Visvanath Ratnaweera

Well, "it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Fedora 9 distribution in today’s dollars, with today’s software development costs. Additionally, it would take $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel alone".
https://www.linux.com/publications/estimating-total-cost-linux-distribution

Divide by a safe number and watch the effect of the result on his opinion.

Hi Rick

I'm glad to answer your questions. We are diverting from the original topic though. Therefore I gave this sub-thread a new subject in case the moderator wants to split it.

> However, when I travel light, I am not sure that I want to carry around with me another device.

Sure. You know that the Pi is the size of a pack of cigarettes. It fits nicely to a side pocket of my sling bag. For my usage, the Pi doesn't even need an external power source. I simply connect it to the USB port of my laptop.

> And it doesn't appear to me that the Raspberry Pi can run Microsoft Office, but I might be wrong about this. Your thoughts about MS Office, PC software, and Mac software running on a Raspberry Pi?

Pi was originally meant to be an experimental rig, a hardware controller and a development board. But the designers used an architecture which is closer to a full PC than an embedded device. Still the Pi is an order of magnitude weaker that the typical laptop today. One shouldn't expect it to be with its less that 5 W power consumption!

Bottom line: Pi doesn't replace the laptop (although there are nerds who are doing exactly that), it is the server of the classical client-server-architecture we have in Moodle. (Well, only in this context. The Pi itself is very versatile.)

Anyway, the bottom line is, Linux is the OS of choice (and destiny) for the Pi. Microsoft is way too bloated. BSD (kernel of the Mac OS) will run in a Pi, but not the shiny GUI. (I am doing an injustice to Pi. It has incredible graphics power for its size - which a server does not need.) Now the good news: You don't have to be a command line geek to run Linux on Pi. Write the image to a micro SD, insert in to the Pi and connect it to a power source. There are many variations of Linux for Pi. The one I am talking about is the https://moodlebox.net/, which has the latest version of Moodle pre-installed.

Now the question, isn't Moodle too big an application for Pi? The developer of MoodleBox has taken lot of trouble to tune it. It feels snappy enough, even in a class of 20 students. Try it!

> Also, out of curiosity, what do you do for a "monitor" for the Raspberry Pi when you travel with it?

I didn't get your question. If you mean a performance monitor, all the tools available for Debian GNU/Linux are available for Pi.

Agree.

I understood that the purpose is to have access to the own test/development Moodle site at home _and_ at the working place. Home OS is Mac, at work it is Microsoft.

My suggestion: carry a Raspberry Pi, https://moodlebox.net/en/ installed, between the two places!

Hallo Matthias Sch.

Moodle eignet sich sehr gut als die Lernplattform für Integriertes Lernen (zu Neudeutsch Blended-Learning). E-Learning im Sinne reiner on-line Unterricht ist schon was anders.

Dazu gibt es unendlich viele Literatur, Vorträge, etc. Dein Ansatz, im Unterricht einzelne LE mit Moodle zu unterstützen und so mitwachsen, ist bestimmt ein sicherer und bereichernder Weg.

Ja, zu diesen "Digitale Natives", da musste ich lachen. Klar, sie hatten mehr Möglichkeiten als wir. Eben, zu viele Möglichkeiten, sprich Ablenkungen. Das war ihr Pech. Ich meine ihr ständiger Begleiter, das Mobiltelefon.

Nebenthema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Prensky (Siehe Abschnitt Criticism. Prensky gilt als Erfinder vom Begriff Digial Natives.)

Hi

The first paragraph of any security course will ask you to begin with a) the value of your secrets b) who your adversary is.

You started by saying you want to secure "test grades, exam questions, ..., students personal info" from unauthorized users. Then moved on to hiding your users who "learn about democracy, human right, multi-party politic and freedom of speech" from the state. The two things are as different as a mouse and and an elephant. So please decide which one before you continue!

P.S. In an enquiry a couple of months ago https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=358202 you talked of "the teaching staff involve in a moodle site are keen to see their online discussions on sensitive content (e.g. developing questions for the forthcoming exams, students marks and grades". How was the progress?