What’s new in the latest release?

The first official, stable release of DoudouLinux (version 1.0) was published in early June 2011. Its name is DoudouLinux Gondwana. A first update of this release (version 1.1) was published in late September 2011. It is available for download as a CDROM image file ready to be burnt as an ISO file – not a data file, or as an USB key image file that requires special tools to make a key able to start a computer. This update release 1.1 is officially supporting 25 languages [1]. So what’s new in this release?

New applications

DoudouLinux Gondwana is shipping two new applications, plus a new launcher and a replacement application for the network manager:

• Songwrite2 is a simple, yet powerful song editor and player
• Stopmotion is a simple, yet powerful :) animation movie creator
• Jukebox is a small launcher that just plays the music files in the user’s Music directory
• Network Manager is replacing the previous network manager tool lxnm which could not handle Wifi networks easily

The first 3 new applications are available in the activity Whole DoudouLinux, in the multimedia tab. Moreover the update 1.1 is shipping a new small tool to easily set the user’s nickname on the local network (for use with Empathy instant messaging).

As you can see our project is moving toward digital content. We believe that children also need to be taught the use and creation of digital contents, for which computers remain the best tool. This is why our efforts will continue in the future to provide more digital content and more digital creation applications for the older children. As a result, if you want our project to provide more digital content and faster, you can come and help us create song files, animation movies, stories, etc. You will be welcomed! ;).

So now let’s have a look at these applications.

Songwrite

Songwrite has been created for people who do not know music theory. This is why it does not use the standard music notation but fingerings and tabs instead, which are simply representing the place where you put your fingers on the musical instrument! The rhythm is then represented by the space between notes. Of course you can switch to the official music notation but this is not the default application behavior.

Moreover, lyrics can be easily added to the music score to sing the song. Using the printing feature, this makes it possible to print song booklets for children. We believe this is a good way to start learning music and learning an instrument, especially, because Songwrite can handle flute fingering and percussion instruments: flutes are quite cheap and percussion instruments are the easiest to learn.

Songwrite

Stopmotion

Stopmotion is an animation movie creator. It can create a movie file from a series of photos captured with a webcam for example. The typical use is to make a scene with small characters then take photos after slightly moving these characters step by step. Using the audio recording application of DoudouLinux, you should even be able to add voices, sounds or music to movies. Children will finally discover how cinema is functioning. This is also a great opportunity for them to start thinking about scenarios, characters, scenes, landscapes, etc.

Stopmotion

Jukebox

This is not really an application but a special launcher that starts the media player with a list of files to be played. The files are all the MIDI, OGG and WAV files found in the directory Music of the activity Whole DoudouLinux. They are played in a random order and, to entertain children, the player is launched fullscreen showing its nice curves flowing across the whole screen.

Currently, the set of music shipping with DoudouLinux is not that large, but we wish to continue to add many songs in many different languages. It is covering mainly French children songs and European classical music at the moment. We may put them partly on the Internet to reduce the size of the CD in the future. Note that the MIDI file scores are available in a Songwrite format as well as in a PDF format in the directory Music.

Network Manager

This is a quite standard application to manage networks in a Linux environment. Now that DoudouLinux is shipping more drivers and firmware for network hardware, we took the necessary time to make the space required on the CD to include a more advanced network manager tool. It is able to manage both wired and wireless networks easily. Just plug the network and it should automatically work in a few seconds! At most, you will be asked to enter the WEP/WPA key of your network.

Network not connected

Network search

Network being connected

Network connection active

Other improvements

User interface

• We have improved the boot and shutdown process of DoudouLinux. Now, nice images are displayed and pleasant pieces of music are played during these operations.
• We included the first audio messages whose goal is to let children who cannot read understand what the computer is telling them. :) We also added audio messages for the low battery alert and to ask for CD removal at shutdown.
• The menu of activities has been redesigned and the shutdown/reboot functions are now much easier to find. Moreover this new version now handles languages written from right to left.
• The web browser Epiphany now features adblocking and popup blocking to disable these, too frequent and annoying, web practices. Children will then have a better Internet experience.
• A shortcut, Alt+F5 has been added. This restarts the top right panel in case it is not correctly drawn (panel stays black and empty).

Gondwana start music

DoudouLinux Gondwana music, recorded with Rosegarden

Miscellaneous

• DoudouLinux Gondwana provides better hardware support for wired network, Wifi network, webcams, tablet PC’s and touchscreens.
• The audio output selection is now a system wide setting and addresses all activities instead of the Whole DoudouLinux activity only.

For a full list of changes, please browse our project management software online.

Improvements in Gondwana update 1

The update release 1.1 is mainly a language update. The number of officially supported languages [2] increased from 15 to 25. Moreover several improvements have been brought:

• Songwrite is now in its latest version to solve language issues.
• Many other translation issues have been solved.
• A basic video driver is forced on recent Poulsbo hardware to avoid ending with a black screen.
• Embedded PDF documentation has been updated.
• Added the Russian version of the song Brother John.

For a more detailed list of changes, please read the article Release notes.