New OpenSUSE education apps available

While there has been some controversy over whether LTSP support would be added to SUSE's so-called EduCD, to be distributed with their fourth quarter version 10.3 release, a wide variety of software slated for inclusion in their education-centered set of add-ons is now available for download and testing. These applications have all been collected in a single repository (http://www.opensuse-education.org/download/Beta1/).

For those of you currently using OpenSUSE 10.2 or 10.3 Alpha, simply add this repository to your list of installation sources. Go to the YaST Control Center, select "Installation Source," click the Add button, select "Specify URL," and paste the link above into the resulting dialog box. Once YaST finishes synchronizing, an entire suite of educational applications will be available through the software package management module. Applications include Moodle, Centre, Class, and Koha.

I ran into a few installation snags that looked to be related to missing dependencies for my 64-bit version of OpenSUSE. However, the ready availability of these applications now makes for easy testing and some easily accessible new tools for educators using OpenSUSE/SLED. It remains to be seen if LTSP support will make its way into more stable releases, creating a real competitor to Edubuntu. However, the server-centric applications alone just might make Version 10.3 (and its accompanying EduCD) a powerful option for those of us looking at open source solutions.