Skubuntu Screenshots

[Jane Weideman]

On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 11:07 +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Hi Edward
> 
> Top posting. Grrr..

Sorry I still do this at time too. I am learning though (MS habits die
hard)... ;)
> 
> Edward Holcroft wrote:
> > OK, I see I have the wrong end of the stick. You are no longer using  
> > K12LTSP at all.
> 
> That's right.
> 
> > So now what happens to those 100 plus schools where the Tuxlabs are  
> > K12LTSP based?
> 
> They are being upgraded to hoary. 13 schools have been upgraded, and 50 
> will have been upgraded by October, which means that, effectively 50 
> schools will be using Edubuntu (or at least something close to it) even 
> before it's released :)
> 
> > What's the upgrade process? How does data, home directories and  
> > usernames get easily imported into what is a very different distro? I  
> > am asking this because I am interested in converting about 33  schools, 
> > widely dispersed over four provinces to the Ubuntu-based  distro. Since 
> > the cost of going to each site to upgrade is  prohibitive, we need a way 
> > for the centre manager to just boot off a  CD and K12LTSP magically 
> > becomes Skubuntu. This is a big ask, I know,  but essential, since our 
> > site admins (with maybe one or two  exceptions) do not yet have the 
> > technical expertise to manually back  up user data and usernames, 
> > install a new distro and put everything  back.
> 
> This will probably not be a big deal in Edubuntu (since it would 
> probably focuss on new installations), but it has been a big deal for 
> us, who have similar situations to your 33 schools. Currently, we either 
> take along an external hard disk, tar up /etc and /home (along with a 
> few other crucial files like lts.conf, dhcpd.conf, etc) to the disk and 
> re-install. Then we copy the home dirs back. This could be automated to 
> some degree, desktops could be reset with the 'reset desktop' script 
> (automatically, in the script, of course), but I think this is a bit far 
> off in Skubuntu. We've been anticipating a move to Debian before October 
> last year (just never got round to it- resource constraints, etc), so 
> we've modified the K12-Desktop, so that when we upgrade to Debian, we'll 
> have the exact same look and feel. Our schools don't know about K12LTSP 
> or Fedora or Ubuntu, they just think it's the same OS with some new 
> software :)
> 
> I like the idea of an auto-upgrade though. If you have enough 
> disk-space, you could almost do it without reformatting (moving the 
> entire old filesystem to something like /oldsystem, for instance, before 
> the actual installation starts). Then a post-install script can go and 
> grep in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /home for users and put them into 
> the new passwd file with new UID and GID's, fix permissions, new 
> desktops, etc. Wow, this is a real good idea. I'll take it with to the 
> EdUbuntu summit too and see what the people think!
> 
> -Jonathan
> 
> PS: Jane, if you're reading this, Edward is from South Africa too, and 
> he's worked with us before.
> 
Yes, I am following these discussions with interest, and am very glad
that we have real from the field experience to draw from here, so we can
find out first hand what the obstacles and issues are.

Thanks :)

-- 
JaneW
_____________
Jane Weideman
mobile: +27 83 779 7800
Canonical Ltd.