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:

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 and Active Antennas -- the latter limited to small school deployments only.

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 the award-winning Fedora Linux
• Runs on a wide range of hardware. Equipment certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux or known to work well with Fedora Linux 9 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.