Why Labdoo Uses Linux

EN

If you receive Labdoo laptops, we strongly recommend to not overwrite the installation with Windows and to leave the installed Operating System Linux in place. There are many important reasons for that:

• Linux is between 50-100% faster than Windows. Installing Windows can make your laptop much slower.
• Linux is an open and free software. This is an incredibly powerful property. This basically means that people can freely use all the software provided by Linux without worrying about license violations. It means that you can fire up the Ubuntu Software Center and install any of its thousands of applications for free. This aspect is really important for schools and students, because it provides freedom to access powerful educational applications.
• Many Windows versions are or will soon be out of support (XP, Vista or Windows 7). This means that they will no longer be maintained and updated. The laptop you are receiving is fully updated and patched with a long-supported version.
• Labdoo's software comes with more than 300 educational applications in addition to the Firefox web browser, Skype, VLC, or the Libre Office Suite that offers all the Microsoft Office's functions.
• Labdoo laptops come with more than 1,000,000 eBooks, videotutorials and Wiki Pages preinstalled, even in your local language. If you install another operative system, you will lose all this content
• Labdoo supports through its Global Support Program (LGS) only the laptops that keep the original Labdoo software. You can find all the Labdoo video tutorials on the Desktop in the folder "Videos" and you can also find manuals in the folder "/home/labdoo/Public/how-to-start"
• Separated user and permissions concept: The creation of 3 different users -Teacher (labdoo) Student (student) and Guest (guest) eases enormously the learning process and the sharing of the laptop between students.
• You still can still use Windows applications through Wine and VirtualBox if you really need to, please continue reading below if you want to know how.
• The Look and Feel of a Labdoo laptop is almost identical to that of a Windows machine. Because we understand that you may be used to Windows operating systems, we've tuned Labdoo laptops to have a very similar user interface.

If the above is still not convincing enough and if you'd like to install another operating system different than Linux to your Labdoo laptops, you can still do so. Labdoo does not impose any restrictions on the software you run on the computers provided that you can ensure that the laptops are being used for educational purposes.

If you want to change the operating system (OS) but the laptop needs to travel internationally, we recommend you to install the basic, license free Ubuntu in the laptop, and then you can have the edoovillage install their desired OS locally. A basic OS is needed to travel abroad because the international travel rules require laptops to be able to boot into an OS.

If the laptop does not travel internationally and you want to have your own OS, then it is recommended to deliver the laptop without any OS. Just format the hard drive by using the 'shred' command.

Please make sure all software and OS installed in Labdoo devices are NOT violating any copyrights or laws. As explained above, this is the reason Labdoo.org strongly encourages using open and license-free OS and software such as Ubuntu.

Use Windows under your Linux Laptop

If you need to run Windows applications, you can still use one of the following options with a Labdoo machine:

Wine is a free tool, enabling Windows applications (exe) to run on Linux. Using Wine you are able to run many programs on Linux, even those developed for the Microsoft Windows OS. Wine can be used without installing the Windows OS. Of course, you will still need to buy or own the necessary licenses for these programs. Read more here https://www.winehq.org/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine.

Installing multiple operating systems using VirtualBox If the laptop comes with more than 2 GB RAM, you can consider using Virtualbox, a tool that allows you to install another operating system like Windows next to (or on top of) Linux. By doing so, you will be able to run Ubuntu as the host OS and Windows, or other operating systems, as a guest OS at the same time. You also need to fulfil the legal and license regulations on the guest OS that we mentioned above. The images provided by Labdoo for cloning laptops come with a preinstalled Virtualbox. There is also an installation script to install Virtualbox and its extensions for a Linux OS available.

Download handout as odt or pdf

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
VirtualBox is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.