School OS is specially designed for school chidren by Sun Microsystems, India in collaboration with NCERT and IIT Delhi and is determined to spearhead the rise of open-source in the primary & secondary education system of India. OpenSolaris School OS is a unix based operating system. As we’ll see in this guide it is pretty easy to use even for school students and It has a lot of cool featur es. OpenSolaris has all the tools you need for day to day productivity, development and even simple tasks like browsing the web, listening to music and watching movies. There is nothing that your Windows box can do and OpenSolaris cannot.

2. School OS 2
An Introduction to School OS
School OS is specially designed for school chidren by Sun Microsystems, India in collaboration with NCERT and
IIT Delhi and is determined to spearhead the rise of open-source in the primary & secondary education system
of India. OpenSolaris School OS is a unix based operating system. As we’ll see in this guide it is pretty easy to
use even for school students and It has a lot of cool featur es. OpenSolaris has all the tools you need for day to
day productivity, development and even simple tasks like browsing the web, listening to music and watching
movies. There is nothing that your Windows box can do and OpenSolaris cannot.
The latest version, released in June 2009, is the most user‑friendly to date. It has a simple graphical desktop
environment and familiar software out of the box, and is available as a live CD that you can just boot from to
try out the OS without affecting your computer’s hard drive at all. End‑user‑oriented improvements in this
version include driver support, simple fle restoration, and software installation using the IPS package manager.
Underneath the hood, there are features that no other mainstream desktop environment can match, such as
the real‑time debugging utility DTrace and the awesome ZFS fle system which can support fles larger than we
have numbers or units to describe! This guide is aimed at demystifying OpenSolaris and illustrating how it can
be useful to you. If you are a software or Web developer, you should undoubtedly give it a look. If you are
interested in high performance computing or cluster computing with virtualized networking, OpenSolaris
defnitely has some tricks you should check out. And even if you’re just a casual home user, this operating
system offers you yet another choice.

3. School OS 3
An OpenSolaris School OS Walkthrough
This walkthrough will take you through the journey of installing SchoolOS on your system, right down to
exploring all its features in the end. To install School OS on your system, follow these simple steps:
1. Insert the OpenSolaris School OS DVD into your PC
2. Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from a DVD and not your hard disk.
3. You will see a screen like this:
Select the first
option –
“School OS X86”
using arrow
keys and press
The screen
Enter
waits 30
seconds before
going with the
default option

4. School OS 4
I’m loading up..
It takes a while to load a Live DVD. Be patient.

5. School OS 5
After a while you will see this screen.

6. School OS 6
The DVD is asking you for your keyboard layout. Just press enter. It will choose US-English by default.

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The DVD is now asking you the language you can read. Leave it blank and press enter to select English.

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I’m almost done
After a while you might see a blank window with an arrow in the middle. Don’t worry, it’s just loading..

9. School OS 9
Finally you see the School OS Desktop. Let’s learn the meaning of all the icons and widgets on the screen
Shortcut Icons Input Method
Running Applications Network Interfaces
“Start” Menus
Clock
Install new software
Browsing
Email
Install
School OS

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Run the “Device Driver Utility” once to check if your system’s essential hardware is supported.

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I
Now let’s run the installer. Click on the “Install OpenSolaris” icon on the desktop.

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Disk: This is where you setup your disk partitioning scheme.
You will see your existing partitions here. Select the unused partition, set
it to ‘Solaris’ and specify the size. Recommended size: 9 GB.
Note: If you already had Windows or Linux installed on your computer,
you will have to use a partitioning tool to resize an old partition to make
space for Solaris.
You can definitely install Solaris alongside Windows in a multi-boot
fashion. Just create an empty partition using GPartED available at:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net
For detailed step by step instructions on multi-boot partitioning visit
http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/entry/triple_boot_part_1_planning

13. School OS 13
Time Zone: Set your time zone

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Locale: Choose your language

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User Settings
Root is the super-privileged
user on a unix system. Set
this password carefully.
Choose a unique name for
the computer, so that it
can be uniquely identified
on the school network.

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Review your settings before installing… take a look again at what you have chosen
Okay.
Let’s install!

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School OS is now installing on your computer 

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Installation has Finished
Click reboot. Remove
the DVD from the
drive, and boot into
School OS

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Let’s boot into School OS
This is called the “GRUB” boot screen.
GRUB stands for Grand Unified Boot
Loader. If you have Windows or Linux
installed, they will also appear in this
list so that you get to decide which OS
you are going to run.

20. School OS 20
School OS is booting..
I’m the fastest OS in
the world. Just wait
till I boot… 

21. School OS 21
The School OS Login Screen
Enter your (earlier
chosen) username
and password to log
in.

22. School OS 22
The School OS Desktop 

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Who is Jack?
Jack is the default user used by the School OS live
CD. Think of Jack as a friend who is helping you
check out OpenSolaris School OS.
Note: That also means that, wherever asked, the
username is “jack” and the password is
“opensolaris”.

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How do I Shutdown School OS?
Just click here! 

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How do I play music on my School OS?
Step 1: First you
need to install
MP3 codecs. Run
Codeina!

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Click ‘Register’, if this is
your first time or ogin with
your existing ID if you’ve
already registered.

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Fill up the form

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Install the Free
Fluendo MP3
Decoder

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Done!

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Now you can listen to music in Totem or RhythmBox

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How Do I Add More Software to School OS?
Click on the ‘Add
More Software’ icon
on your School OS
desktop.

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The first time your start
Package Manager, it will load
the software list from the
internet

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Step 3: Click the
“install/Update” button to
install the selected
packages.
Step 2: Select Packages you
want to install
Step 1: Choose category

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This step usually takes time so be patient.
It is downloading the packages you
selected and installing them.

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How do I start/configure MySQL/Apache/PHP (AMP)?
Click the ‘Web Stack Initialize’
menu item. (one time only)

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Enter your root password
here. You had set it during
installation of School OS.

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Use these menu items to
start, stop and manage the
AMP stack (Apache, MySQL
and PHP)

38. School OS 38
What Kind of Tools Are Available in School OS
Word-class open-
source development
tools
Games to enjoy in
free time
OpenOffice – a Image Editor
powerful open- (GIMP), organizer,
source productivity viewer, etc.
suite
Instant messaging,
browsing, emailing,
etc.

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What’s inside “Places”?
“Home” contains all data related to
your user – settings, documents, and
even your desktop.
These are common folders you would
store your media in.
“Computer” is the counter-part to “My
Computer” in Windows.
This is like the “Network
Neighbourhood” – here you can
Search your data browse through other computers on
To connect to an FTP, your network
WebDAV, SSH or Windows
share

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How to enable “Special Effects”?
Go to System >
Preferences >
Appearance

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Go to the Visual
Effects tab and
click “Extra”
Click “Custom” instead and
go to preferences to
customize the effects
further if you want

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This is the special effects
manager. You can chose from the
variety of effects and fine tune
them as you want.

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How do I use the “Time Slider”?
First we’ll enable
Time Slider

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Feel free to set which parts
of the filesystem you want
to use Time Slider with and
even the capacity quota

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Let’s see the
power of time
slider. Create
an empty file

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Enter some text and save it
as ‘my file’

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Now click on the ‘Restore’
option in the folder menu

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Click the little camera
icon to take a snapshot
of the folder in time

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Give a suitable name if you
want or just leave it to
default

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Now edit the file and change its contents. Then
shift the Time Slider to the left – to the time of
your previously created snapshot. Your file’s
original contents will be restored. You can finally
go back and forth in time! 

52. School OS 52
How do I Change My Screen’s Resolution?
Then just choose your
preferred resolution
from the dropdown
menu and click “Apply”
Really Simple! Just
right click anywhere on
the desktop and click
“Screen resolution…”

53. School OS 53
Further Reading
This guide was just meant to familiarize you with the OpenSolaris environment. To learn more please feel free to use the
following resources:
Getting Started with OpenSolaris by Roman Strobl
http://www.sourcetalk.de/2008/downloads/presentations/opensolaris/GettingStartedWithOpenSolaris.pdf
Getting Started OpenSolaris 2009.06
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/dev/getstart/
OpenSolaris 2009.06 Booklet
http://kumarabhishek.com/OpenSolaris200906Booklet.pdf
Official OpenSolaris Documentation Consolidation Page
http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/docs/
The OpenSolaris Observatory
http://blogs.sun.com/observatory
OpenSolaris Community
http://opensolaris.org
OpenSolaris Website
http://opensolaris.com
Open Source University Meetup
http://osum.sun.com
This is a place where you can socialize with other school children like you to discuss open source and get your problems solved.