Let's get serious about Edubuntu's future

[Mario]

Hi Sven,

at least me and Jonathan from the Edubuntu community will be at UDS. Let's
see what happens there, so together we can decide on a good plan of action.
Ok? :)

Cheers,
M.

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 21:54, Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh at lutzhaase.com> wrote:

>  Hello everybody,
>
> in case there actually is somebody left to read this message. I think it
> is finally time to act. On IRC, we agree a lot that Edubuntu is
> definitely going the wrong direction, which right now would be 'none'.
> We all know that Canonical has largely lost interest in developing,
> maintaining and caring for Edubuntu in general.
> Some weeks ago, some people set out to get an official answer from
> Canonical so that some light be shed on Edubuntu's current point of
> existence but so far no answer has appeared and I doubt it will any time
> soon.
>
> I think Edubuntu's fate is now entirely in our capable hands. I suggest
> we either have a live meeting on IRC at some point in the near future or
> just keep discussing in this thread what is going to happen to Edubuntu.
>
> To be more precise what I think Edubuntu is lacking currently (so we
> agree about the short-comings):
>
> 1) Direction. I think Edubuntu has been without actual vision for some
> time now. I don't mean to say that Edubuntu is a piece of crap, I mean
> to say that currently it serves neither groups' interests to the point
> which would be required to make it outstanding. The groups, as I see it,
> would be:
> 1.1) Schools that want to deploy LTSP clients _EASILY_
> 1.2) Workstations at schools (for example a physics workstation in the
> physics rooms)
> 1.3) Private users at home (for children, obviously)
>
> 2) Documentation. Currently, if you want to deploy LTSP clients and you
> want to be informed about LTSP 5 (assuming you even know what that is,
> imagine you are teacher trying out Edubuntu!), you will have to search
> the official LTSP documentation, the Ubuntu LTSP documentation, the
> Edubuntu cookbook, the Edubuntu handbook, the Edubuntu wiki. You WILL
> find conflicting material and most of the stuff you find doesn't even
> apply anymore (LTSP 4.2 anyone?). The user wants ONE definitive resource
> for looking up things, to get going, for tips, to look for help. So**many** scattered and contradicting resources are not very reassuring for
> a school's IT admin to say it mildly.
> Personally, I'm still a student but I serve as my school's primary IT
> administrator and I would rate myself as quite Linux literate, maybe
> even 'expert' (from a user's and administrator's point of view, that
> is). I was not able to gather a definitive set of resources that would
> always apply to what I wanted LTSP/Edubuntu to do. Maybe I'm just
> incompetent but I imagine a natural sciences teacher with mere Windows
> user experience wouldn't perform any better, if at all.
>
> 3) Split distribution. It seems that the Edubuntu-Addon itself is a
> major problem for people wanting to try out Edubuntu. People want to TRY
> Edubuntu. Most schools are completely Windows dependent and teachers are
> afraid of installing anything they would not be able to get rid of
> themselves. Edubuntu NEEDS to be able to showcase all its features from
> a live system or many people will be afraid of even trying it out in a
> running infrastructure (for a good reason). This will probably mean that
> a LTSP environment will have to fit the live medium, which will make it
> grow beyond CD size at any rate which on the other hand wouldn't matter
> all that much judging by how popular DVD/USB is nowadays. Edubuntu
> should NOT be restricted to fit onto a CD, that would be totally
> unnecessary.
>
> Those are my main three gripes. There are some minor ones but I won't go
> over those now because it would probably make this mail lose direction.
>
> I suggest completely revising Edubuntu and maybe even consider changing
> the name. I thought about forking Ubuntu to Schoolbuntu but I'd rather
> continue working under 'Edubuntu'. In case Canonical has other plans
> with that name, though, I see nothing wrong with starting a separate
> project forked from Ubuntu itself.
>
> A few straight goals need to be set out for Edubuntu (or whatever the
> name is going to be). We need to think about the target group. Currently
> Edubuntu is just an Ubuntu with a couple of fancy educations in it that
> match the tag 'education' and a LTSP server sitting beside. General
> purpose is great for general stuff but in this case we're dealing with a
> quite specialized use case and therefore Edubuntu might as well
> specialize. For general purpose stuff, the is Ubuntu Alternate with LTSP.
>
> A lot of the previous efforts will have to be discarded in order to make
> place for something new and consistent. A "revolution" is needed, in my
> opinion.
>
> What we need is a dedicated bunch of a few people that are willing and
> knowledgeable enough to help out to get things rolling. This would
> require a great deal of spare time which I have but I assume others do not.
>
> Let's hope somebody sees this.
>
> -- Sven-Hendrik Haase
>
>
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