2 School OS

School OS is specially designed for school chidren by Sun Microsystems, India in collaboration with NCERT and

IIT Delhi and is determined to spearhead the rise of open-source in the primary & secondary education system

of India. OpenSolaris School OS is a unix based operating system. As we’ll see in this guide it is pretty easy to

use even for school students and It has a lot of cool featur es. OpenSolaris has all the tools you need for day to

day productivity, development and even simple tasks like browsing the web, listening to music and watching

movies. There is nothing that your Windows box can do and OpenSolaris cannot.

The latest version, released in June 2009, is the most user‑friendly to date. It has a simple graphical desktop

environment and familiar software out of the box, and is available as a live CD that you can just boot from to

try out the OS without affecting your computer’s hard drive at all. End‑user‑oriented improvements in this

version include driver support, simple fle restoration, and software installation using the IPS package manager.

Underneath the hood, there are features that no other mainstream desktop environment can match, such as

the real‑time debugging utility DTrace and the awesome ZFS fle system which can support fles larger than we

have numbers or units to describe! This guide is aimed at demystifying OpenSolaris and illustrating how it can

be useful to you. If you are a software or Web developer, you should undoubtedly give it a look. If you are

interested in high performance computing or cluster computing with virtualized networking, OpenSolaris

defnitely has some tricks you should check out. And even if you’re just a casual home user, this operating

system offers you yet another choice.

An Introduction to School OS

3 School OS

An OpenSolaris School OS Walkthrough

This walkthrough will take you through the journey of installing SchoolOS on your system, right down to

exploring all its features in the end. To install School OS on your system, follow these simple steps:

1. Insert the OpenSolaris School OS DVD into your PC

2. Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from a DVD and not your hard disk.

3. You will see a screen like this:

Select the first

option –

“School OS X86”

using arrow

keys and press

Enter The screen

waits 30

seconds before

going with the

default option

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It takes a while to load a Live DVD. Be patient.

I’m loading up..

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After a while you will see this screen.

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The DVD is asking you for your keyboard layout. Just press enter. It will choose US-English by default.

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The DVD is now asking you the language you can read. Leave it blank and press enter to select English.

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After a while you might see a blank window with an arrow in the middle. Don’t worry, it’s just loading..

I’m almost done

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Finally you see the School OS Desktop. Let’s learn the meaning of all the icons and widgets on the screen

Clock

Input Method

Network Interfaces Running Applications Shortcut Icons

“Start” Menus

Browsing

Email

Install new software

Install

School OS

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Run the “Device Driver Utility” once to check if your system’s essential hardware is supported.

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I

Now let’s run the installer. Click on the “Install OpenSolaris” icon on the desktop.

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Disk: This is where you setup your disk partitioning scheme.

You will see your existing partitions here. Select the unused partition, set

it to ‘Solaris’ and specify the size. Recommended size: 9 GB.

Note: If you already had Windows or Linux installed on your computer,

you will have to use a partitioning tool to resize an old partition to make

space for Solaris.

You can definitely install Solaris alongside Windows in a multi-boot

fashion. Just create an empty partition using GPartED available at:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net

For detailed step by step instructions on multi-boot partitioning visit

http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/entry/triple_boot_part_1_planning

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Time Zone: Set your time zone

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Locale: Choose your language

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User Settings

Root is the super-privileged

user on a unix system. Set

this password carefully.

Choose a unique name for

the computer, so that it

can be uniquely identified

on the school network.

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Review your settings before installing… take a look again at what you have chosen

Okay.

Let’s install!

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School OS is now installing on your computer

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Installation has Finished

Click reboot. Remove

the DVD from the

drive, and boot into

School OS

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Let’s boot into School OS

This is called the “GRUB” boot screen.

GRUB stands for Grand Unified Boot

Loader. If you have Windows or Linux

installed, they will also appear in this

list so that you get to decide which OS

you are going to run.

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School OS is booting..

I’m the fastest OS in

the world. Just wait

till I boot…

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The School OS Login Screen

Enter your (earlier

chosen) username

and password to log

in.

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The School OS Desktop

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Who is Jack?

Jack is the default user used by the School OS live

CD. Think of Jack as a friend who is helping you

check out OpenSolaris School OS.

Note: That also means that, wherever asked, the

username is “jack” and the password is

“opensolaris”.

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How do I Shutdown School OS?

Just click here!

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How do I play music on my School OS?

Step 1: First you

need to install

MP3 codecs. Run

Codeina!

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Click ‘Register’, if this is

your first time or ogin with

your existing ID if you’ve

already registered.

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Fill up the form

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Install the Free

Fluendo MP3

Decoder

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Done!

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Now you can listen to music in Totem or RhythmBox

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How Do I Add More Software to School OS?

Click on the ‘Add

More Software’ icon

on your School OS

desktop.

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The first time your start

Package Manager, it will load

the software list from the

internet

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Step 1: Choose category

Step 2: Select Packages you

want to install

Step 3: Click the

“install/Update” button to

install the selected

packages.

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This step usually takes time so be patient.

It is downloading the packages you

selected and installing them.

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How do I start/configure MySQL/Apache/PHP (AMP)?

Click the ‘Web Stack Initialize’

menu item. (one time only)

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Enter your root password

here. You had set it during

installation of School OS.

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Use these menu items to

start, stop and manage the

AMP stack (Apache, MySQL

and PHP)

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What Kind of Tools Are Available in School OS

OpenOffice – a

powerful open-

source productivity

suite

Games to enjoy in

free time

Image Editor

(GIMP), organizer,

viewer, etc.

Word-class open-

source development

tools

Instant messaging,

browsing, emailing,

etc.

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What’s inside “Places”?

“Home” contains all data related to

your user – settings, documents, and

even your desktop.

These are common folders you would

store your media in.

“Computer” is the counter-part to “My

Computer” in Windows.

This is like the “Network

Neighbourhood” – here you can

browse through other computers on

your network To connect to an FTP,

WebDAV, SSH or Windows

share

Search your data

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How to enable “Special Effects”?

Go to System >

Preferences >

Appearance

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Go to the Visual

Effects tab and

click “Extra”

Click “Custom” instead and

go to preferences to

customize the effects

further if you want

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This is the special effects

manager. You can chose from the

variety of effects and fine tune

them as you want.

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How do I use the “Time Slider”?

First we’ll enable

Time Slider

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Feel free to set which parts

of the filesystem you want

to use Time Slider with and

even the capacity quota

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Let’s see the

power of time

slider. Create

an empty file

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Enter some text and save it

as ‘my file’

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Now click on the ‘Restore’

option in the folder menu

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Click the little camera

icon to take a snapshot

of the folder in time

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Give a suitable name if you

want or just leave it to

default

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Now edit the file and change its contents. Then

shift the Time Slider to the left – to the time of

your previously created snapshot. Your file’s

original contents will be restored. You can finally

go back and forth in time!

52 School OS

How do I Change My Screen’s Resolution?

Really Simple! Just

right click anywhere on

the desktop and click

“Screen resolution…”

Then just choose your

preferred resolution

from the dropdown

menu and click “Apply”

53 School OS

Further Reading

This guide was just meant to familiarize you with the OpenSolaris environment. To learn more please feel free to use the

following resources:

Getting Started with OpenSolaris by Roman Strobl http://www.sourcetalk.de/2008/downloads/presentations/opensolaris/GettingStartedWithOpenSolaris.pdf

Getting Started OpenSolaris 2009.06 http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/dev/getstart/

OpenSolaris 2009.06 Booklet

http://kumarabhishek.com/OpenSolaris200906Booklet.pdf

Official OpenSolaris Documentation Consolidation Page http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/docs/

The OpenSolaris Observatory

http://blogs.sun.com/observatory

OpenSolaris Community

http://opensolaris.org

OpenSolaris Website

http://opensolaris.com

Open Source University Meetup

http://osum.sun.com

This is a place where you can socialize with other school children like you to discuss open source and get your problems solved.