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UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 64-bit and 32-bit Xfce Enduser Edition - Release Notes
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ABOUT
UberStudent is a Linux distribution for learning, doing, and
teaching academic success at the higher education and advanced
secondary levels. It is designed for Linux beginners while
being equally satifying to advanced users.
More than just an operating system, UberStudent aims to be a
complete, ready-to-go, and "out-of-the-box" Learning Platform
for education that facilitates not only immediate user-friendly
productivity but long-term cross-platform computer fluency
among its users.
Researchers, other knowledge workers, lifelong learners, and
anyone who just wants a highly-polished computing platform will
equally benefit from UberStudent.
Version 4.0 of UberStudent is a Long Term Stable (LTS) release.
It will be supported for nearly five years, until April 2019,
by both UberStudent and Ubuntu developers.
Visit http://uberstudent.com for more information.
CONTACT
Stephen Ewen, M.Ed.
ewens@uberstudent.com
stephen.ewen@gmail.com
RELEASE DATE
* 21 July 2014 - UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 64-bit Xfce Enduser Edition
ISO: uberstudent-4.0-xfce-amd64.iso
HASH: a04aa3b93112cf5fe4a6953b4331a08f
* 21 July 2014 - UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 32-bit Xfce Enduser Edition
ISO: uberstudent-4.0-xfce-i386.iso
HASH: d6f860d2101803e71ca28eb996d3f3d1
The below OVA files are intended for easy testing and initial
usage of UberStudent. The configured harddrive is 12.5
gigabytes and the memory is 2 gigabytes. The come with Guest
Additions installed.
* 21 July 2014 - UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 64-bit Xfce Enduser Edition
Virtual Box Appliance
OVA: uberstudent-4.0-xfce-amd64.ova
HASH: 7c8a4708097a1ca5cc0c23de42528afa
PASSWORD: uberstudent
* 21 July 2014 - UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 32-bit Xfce Enduser Edition
Virtual Box Appliance
OVA: uberstudent-4.0-xfce-i386.ova
HASH: 82f3e1fc4ebe2cae0436d2ad6a55b3f4
PASSWORD: uberstudent
LICENSE
(c) Copyright 2014 by UberStudent EdTech (uberstudent.com) and
Stephen Ewen (stephen.ewen@gmail.com)
* All licenses under which UberStudent is released are
available to read within the distribution.
* Most of UberStudent is released under the GNU Free
Documentation License, which can be read at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
* Some parts are under a variety of other open content
licenses.
* A few components are proprietary and under the licenses of
their respective authors. View the documentation of the
respective software for details.
* The UberStudent name and logo is trademarked and may not be
used without express written permission, except as described
in the UberStudent Edtech UberStudent Trademark Policy,
which may be downloaded along with official artwork from
http://uberstudent.com/uberstudent-logo-pack.zip
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
* 64-bit or 32-bit PC or Intel-based Mac with at least 1 GB of
memory. 2 GB of memory or more is strongly recommended.
* DVD drive for installation or a USB port with a 3 GB drive
into which the UberStudent ISO has been placed with a
program such as UNetBootIn, available at
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net.
* The Live System may be run entirely from a DVD or USB drive.
Please don't expect it to work with any speed from a DVD drive.
* The UberStudent ISOs may be run in a virtual machine, such
as VirtualBox, available at https://www.virtualbox.org. When
configuring the UberStudent ISO in VirtualBox, select Ubuntu as
the base machine. For your convenience, VirtualBox appliances
(OVA files) of UberStudent with guest additions pre-installed
are available for download. Simply import the appliance (OVA
file) by following the directions at http://tiny.cc/r1zfyw.
See the accompanying README at the download page for the OVA
files for additional important information.
SYSTEM
* Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base
* Linux Kernel version 3.13.0-24-generic
* Xfce 4.10
* Dedicated UberStudent repository (http://uberstudent.net)
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
* For instructions on installing UberStudent to your computer's
harddrive, see,
http://uberstudent.com/wiki/index.php?title=Beginners'_Guide
* For instructions on importing the VirtualBox appliance version
of UberStudent in to VirtualBox, see http://tinyurl.com/ngka7r3
DOCUMENTATION and HELP
* http://uberstudent.com/wiki/
COMMUNITY
* Forums - http://uberstudent.com/phpBB
* Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/uberstudent
* Twitter - https://twitter.com/UberStudent_OS
DONATE
* http://uberstudent.com/donate
BUG REPORTS
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/uberstudent
DEVELOPMENT
* https://github.com/uberstudent
KNOWN ISSUES
* UberStudent-specific:
* Laptop users may initially notice a few redundant
appindicators in the top-right Xfce panel. Just run the
Update Manager, also located in the top-right Xfce panel.
Answer "yes" during the user-interactive update and the
fix will be applied.
* A race condition between apt and synaptic may occassionaly
result in an error stating that "socrates" is not the
default distribution. Just run the Update Manager, located
in the top-right Xfce panel, and the fix will be applied.
* After boot, there may be a small lag in the Applications
menu. It may take a few seconds to display after you first
click it. It will display without lag until you reboot
again. This condition has been largely fixed with post-
release updates but may still exist for some users,
especially if you run UberStudent on a low-specification
machine.
* In some GTK3 applications, the progress bar using the
default "A+" theme series is a bit disproportionate.
Although it is a trivial matter, it will be fixed in the
near future via an update to the default UberStudent theme
set.
* All of the following are upstream Xfce issues:
* Template sub-menus do not show when right-clicking on
the desktop. Open the Thunar file manager and right-
click to view them all.
* Template icons display at 16 rather than 22 pixels.
* In the Applications menu, the application category will
not display if all applications are categorized in to
sub-menus. At least one application must be in the
application category that is not in a sub-category. The
UberStudent Appinstaller works around the issue, unless
you try to remove it; if you do and don't replace it with
something else, the Application category will fail to
display.
* Upstream xdg-open:
* The first time you run a web-app opened by xdg-open, it will
ask you each time for your default browser selection. Once
you've run each web-app once, it will stop asking and your
default selection will keep.
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CHANGES FROM VERSION 3.0
* Menus have been translated in to:
* French
* German
* Italian
* Portuguese
* Spanish
If you set any of those as the default system language,
they will display instead of English. If you'd like to
help expand the available languages, please do visit
the UberStudent forums and let us know.
* UberStudent AppInstaller
The UberStudent AppInstaller is a small program that
displays a list of hand-selected, additional applications
that you can install in to sub-categories of the
UberStudent Applications Menu. They will be perfectly
placed once installed. An instance of the AppInstaller
appears in most of the menu categories and one sub-category
(Education > Subjects).
* UberStudent Repositories
Version 3.0 introduced the UberStudent Repositories.
In version 4.0 they are better than ever. You'll find
additional packages not available in the Ubuntu
repositories. As with version 3.0, no PPAs are used
in UberStudent. In addition to the upstream Ubuntu
repositories and the UberStudent repository, the official
Dropbox, Google, Oracle, and Videolan repositories are part
of the default repository configurations for version 4.0.
* UberStudent System Fixer
A goal in developing 3.0 was to fix common Linux
desktop annoyances so as to improve the user experience
and reduce support requests, while facilitating
intellectual curiosity about open source computing.
The UberStudent System Fixer in 4.0 continues this.
At boot-up, it quietly looks for issues that are a
common reason for support requests and silently fixes
them. For example, if you have apt issues, try simply
rebooting. Other improvements over 3.0 include
increased vigillence over "mime creep," the tendency
of some packages to clutter menus according to what
they possibly can be used for rather than what they
probably are used for.
* Applications menus
4.0's menus are even more tidy and well-organized. The
goal in the UberStudent Applications menus is to visually
map workflows to how the brain itself maps objects, which
is by overviews, categories, and sub-categories.
* Default Application Changes
Version 3.0 | Version 4.0
-----------------------------------
KeepNote > Cherrytree
Freemind > Freeplane
Xchat > Hexchat
EasyTag > Puddletag
Kazaam > SimpleScreenRecorder
A few minor ones
* Added Applications
A few utilities and some minor programs were added. For
two examples, Master PDF Editor is the most advanced free
for non-commercial use PDF editor available for Linux,
while Showtime is a simple program that you can use to
inhibit your screensaver while watching a full-screen
movie. You can explore around for the other additions. ;-)
* New-user helps
Most of the below are not specific to 4.0 but were part of 3.0; but,
they bear repeating:
Not everyone is a geek yet. :-) Accordingly, UberStudent
contains thoughtful and very helpful assistance for new
users in strategic places and ways. Some examples include:
* Whenever a program lacks good documentation by default,
it is added in to a Documentation submenu of the program's
menu entry. If I missed any program, please file a bug
report and suggestions for documentation resources.
* The UberStudent Documentation Wiki is growing. You can
help! A link in the menu points to it.
* When you use LibreOffice Writer the second time you boot
up, a dialog will display asking if you wish to go to a
brief tutorial about interoperability between word
processor file formats. Keep in mind that Windows
literally hides file extensions by default, thus
facilitating user ignorance. New LibreOffice users need
to know about saving and sending word processor files
appropriately.
* Imagination files are not portable across computers. Many
a user, myself included, has had to find this out the
hard way, with miserable consequences and a sleepless
night right before a presentation. A script runs the
first time the user runs Imagination, informing them of
the non-portability issue and asking if they wish to be
taken to a brief tutorial about the matter and how to
work around it. This is essential knowledge for new users
of Imagination.
* The version of Impressive in UberStudent is no longer a
command line-only application. It instead opens a small
GUI from which you navigate to a PDF presentation file
and display it with the default Impressive settings. This
makes the program accessible to new users and easier to
use for all.
* Update dialogs, such as in GDebi and Synaptic, have been
changed to show what is going on by default, rather than
hiding it--simple Glade tweaks. A few yet remain to do.
The point here is to facilitate intellectual curiosity
about Linux. People have to first see what is going on
before they can wonder about it.
* Cherrytree Example replaces KeepNote Example in prior
versions. It is an example usage of using Cherrytree during
an entire semester of academic work that students can use
to get a good idea of how they might use Cherrytree to
organize their own semester.
* Appindicator runs when select autostared programs start
to inform users of keyboard shortcuts to call them. There's
no reason people should have to dig around for that info.
* Much more!
* UberStudent Update Manager amd Software Sources
Version 3.0 dispensed with Ubuntu's update manager and
this remains the case with version 4.0. The update manager
and software sources configuration tools in UberStudent
have been forked from Linux Mint's Update Manager and
Software Sources tools and undergone some redesigning.
The Update Manager takes a very conservative approach to
updating your system so as to favor a stable, smooth-
running system that is less subject to negative upstream
issues or to just doing updates for the sake of doing them.
The Software Sources tool is designed to make it very
difficult for you to break your system. One click restores
the default settings.
Synaptic is still installed by default but configured to
discourage doing updates from it in favor of the Update
Manager. Traditional apt methods on the command line for
updating and installing packages of course remain in
their upstream state.
The Ubuntu Software Center is also installed and has been
configured to pick up the UberStudent repository.
The lsb-release is UberStudent. You won't see Ubuntu
in grub, ubiquity, etc.
The above features are unchanged from 3.0.
* UberStudent Welcome Screen
The Welcome Screen is slightly redesigned.
* UberOxygen Icons
The UberOxygen icon theme is a fork of the KDE Oxygen icon
theme that has been comprehensively ported to other Linux
desktop environments, with the exception of GNOME 3. The
release of the icon theme in UberStudent 4.0 brings dozens
of newly drawn icons by UberStudent that mesh seamlessly
with the UberOxygen style and default UberStudent theme.
* Zotero with LyX and/or LibreOffice and Chromium and/or
Firefox
All of the needed Firefox and Chromium extensions are in
the UberStudent repositories, as is both Zotero
Standalone and Zotero Firefox. It was something of a
feat, but you'll find that everything is configured "to
just work" and share the same Zotero database. Only in
LyX must the user set a path in the program's
preferences, but there is documentation in a sub-menu
near LyX showing how. This was a feature also included in
UberStudent 3.0.
* Default compositing by compton
4.0 disables Xfce native compositing by default in favor
of a much nicer set from compton. If you try to turn on
Xfce's native compositing, a warning box informs you of
a few steps to take to turn off the compton compositing,
which is done from a simple entry in the System > Look
and Feel > Compositing menu. In that menu, there are
four levels of compositing you can toggle between: Least,
Default, Most, and None. Using any of these menu entries
first smartly checks if Xfce's native or any other known
compositer is running and turns it off, to prevent more
than one compositer running at a time. This feature is
unchanged from UberStudent 3.0.
* Conky on your desktop
The UberStudent logo on your desktop is not part of a
desktop background. It's a conky script that runs at
startup. It discretely adds some system information, as
well. If you change the background image, the logo
remains. If you don't want the logo displayed, just turn
it off in the startup programs. This feature is
unchanged from UberStudent 3.0.
* Thunar Custom Actions
A very useful set of Thunar custom actions is installed
by default. You can "Quick View" or "Quick Play" every
type of file you're likely ever to encounter. Gloobus
Preview handles the mime types it can handle, while
Quick Play of odd media files are done in a command
prompt. You can move and copy files to specific
locations, and more. The overall goal has been to avoid
clutter and overload but add some very useful
functionality from the go. A set of Thunar custom
actions are installed for the root account but the
package may be removed, while another optional package
contains documentation for configuring your own custom
actions and making UberStudent use them on startup.
This feature is unchanged from UberStudent 3.0, although
numerous of the custom actions have been improved for
version 4.0.
* DocFetcher
In 4.0, the default docfetcher memory allocation has been
raised so it can index a larger number of files.
* Guake Terminal
The version of Guake terminal in UberStudent displays at
an 80% default width, rather than its upstream 100%, and
you can configure the percentage to your liking using
gonf-editor. Guake Developers: This should be the
default behavior of Guake, don't you think? The patches
are in the UberStudent repository for the taking. :-)
This feature is unchanged from UberStudent 3.0.
Download Latest Version
uberstudent-4.3-xfce-amd64.iso (2.9 GB)
