XS Features
- Note: The functionality offered by the XS software is maturing quickly and interacts deeply with the XO laptop software. Some of the features listed below work in a limited fashion and may only work completely with the latest XO software.
As of release XS-0.5, the headline features of the School Server software are:
Contents
Networking
- Provides networking infrastructure for the school.
- If an Internet connection is available, acts as an Internet gateway, providing access to the Internet to the XO laptops.
- Includes an HTTP proxy, saving significant bandwidth and providing faster access.
- Can route the Internet traffic through a content filter controlled by the Ministry of Education or other relevant agent.
- Supports various wireless network setups, including standard Access Points.
Services to the XO laptops
- Provides a presence and collaboration service, allowing the mesh-based collaboration scale across more XO laptops.
- Provides a backup and restore service. (Note: as of version XS-0.5 this facility has some limitations.)
- Acts as installation and upgrade server for the XO covering
- Core OS for the XO
- Activities
- Acts as an initial activation server, providing Bitfrost security leases
Education and discovery tools
- Provides flexible communication, collaboration and publishing tools based on a tailored version of the award-winning Moodle course management system.
Hardware, installation and administration
- Based on Fedora 9 Linux
- Runs on a wide range of hardware. Equipment certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux or known to work well with Fedora 9 Linux is supported.
- Provides administration tools geared for large deployments of connected and disconnected schools:
- Server installation and upgrades can be completely automated.
- A Simple One-Time-Pad password (SOTP) scheme to support safe practices in the handling of administrator passwords.
- Content and configuration can be deployed to the XS via untrusted means safely, thanks to a cryptographic signing scheme.
