~kjcole/edubuntu.cookbook-delete/wip : revision 33

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<title>Software components</title>

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<h1>Software components</h1>

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<p>

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An Edubuntu lab includes both free educational software as well as office tools

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and web browsers. At its core, however, it consists of the server software

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that runs the classroom server.

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<h2>Classroom server</h2>

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<p>

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An Edubuntu classroom server is built on moo cow...

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</p>

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<p>

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The moo cow server defaults to an IP gateway and firewall when two Ethernet

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cards are present. This will only be the case in Edubuntu labs that are

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permanently online, which will usually not be the case.

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</p>

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<h2>Applications</h2>

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<h3>OpenOffice.org</h3>

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<p>

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OpenOffice is a full office suite, intended to measure up to and surpass

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Microsoft Office. This is what its original author, Marco Börries,

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intended when he started StarDivision to create the software that would

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eventually become OpenOffice in 1984, when he was just sixteen. He called it

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StarOffice. By the time Sun Microsystems bought Marco's company in 1999, over

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25 million copies of Star Office had been sold to customers who needed platform

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independence and an alternative to Microsoft.

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<p>

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In July 2000, Sun released most of the Star Office source code (about 7.5

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million lines of C++) to the stewardship of the open source community, under

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the Free Software Foundation's LGPL license. The community project has as its

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goal: <q>To create, as a community, the leading international office suite

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that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality

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and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.</q>

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The open APIs and file formats are turning OpenOffice into a platform in its

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own right, supporting projects such as OpenGroupware, which aims to provide an

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open alternative to Microsoft's Exchange and SharePoint products.

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<p>

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This is in direct contrast to Microsoft's approach, who have always used the

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fact that only their own software could easily use their document formats to

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keep customers locked in, in effect reserving the Office platform to Windows

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applications.

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</p>

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<p>

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OpenOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation

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builder, and diagramming tool. It is now able to decode most variants of

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Microsoft Office document formats, but although its StarBasic macro language is

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syntactically identical to Visual Basic, OpenOffice cannot execute Visual Basic

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scripts. Although these are preserved upon conversion, the scripts need to be

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adjusted to use the OpenOffice API before they can be used.

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</p>

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<p>

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OpenOffice can be used to teach all the basic computer skills required to enter

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the job market, and as the design paradigms of the software is very close to

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Microsoft Office, the skills learnt are readily transferable.

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</p>

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<h3>Firefox</h3>

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<p>

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In 1998, Netscape Communications released the source code of its Navigator web

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browser software as open source, and the Mozilla project was born. Netscape

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released their software as open source in order to compete with Microsoft, who

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were bundling Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows sold. Netscape

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hoped that the cooperation of thousands of developers around the world would

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create a better product than Internet Explorer. It did, but it took years, and

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Netscape fell by the wayside. The code lived on, though.

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</p>

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<p>

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In 2004, six years after the start of the project, the non-profit Mozilla

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Foundation that was created to coordinate the project finally released version

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1.0 of the Firefox browser. Earlier versions of the software had been in use

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for years, but at last it was deemed ready for a high-profile release to the

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general public.

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<p>

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The full Mozilla suite includes far more than the web browser. It includes

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Thunderbird, a mail client with address books and calendaring support, and

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Composer, a web page editor. For developers, it includes Venkman, a Javascript

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debugger, and the DOM Inspector, a wonderful tool for interactively exploring

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the enormous, intricate internal structure of complicated web pages.

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</p>

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<p>

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The code base has been painstakingly restructured to get as much use out of it

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as possible. So, for instance, all the Mozilla applications use the same

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rendering engine, called Gecko, to layout and display HTML pages on screen.

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This is critical, since it is extremely hard work to implement the standards

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that govern web page structure and display correctly. Mozilla has the best

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support for the HTML and CSS standards of any browser out there. In the past,

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Microsoft has used Internet Explorer's idiosyncratic and incomplete

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implementation of web standards to coerce people to craft their web pages to

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look good in Internet Explorer at the expense of other browsers. For the web to

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become a dependable platform, however, developers have to be able to build on

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solid public standards that don't leave them at the mercy of any company's

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prosperity.

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</p>

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<p>

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As with OpenOffice, the Mozilla project is becoming a platform for extensions

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from the community.

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</p>

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<h3>Security</h3>

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<p>

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As the internet has become more popular, viruses, spam, spyware and trojans

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have grown to be an enormous problem. These are all caused by programs that

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are received and executed on computers without the knowledge or consent of

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their users. How can this happen?

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</p>

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<p>

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In general, there are two ways for this to happen:

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</p>

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<ul>

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<li>You may have given implicit permission without intending to do so;</li>

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<li>The unwanted program may be exploiting errors or bugs in some program in

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order to insinuate themselves into it, so that it can execute with the

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permissions of the original program.</li>

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</ul>

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<p>

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Firefox and Thunderbird try to protect you as far as possible by setting up

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reasonable defaults. Nothing in an email message is executed unless you

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explicitly run it yourself. And execution of Javascript in web pages can be

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switched off at any point. Firefox also allows you to grant or revoke specific

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permissions (e.g. opening popups, hiding the status bar, or changing images) to

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Javascript.

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The Mozilla suite also affords you a measure of protection from the second

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case. While Internet Explorer has access to practically the entire running

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system of a Windows PC via a powerful integration technology called ActiveX,

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Firefox and Thunderbird are far more restricted. It also helps to be running on

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Linux, where the user of the web browser will generally not be able to damage

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the operating system, and the system administration account is never used to

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run user applications.

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