Welcome to LEARNIX
LEARNIX is a Linux distribution which runs off CD-ROM. That means there is no need to install LINUX on a computer for you to be able to run powerful UNIX software. LEARNIX is based on the Xubuntu GNU/LINUX distribution (which itself is based on the popular Ubuntu distribution), with the Radiance lighting simulation software added for convenience.
Due to popular demand, LEARNIX has risen from the ashes. The new LEARNIX is no longer based on Ubuntu, but on one of its light-weight derivatives, Xubuntu, instead. If you are looking for the Radiance tutorials that used to be available from the LEARNIX pages, please look here.
Announcements
LEARNIX-2011-1beta published
Posted 30 Nov 2011
Phoenix-from-the-ashes release.
Due to popular demand (and teaching requirements), LEARNIX
which announced dead a year ago, is back. It used to be based on
the Ubuntu GNU/LINUX distribution, but we have now decided to
use Xubuntu, itself a derivative of Ubuntu, instead. The
main difference between the two is that Xubuntu uses the XFCE
desktop environment, rather than the traditional GNOME one
which has become rather clunky after the recent 'usability
improvements' which have been introduced along the switch-over
from GNOME2 to GNOME3.
Moreover, support for the ESP-r
thermal building simulation package has been dropped. Teaching
ESP-r to our MSc students has been an absolute nightmare over
the past few years. The software is so full of bugs
that we were spending more time going around fixing the models
messed up by the ESP-r interface than we did introducing
the concepts of thermal building simulation software.
That is an awful shame, because ESP-r is a very powerful piece
of software--it's just that it simply isn't usable by anybody
other than rockets scientists in white lab coats. In that sense,
at least ESP-r has remained true to its origins: the '-r'
stands for 'research'.
LEARNIX-2010-1 finalised
Posted 25 Dec 2010
Ready to be boxed.
ESP-r has been updated to the latest official release which is 11.10. The experimental pre-release we had on the Beta was still rather buggy, so hopefully this should improve things a bit. There are also some minor corrections in the Radiance Tutorial.
LEARNIX-2010-1 Beta released
Posted 12 Nov 2010
That'll do for now.
ESP-r has been updated to the unstable development version. We usually don't like running experimental software, but had to do this due to a serious bug with the GTK version which made ESP-r unusable. The problem is fixed, but other, less serious bugs still remain.
LEARNIX-2010-1 Alpha released
Posted 30 Sep 2010
Long-term Support
Traditionally, LEARNIXes are based on cutting-edge, fresh-from-the-bakery Ubuntu releases. Breaking with this tradition, 2010-1 is instead spun from Ubuntu 10.04, which is an LTS (long-term support) release. If you choose to install LEANRIX on your hard drive, this will give you three years peace-of-mind instead of the usual 1.5 years. Please see Running LEARNIX to find out about alternative ways of running and installing LEARNIX, other than from a live CD-ROM.
Oh, and before I forget: Most of the Radiance tutorials have seem minor improvements, too.