Edubuntu's focus, and future.

[Bud Roth]

Like Matthew, I'd like to see Edubuntu succeed in the education
marketplace and agree with his comments below.  My experience trying to
get my sons' middle school to adopt GNU/Linux showed me that LTSP
created more issues than it solved.  

I think LTSP is a great idea, but not one that should be bundled with
Edubuntu.  It should be developed in its own right for commercial
environments as well as educational.  

On top of that, I'd agree with Matthew that Edubuntu developers need to
focus on education segments (ES, MS, HS, college) and develop with a
particular age group in mind.  

I too would like to help.

Regards,

Bud Roth


On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 09:56 +0100, Ben Crisford wrote:
> 
> 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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>         edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
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>         
> 
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