Escuelas Linux

All the features you love in Escuelas Linux, running from our brand new platform: Debian Bullseye 11.

-Why a Debian-based release?

As you may be aware, Escuelas Linux 6.x 32-bit uses Bodhi Linux 5 as its code base, which in turn operates an Ubuntu 18.04 base. Nevertheless, the EOL (End of Life) for Ubuntu 18.04 will happen in April 2023; that means that the already limited availability of packages on that platform will stop entirely, and no security patches will publish anymore.

Unfortunately, Canonical decided to stop releasing its Ubuntu distribution for the x86, 32-bit platform a while ago. That is why we have released the current versions of Escuelas Linux in a dual-versioning scheme: 7.x for 64-bit, 6.x for 32-bit.

We work with many underserved school communities with no means to afford new computers. Many old computers indeed have processors capable of running the x64 instruction set, but the x64 apps require a fair amount of RAM to run at a decent speed. Try running any 64-bit distribution on a machine with 512 MB of RAM! The upcoming EOL for Ubuntu 18.04 means we must find an alternative to continue the release of Escuelas Linux 32-bit edition.

For us, having a 32-bit distribution is not a weird vintage hobby; it is a way to solve real needs for access to current apps and enrich people's lives using what is available.

-Meet the 32-bit Debian-based edition of Escuelas Linux

Following the initial efforts made by the Bodhi Linux team to produce a Debian-based edition, those efforts culminated to this date in a beta version; this is the starting point of our Escuelas Linux 7.6 32-bit release.

-It is a release for testing purposes

Remember that this release is a proof of concept, a test to verify that the Debian-based edition could function as envisioned.

As a proof of concept, it is not meant to replace the existing Escuelas Linux 6.x installations. This Debian/Bodhi-based concept is released for interested parties to have a first look at this proposal and try it on some old test machines to tell us the feasibility of this release on their hardware and report bugs or issues encountered.

We may not offer updates to this proof of concept, and it has no Installation Manual available. Nevertheless, the installation of the 32-bit ISO would be a non-issue as it installs as easily as any other Linux distro.

Regarding the custom procedures required to install our LowMem edition, we documented them in a PDF, as would not be possible to install LowMem without knowing how to do it.

You should not install the 32-bit nor the LowMem edition on UEFI-based systems, but you can use them as virtual machines with apps such as VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU, etc. Just make sure to configure your VM as a Debian 11 with 40 GB of disk space.

-DOWNLOAD ESCUELAS LINUX!

Escuelas Linux 7.6 32-bit is available for download right now from:

https://es.osdn.net/projects/escuelaslinux/releases/76224

Once there, download the .z01 and .zip files for the language that you'd like to use (English or Spanish). Remember that this 32-bit edition is for relatively old computers with more than 700 MB of RAM and less than 3 GB.

HOW TO GENERATE YOUR ISO IMAGE

-On Windows and Escuelas Linux systems, uncompress with the file manager ONLY the .zip file to generate the ISO image.

-On macOS, you should install The Unarchiver app and uncompress ONLY the .z01 file to generate the ISO image.

-On Linux distributions that cannot handle the uncompression of split zip files in their file manager, open a terminal and type the following commands:

cd {path and folder name where the zip and z01 files are} (enter)

zip -s- escuelaslinux*zip -O todo.zip (enter)

unzip todo.zip (enter)

DOWNLOAD ESCUELAS LINUX LOW-MEM!

If you have computers between 512 and 700 MB of RAM, download Escuelas Linux 7.6 LowMem!

https://es.osdn.net/projects/escuelaslinux/releases/74609

You can also find there a PDF file with the instructions on how to install this LowMem edition.