

>         My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight
> into the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor,
> a browser and gcc or clang.
 
>         Andrew

System Rescue CD fulfils the above requirements.  You can go straight to XFCE, be root with no user/password, by default automatically configures network with DHCP.  Editor is vim (I believe), browser is Midori, and gcc is present; I didn't think of looking for clang.

Tom

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andrew Lowe]

On 03/08/2014 09:24 PM, Thomas Mueller wrote:
>>> systemrescuecd?
> 
>>         "Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon booting
>> has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do you copy
>> everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The problem is
>> that these are first year students in a common first year, they have
>> not yet decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem, Mech etc and
>> don't see any benefit in doing programming but have to pass the
>> subject.
> 
>>         My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight
>> into the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor,
>> a browser and gcc or clang.
>  
>>         Andrew
> 
> System Rescue CD fulfils the above requirements.  You can go straight to XFCE, be root with no user/password, by default automatically configures network with DHCP.  Editor is vim (I believe), browser is Midori, and gcc is present; I didn't think of looking for clang.
> 
> Tom
> 

	Thanks everyone for your comments. In my research, I stumbled across
sax, www.sax.org, and it does all that I need. I can either burn it to a
cd or a stick, it has the apps I need and is quite small, just under 300MB.

	Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Bruce Schultz]

On 9 March 2014 4:05:42 AM AEST, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:

>	Thanks everyone for your comments. In my research, I stumbled across
>sax, www.sax.org, and it does all that I need. I can either burn it to
>a
>cd or a stick, it has the apps I need and is quite small, just under
>300MB.
>
>	Andrew

Do you perhaps mean http://www.slax.org ?

Bruce

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andrew Lowe]

On 03/09/2014 06:27 PM, Bruce Schultz wrote:
> 
> 
> On 9 March 2014 4:05:42 AM AEST, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> 	Thanks everyone for your comments. In my research, I stumbled across
>> sax, www.sax.org, and it does all that I need. I can either burn it to
>> a
>> cd or a stick, it has the apps I need and is quite small, just under
>> 300MB.
>>
>> 	Andrew
> 
> Do you perhaps mean http://www.slax.org ?
> 
> Bruce

	Whoops, yes.....

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am 08.03.2014 02:57, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
> On 8/03/2014 9:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> Am 08.03.2014 01:54, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
>>> Hi all, I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was
>>> after any input the list may have.
> [snip]
> ...
> ...
> ...
> [snip]
>>>
>>> Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>>
>> systemrescuecd?
>>
>     "Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon
> booting has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do
> you copy everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The
> problem is that these are first year students in a common first year,
> they have not yet decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem,
> Mech etc and don't see any benefit in doing programming but have to
> pass the subject.
>
>     My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight
> into the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor,
> a browser and gcc or clang.
>
>     Andrew
>
> .
>

they are students. They should have brains and at least average
intelligence. 'choose option two from the boot menu' should not overcook
their neurons.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andrew Lowe]

On 03/09/2014 04:39 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am 08.03.2014 02:57, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
>> On 8/03/2014 9:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>> Am 08.03.2014 01:54, schrieb Andrew Lowe:
>>>> Hi all, I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was
>>>> after any input the list may have.
>> [snip]
>> ...
>> ...
>> ...
>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> Andrew
>>>>
>>>>
>>> systemrescuecd?
>>>
>>     "Too complicated". What I mean by this is that the user upon
>> booting has options!!! Do you kick into a graphical environment, do
>> you copy everything to memory, do you..... you get the idea. The
>> problem is that these are first year students in a common first year,
>> they have not yet decided upon their stream, could be Civil, Chem,
>> Mech etc and don't see any benefit in doing programming but have to
>> pass the subject.
>>
>>     My "requirement" is that it boots into a GUI, preferably straight
>> into the environment, no username/password, has dhcp, a decent editor,
>> a browser and gcc or clang.
>>
>>     Andrew
>>
>> .
>>
> 
> they are students. They should have brains and at least average
> intelligence. 'choose option two from the boot menu' should not overcook
> their neurons.
> 
Volker,
	Whilst I totally agree with your sentiment, it's obvious you've not
taught any 1st year, Australian, Uni students lately. After 10 minutes
of explaining mv and cp, "You have a source, that's the first parameter,
and a destination, that's the second parameter....", they still manage
to get it wrong, usually because someone updated something on Facebook 3
minutes into the explanation, and they got distracted by it.......

	Yes, I do feel old.....

		Andrew

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[eroen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2236 bytes --]

On Sat, 08 Mar 2014 08:54:38 +0800, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all,
>      I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was after
> any input the list may have.
> 
>      I'm a tutor at a Uni in Australia teaching, amongst others, 1st 
> year Engineering students. We teach them C. Last year we had a lab
> set up and as well, they could ssh into a Linux box from home so that
> they could do assignments. Now due to a bureaucratic change ssh
> access is now gone.
> 
>      I would guess that there would be under 1% Linux penetration
> with respect to home computers and I've tried, in the past, to help
> students set up a dev environment on Macs - a horrid experience, and
> lets not even mention trying to easily set up Win* with a dev
> environemt
> 
>      I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical 
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our 
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home.
> Does anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've
> looked at Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.
> 
>      Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
> 
>          Andrew
> 
> 

You know, if you can be a bit flexible in the 'lightweight' department,
Gentoo has some really splendid full-featured live dvds. See the
release announcement[1] for the last official release (list of
included packages at [2]). More recent pre-release versions are
available at [3]. The livedvd team has an irc channel #gentoo-ten on
Freenode too.

If your requirements are more specific, you could leverage catalyst[4],
Gentoo's script for generating release media. It should be possible to
add or remove packages from the spec files used for the livedvd,
ostensibly available at [5]. You may wish to confer with #gentoo-releng
on Freenode for specific questions on catalyst usage.

1: http://www.gentoo.org/news/20121221-livedvd.xml
2: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/pr/releases/20121221/livedvd-amd64-multilib-20121221.iso.PACKAGES.txt
3: http://releases.gentooligans.com/
4: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/
5: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/releng.git;a=tree;f=releases/

-- 
eroen

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 490 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Samstag, 8. März 2014, 01:54:38 schrieb Andrew Lowe:

>      I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home. Does
> anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've looked at
> Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.
> 
>      Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
> 
>          Andrew


How about Knoppix?
http://www.knoppix.org/

-- 

Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer 
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[William Kenworthy]

On 08/03/14 08:54, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
>     I'm doing some research on the topic of LiveCD's and was after any
> input the list may have.
> 
>     I'm a tutor at a Uni in Australia teaching, amongst others, 1st year
> Engineering students. We teach them C. Last year we had a lab set up and
> as well, they could ssh into a Linux box from home so that they could do
> assignments. Now due to a bureaucratic change ssh access is now gone.
> 
>     I would guess that there would be under 1% Linux penetration with
> respect to home computers and I've tried, in the past, to help students
> set up a dev environment on Macs - a horrid experience, and lets not
> even mention trying to easily set up Win* with a dev environemt
> 
>     I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home. Does
> anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've looked at
> Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.
> 
>     Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
> 
>         Andrew
> 


Hi Andrew ... I stopped doing this awhile back when broadband became
common.  Now I tell them to download and install via linuxmint/ubuntu
etc. and let the distros do the heavy lifting (in virtual box if they
dont have the hardware) - and supply a set of instructions to install
the wanted packages and configuration (which I have sometimes done by a
downloadable script which abbreviates the instructions.)

I have used gentoo in labs for some low level tasks/demos and point
students to it if they really want to learn about Linux but for most
undergrad courses its too non-core to actually get them to build a
system.  Catalyst can build a customised gentoo system but a) its a lot
of work for a small gain and b) you will find yourself doing a lot of
support better done by the distros (help, mailing lists, updates, fixes,
...)

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 03/07/2014 07:54 PM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> 
>      I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical 
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our 
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home. Does 
> anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've looked at 
> Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.

I haven't tried one out in a while, but the Sabayon liveCD/DVD is
Gentoo-based with a DE of your choice and all of the development tools
that come with (i.e. are required for) a Gentoo install.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1206 bytes --]

On Sat, 08 Mar 2014 08:54:38 +0800, Andrew Lowe wrote:

>      I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical 
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our 
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home.
> Does anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've
> looked at Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.

Ubuntu has a tool called Ubuntu Construction Kit for creating custom live
CDs. I've used it several times for creating custom Ubuntu and Mint DVDs
for Linux Format. It works by unpacking an existing live CD insto a
chroot, from where you can add and remove whatever you want, as well as
tweaking boot options. Then it builds an ISO of the environment you
created.

This is probably much better for you than trying to find an off the peg
solution, even if all you end up with is Lubuntu+GCC.

You could do the same thing with system rescue CD but UCK is probably
nearer your needs.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Quantum leap: (adj.) literally, to move by the smallest amount
theoretically possible. In advertising, to move by the largest leap
imaginable (in the mind of the advertiser). There is no contradiction.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] LiveCDs for Uni students

[James]

Andrew Lowe <agl <at> wht.com.au> writes:


>      I'm looking for a lightweight LiveCD that includes a graphical 
> environment and gcc/clang so that we can make it available on our 
> internal network for the students to download/burn and use at home. Does 
> anyone have any ideas/experience in something like this? I've looked at 
> Lubuntu but it lacks gcc.

adding packages to *ubuntu* after installation, is trivial and part
of normal system maintenance. As others have stated, you can use
catalyst to create your own gentoo-derivative OS, thus controlling
what software the students are using (hopefully).  On most every
install of linux, it's fairly simple and routine to downloand and
install new software; so assess your goals of keeping them each
rigidly on the same install base of whatevery distro you select to use.



There are 2 differnt gentoo derivatives I'd suggest:

Pentoo, is most excellent for the security minded. (weak on community
support).....
http://www.pentoo.ch/isos/


Arch linux is fantastic for noobs..... who want a Gentoo_ish distro!
https://www.archlinux.org/download/


ymmv,
hth,
James