IIAB
This IIAB XSCE content does not reflect the opinion of OLPC. These pages were created by members of a volunteer community supporting OLPC and deployments.
| Download and Install XSCE | |
 OLPC XO-1.5, XO-1.75 or XO-4 | |
| Offline Install (still 0.4 RC-1, needs updating) | Online Install |
| Generic x86 PC or Laptop | |
| 32 bit Online Install | 64 bit Online Install |
 Trim-Slice | |
| Online Install | |
 Raspberry Pi | |
| Online Install | |
Welcome to the School Server Community Edition (XSCE, or http://schoolserver.org), a global project where volunteer professionals are taking the One Laptop per Child movement into a new decade, enabling quality learning among the world's poorest children. Commercial support for our free software is available for those who need it, through freelance consultants as necessary. Most important, contributors of all kind are invited to contribute your talents to kids' schools worldwide, in any way you find meaningful!
Our Product
XSCE provides communication, networking, content, and maintenance to schools and classrooms. In everyday usage, the school server extends capabilities of connected laptops and devices with services in these areas, towards giving kids the very best learning opportunities imaginable:
- Classroom connectivity – Similar to what you would find in an advanced home router.
- Internet gateway – If available, an internet connection is made available to laptops/devices.
- Content – Tools to make educational media available to schools and classrooms.
- Maintenance – Tools to keep laptop/devices updated and running smoothly.
Get started by downloading and installing the latest:
XSCE 5.1 was released July 27, 2014. Read the full announcement to learn about its new capabilities. The list is impressive: Samba filesharing, XOVis visualization of student work patterns, vnStat traffic-monitoring console, better Internet-in-a-Box searchability, customizable web-filtering requested by many schools, OpenVPN remote access, and a new module for automated field-testing.
XSCE 5.5 is anticipated late spring 2015, including many possible new features for educators and administrators. For example Elgg for students and ownCloud for teachers are two capabilities currently undergoing testing in Malaysia (March 2015). Downloadable images are increasingly available (even on CentOS 7 now!) but drop us a line if you need assistance!
Earlier, XSCE 5.0 was released Jan 22, 2014 introducing ansible progress for developers especially (announcement). XSCE 5.0 RC 1 was released Dec 17, 2013, formerly known as 0.5 RC 1, and XSCE 0.4 on Oct 3, 2013.
Product Features
Current and Planned Features are on a separate page XSCE Features.
Our FAQ
Global community volunteers keep our Frequently Asked Questions (and answers!) fresh thanks to organic input from folks just like yourself, always welcome!
Our Project
XSCE is a community-based project developed and supported by volunteers from around the world.
Our heartbeat is a weekly call Thursdays 10AM NYC Time, and a 24hr live chat channel described further below. See the Agenda/Minutes for a history of past topics or to add a topic for a future week. Please email Adam Holt (holt @ laptop.org) so we can coordinate the logistics necessary to add you to the call.
Every season we try to meet for as much as a week of face-to-face design and hacking. During these quarterly sprints (so far all hosted in the northern hemisphere) we work like crazy to get our features complete, so they are ready to make the feature freeze happening just after the sprint. All are welcome in our community, of course if you are the sort that likes to stand on a soapbox and preach, we may ask you to take a turn in the kitchen ;)
We welcome open community tools of diverse kinds, to support contributors of all kind. Please join our IRC live chat directly on the web by entering channel #schoolserver. Or if you prefer, any IRC chat software can be connected to irc.freenode.net to join this same channel. A Meetbot instance logs the channel strictly only during meetings (currently being held on Tuesdays at 1600 UTC / 1200 EDT), more info in the #Chat Guidelines section below.
Our primary mailing list is server-devel@lists.laptop.org. Teachers and new contributors especially, are strongly encouraged to ask questions! Please also get to know http://internet-in-a-box.org join the Pathagar mailing list if you're interested in digital libraries for curious kids worldwide, whose schools so often (1) lack broadband (2) are unable to afford pay-per-view ebooks (3) are wary of advertising/manipulation of our youngest citizens.
Education is inherently political: how can we each invest our lives nurturing the most meaningful learning communities in the face of self-interested governments/corporations/unions/religions, each trying to help, but also dominate? As such please consider our ~50 person "xsce-devel" Google Group, where all contributors are invited to join in thoughtful discussion, by sending a short paragraph about your experience and XSCE-related ambitions (holt @ laptop.org). Implementation conversations on civic learning realities are sorely needed at every level, but reality check: OLPC's long history makes clear that humanitarian policymaking is not always best served by "e-male" posturing traditions on open source mailing lists. In short, educators are far too busy for another flame war. As such we seek a more friendly balance, by including more educators' and female voices, thanks to an invigorating & organic interplay between public and private community spaces!
Finally, our bug tracker has recently moved from https://sugardextrose.org/projects/xsce to https://github.com/XSCE. Our technical and user documentation, while crucially evolving at an early stage, can and should be critiqued and refined by all!
Chat Guidelines
Details about how your live chat privacy is protected on this separate page.
Our Ecosystem
The School Server ecosystem is fascinating. There are hundreds of similar projects around the world. Each work from slightly different perspectives. If you are interested in the project... but don't quite 'feel it,' please consider one of the following projects.
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server
- BRCK.com by Ushahidi
- http://SMEserver.org since 1999, based on CentOS
- http://eXeLearning.org being enhanced by Mike Dawson, for Nokia phones
- http://LibraryBox.us by Jason Griffey & All (map shows 25 locations)
- http://internet-in-a-box.org by Braddock Gaskill
- http://LocalFi.org by Caryl Bigenho, Sebastian Silva & All
- Sugar Network by Aleksey Lim
- BeLL Ground Server on RPi, by http://OLE.org
- Pathagar Bookserver by Sayamindu Dasgupta, now maintained by Seth Woodworth & All
- Library For All, apparently for Haiti but is there Creole content?
- Library-in-a-box by Libraries For All.
- LibraryBox
- PirateBox
- eGranary Digital Library
- Village Telco by Terry Gillett et. al.
- RACHEL-Pi "Remote Areas Community Hotspots for Education and Learning"
- CD3WD DVDs archive for developing world homesteaders, to "help the 3rd world rebuild itself" reminiscent of the Whole Earth Catalog begun in 1968
- Khan Academy is increasingly being translated properly!?
- Wikipedia Zero arranges free mobile phone access in 25+ countries; Kenya experimenting with SMS access to classic phones (carrier dependent, may force bundling of data plan)
- FreeNAS network-attached storage system based on FreeBSD.
- Project BERNIE (Basic Educational Resources Needed for Innovative Education) by Tony Anderson.
- Ideas Box by Libraries Without Borders / Bibliothèques Sans Frontières.
- $100 Aptus Solar WiFi Mini-PC / Classroom Without Walls. Open Library by Commonwealth of Learning / COL in India, focusing quality content (customizable offline Khan, Wikipedia, ebooks), running Ubuntu for 20 WiFi devices.
- Lantern "One Device, Free Data From Space Forever"
- A Connected Planet - strong tablet implementer in Haiti / Plateau Central.
- Open Learning Exchange and similar dedicated implementers, like Mennonite Committee in ~6 countries in Central Africa?
Our Community
Our community is made up of people just like you. If you are interested in the project please reach out to any of our members to learn more about us.
- Jerry Vonau (SW architecture)
- George Hunt (configuration, GUI, low-power HW)
- Tim Moody (documentation, testing, Puppet/Ansible auto-distribution & config mgmt)
- Anna Schoolfield (testing, content/ebooks curation platforms)
- Anish Mangal (integration, offline cloud)
- Rodrigo Hartmann (security, GUI, maintainability, intl languages)
- David Farning (software engineering tips)
- Alex Kleider (bookserver eg. Pathagar)
- David Rodríguez Álvarez (web design)
- Rubén Rodríguez (Linux/Trisquel advisor)
- Adam Holt (documentation, community coordination & outreach)
- Professor Sameer Verma (free/open advisor & user)
- Sridhar Dhanapalan (video; author of the 2012 XSCE Design Whitepaper)
- Nitika Mangal (QA Manager in India)
- Santiago Collazo (Sysadmin, Ansible)
- Kartik Kumar Perisetla (Sugar developer, Delhi, India)
- Mike Dawson (advisor on SME Server technologies, Mideast, Afghanistan)
- Seth Wolfwood (Pathagar ebooks library)
- Braddock Gaskill (Internet-in-a-Box)
- Bernie Innocenti (free software advisor)
- Mikus Grinbergs (XO-4 & similar hardware testing)
- John Gunkel (IT configuration)
- Ajay Garg (webdav 1-to-many collaboration)
- Miguel González (performance testing)
- Aneesh Dogra (Pathagar digital book library)
- Andi Gros (Pathagar books' metadata: where & why?)
- Terry Gillett (Village Telco, wireless integration)
- Tom Gilliard (CentOS testing)
- T.K. Kang (testing, Asia outreach)
- David Leeming (Oceania/Pacific deployment realities)
- Craig Perue (Jamaica/Caribbean project management)
- Mitch Seaton (deployment realities, Philippines, Australia, Madagascar)
- Bastien Guerry (OLPC France, Lisper, philosopher-in-chief!)
- Xavier Carcelle (OLPC France/Madagascar, backup testing)
- Daniel Drake (deployment scalability, based out of Nicaragua)
- Samuel Jacob Klein (open educational architectures, Wikipedia community relations)
- James Cameron (Quozl, keeping us all honest!)
- Kevin Mark (live tech support, on the #schoolserver channel at http://webchat.freenode.net)
Our History & Inspiration
How did XSCE's design evolve? Progress only makes sense when we learn from the past...
SEE WEEKLY UPDATES!
Jul 2014 Agenda
XSCE 5.1 was released July 27th 2014, with announcement and release notes here!
Jun 2014 Agenda
XSCE 5.1 release imminent. For Intel NUC at minimum, and hopefully many other platforms tested soon too...
Jun 2014 Agenda
George Hunt begins active Fedora 20 development on low-end Intel NUCs like the Celeron 2.4GHz dual-core, evaluating this WiFi-enabled all-inclusive unit's toughness for deployment across many Haiti schools later this summer.
May 2014 Agenda
Progress accelerating on XSCE 5.1 thanks to Tim & George. Implementation in Haiti, Ghana, Nepal, India anticipated late summer. June's weekly progress summaries will be posted in our weekly minutes.
Apr 2014 Agenda
Learning about Martin Dluhos' visualizations of kids' usage patterns in Nepal. Transition to new download site http://download.unleashkids.org. New page added for Volunteer Microtasks.
Mch 2014 Agenda
User acceptance testing accelerates in Haiti & Malaysia, gathering requirements from OLE Nepal for XSCE 5.1, 5.5 or 6.0. Hardware/power planning matures, around Cubox and competitors.
Feb 2014 Agenda
Planning gets serious for XSCE 5.1 and XSCE 6.0 around our late Feb meetup in Los Angeles, alongside a greatly improved version of Internet-in-a-Box. Current and Planned Features nicely detailed in separate tables on the /Features page.
Jan 2014 Agenda
Internet-in-a-Box incl full-text-search refinement with XSCE 5.0; implementation intensifies in Haiti; XSCE 5.1or 6.0 brainstorming/groundwork.
Dec 2013 Agenda
XSCE 5.0 release approaching, alongside Internet-in-a-Box with fulltext search of Wikipedia! Prep intensifying for Haiti deployments (Jan 2014) and Nepal hopefully sometime early in 2014.
Nov 2013 Agenda
v5.0 culmination -> 5.1 or 6.0 definition hack sprint, Nov 18-20 in Malacca, Malaysia, in conjunction with OLPC Basecamp 2013 (Nov 16-18) whose enlivening blog lays clear our humanitarian commitment.
Oct 2013 Agenda
XSCE 0.4 released October 3, 2013. v5.0 "crystallization" hack sprint Oct 21-23 in San Francisco (formerly known as 0.5) following SF's Summit (Oct 18-20), in conjunction with Internet Archive's Books in Browsers Summit Oct 24-25
Sep 2013 Agenda
v0.4 release final testing. Haiti implementation of XSCE 0.4 at two schools, for the new school year.
Aug 2013 Agenda
XSCE 0.4 RC1 released August 24. Prep for final release! Haiti implementation late Aug and early Sept. Utilite and/or TrimSlice custom hardware early prototype shipping to beta experimenters.
Jul 2013 Agenda
v0.4 Sprint July 8-12, 1hr north of Winnipeg. v0.4 spec gaining precision, bringing stability & configurability to most XOs, x86, 64-bit Fedora, RPi? Pathagar bookserver & Internet-in-a-Box integration also expected.
Jun 2013 Agenda
Version 0.3 released! Prep July sprint! Volunteers can buy XO-4 Touch Laptops if they will help test XSCE & http://internet-in-a-box.org etc.
May 2013 Agenda
Very successful Toronto-area Sprint May 8-13,with Braddock Gaskill all the way from LA! 0.3 RC1 unleashed May 14; RC2 May 28? India prototype installed.
Apr 2013 Agenda
Prep v0.3 May sprint. Los Angeles interfacing with Caryl Bigenho's http://localfi.org and Braddock Gaskill's http://internet-in-a-box.org.
Mch 2013 Agenda
Boston meetup Mch 1-4 with Sameer Verma, Anish Mangal. Early pre-field test connects an orphanage from Haiti.
Feb 2013 Agenda
Toronto/Waterloo area Sprint Feb 6/7 to 10/11.
Release of XSCE 0.1 Stable and 0.2 Coming.
Jan 2013 Agenda
Proposed Core Spec and Priority Tuning.
Dec 2012 Agenda
Jamaica implementation sprint (delayed).
Nov 2012 Agenda
Centred around Toronto area hack sprint Nov 10-18:
Expand testing+UX with Anna Schoolfield, Tim Moody & Seneca College students' packaging with York Univ/Seneca College Professor Chris Tyler.
Meet with Anish Mangal and Nathan Riddle near Detroit etc to discuss wider community integration.
Oct 2012 Agenda
Working w/ Alex Kleider's model classroom @ http://olpcSF.org/summit & http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarcamp_SF_2012.
Sep 2012 Agenda
Toronto area hack sprint Sept 16-23, incl public demo Saturday Sept 22.