Edubuntu's focus, and future.

Ben Crisford ben at freeyourpc.tk
Mon May 25 08:56:43 UTC 2009


Hey Matthew,

Nice to have you with us! :).

First of all, you are 100% correct, edubuntu has fallen wayside, but in the
last week or so we have been working hard, making plans to "bring it to
life" a little more.  We had a meeting on friday.  Someone posted the
minutes to the mailing list, so check the archive if you're interested.

I agree with you about seperating edubuntu for different stages of edubuntu,
but it already does this to *some* extent, but yes, it could definately be
improved.

Again, its nice to have you with us :D,
Ben

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Matthew Lye <matthew.lye at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> I should first apologize to you all, I have been involved in many areas of
> the Ubuntu community but have largely ignored Edubuntu even though I work in
> higher education. I'd like to improve that and will begin lurking in the
> #edubuntu channel as Vantrax.
>
> Edubuntu seems to have fallen by the wayside somewhat and without being
> involved I am going to take a stab and say that people have big ideas, and
> great goals, but not enough people get involved when it comes time to sit
> down and do the work. The Edubuntu project is a great grand idea, but I
> think it needs identifiable and achievable goals to move forward, and at the
> moment it seems to me ,as someone on the outside, that it is stagnant.
>
> I work for a large university managing teaching environments running
> Ubuntu. We are running Ubuntu dual booting with Windows instead of using
> Edubuntu. From my quick look at Edubuntu it didnt seem to add significant
> value as its own distribution. It seemed little more than Ubuntu with some
> applications installed and a prepacked thin client setup (LTSP) if you were
> that way inclined. If the packages were'nt what you wanted Ubuntu was easier
> to build off. Also it seemed like LTSP was a great way to end up frustrated
> and confused if you were anything less than a sysadmin. I dont say this to
> discourage you all but in the hope that those still looking at the list will
> think of what the focus is. Im going to make some more assumptions and say
> the focus is to assist in the implementation of the Ubuntu in teaching
> spaces from Kindergarten all the way through to secondary and tertiary
> studies.
>
> This means you need versions with different software and themes for
> Kindergarten, Preschool, Primary School, Secondary School, and Tertiary
> Education. Each has different goals and requirements, and so far I can see
> one Edubuntu release. A great example of this done well is Qimo, based off
> Ubuntu: http://qimo4kids.com/page/What-is-Qimo.aspx. Qimo isnt networked
> based, but how many kindergartens and preschools have enough computers to
> need a network? They made decisions based of the needs of a specific target
> market, then customised something just for them.
>
> When I was initially looking at implementing Ubuntu in university teaching
> environments I would have loved to have prepackaged distribution that would
> have done the work for me, but it there are certain things that I would have
> expected from it. I would have expected that Edubuntu would build on LTS
> released of Ubuntu with meta packages designed to install and configure
> applications that would be useful for each of those areas, and support
> documentation to go along with them. I would expect to see documentation on
> how to connect Edubuntu to Active Directory and Novell domains and
> information on how to create and deploy images that are locked down so that
> students cannot change the desktop (even an application that implements
> commands in gconftool). I would expect to see some information on best
> practice for setting up student home directories located on centralised
> servers and how to use /net directories to mount the home directories to
> mount /home. These are all problems I had to learn to deal with because
> documentation was hard to find. These are things that need to be done to run
> linux well in teaching spaces, to be able to compete with Microsoft.
>
> If I can help the Edubuntu project I am happy to do so, but at this stage
> my time would be limited to playing devils advocate and giving advice on
> what to focus on. My development skills are limited, and my time even more
> but I have done this before. I have built SOE's based on Ubuntu for teaching
> environments, then supported them. I have trained others to do so as well.
> My suggestion for Edubuntu's future is to focus on developing high quality
> support frameworks for educational environments. Develop metapackages that
> turn Ubuntu LTS into Edubuntu versions for specific educational groups. Try
> not to reinvent the wheel when you can give it a fresh coat of paint and put
> it back on the wagon.
>
> Id like to see this project succeed, but the key I think is to ask 'what
> does it bring the warrants its own brand' then focus on that.
>
> -Matthew Lye
>
> <No tree's were harmed during this transmission. However, a great number of
> electrons were terribly inconvenienced>
>
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>
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