Control file in tertiary description - “fully supported”

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi Marcia,

Responses inline:

On Sun, 2023-08-13 at 22:28 -0400, Marcia Wilbur wrote:
> Hi Erich,  and thank you for the quick response.
> 
> In 2017, I was working on a project with kids on computers. They had
> previously been using Ubermix. 
> 
> What I noticed when I was evaluating the packages Ubuntu-edu-tertiary
> for example, was a deb archive categorized for a particular grade
> level, with other projects and software packages that had nothing to
> do with Ubuntu or ubuntu dev with the exception of putting  the
> flowers in the bag and rolling up a Deb.
> Not minimize the effort, but I wanted to know if there was anything
> contributed to those projects or anything original from Ubuntu devs.
> I’m sure gathering a list of decent software for students take some
> evaluation and coordination

>From myself and Amy, there's nothing contributed to the included
applications. The extense of our work is here: Git : Code : “Edubuntu
Developers” team (launchpad.net)

> Have you done user experience testing or participation to generate
> that list?
> Just wondering. I do have a background in UX.

With our son being in elementary school while we were bringing Edubuntu
back and now entering middle school, we're able to extrapolate his
experience as a data point and he acts as a student consultant. The
23.10 release is likely to look slightly different in terms of what is
installed by default and is very much work-in-progress. For 23.04 we
pretty much took what was already in the seeds and evaluated from
there.

> So my question was, when I saw all the KDE tools and apps,  other
> than finding, and categorizing good tools for students in that age
> range does the ed ubuntu community contribute to any of those
> projects, or does ed Ubuntu have its own projects/tools for
> education?

Edubuntu does not develop its own tools other than for administration.
Developing any actual applications beyond that is outside of our scope
and is outside of the scope for most Linux distributions to develop
their own software. You'll notice very few Ubuntu flavors develop any
original software except administrative tools.

> Or maybe it’s just a few people on the project like you and your wife
> trying to still provide educational packages for Ubuntu?

This is mostly what's accurate.

> How many people do you have actively contributing to your effort?

We really only have about 3-4 currently: my wife (leading the project),
me doing the technical work (and obviously answering the technical
questions), and our son consulting on the student experience and doing
a lot of testing. We also have one person contributing via website
maintenance currently and as needed until Canonical's Information
Support department finally gets a full-fledged website up and running
for us as this one is just temporary. You can see this on
https://edubuntu.org.

Oh, and since this is on a mailing list, remember to reply to all so
that your response makes it back to the mailing list. Thanks!

Erich

> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Aug 13, 2023 at 9:59 PM Erich Eickmeyer
> <eeickmeyer at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Hi Marcia
> > 
> > There's a lot to unpack here.
> > 
> > On Sun, 2023-08-13 at 21:07 -0400, Marcia Wilbur wrote:
> > > Hi. I couldn’t help but notice the description in the control
> > > file of the tertiary Deb.
> > > 
> > > Where it states, this package depends on all the educational
> > > software for tertiary grade level education that is fully
> > > supported by canonical in the edubuntu community
> > > 
> > > What exactly is meant by fully supported? 
> > > What kind of support have you provided in the past?
> > > Maybe dev or qa for  defects or bugs?
> > > 
> > > For example, one of the packages listed in the control file as
> > > recommends not depends, but recommends, is Dia.
> > > 
> > > How do you support a user who is having a problem finding an
> > > option? Do you send them to the dia support or do you manage this
> > > yourselves? Do you contribute developers for bugs or defects? Do
> > > you have a bounty program or perhaps donate to the project?
> > > 
> > > I’m just wondering what is meant by fully supported. thanks
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > First of all, a little history.
> > 
> > That control file was revived and largely unedited from its
> > original form from 9+ years ago, and when it was originally
> > written, all of the software may very well have been fully
> > supported by Canonical. Unfortunately, I wasn't around at that
> > time, so I can't speak to that. However, I can speak to where it is
> > at currently.
> > 
> > Edubuntu, formerly known as Ubuntu for Education, was spun-off into
> > a community project around 2009 and is no longer developed by
> > Canonical. Additionally, in 2014, its final version (14.04) was
> > released before it went into a "maintenance mode" of sorts and was
> > deprecated until my wife and I revived it. Part of that revival
> > included bringing back much of what existed previously, including
> > the control file for the metapackages (the source is edubuntu-meta)
> > which is created from a seed. Getting the seed to build into the
> > .iso image and the metapackages was priortity more than getting the
> > descriptions updated.
> > 
> > Edubuntu, however, is not its own project as it is a flavor of
> > Ubuntu and doesn't exist as a separate distribution from Ubuntu.
> > Ubuntu's repositories exist as follows:
> > 
> > * Main (officially supported by Canonical, Free and Open Source
> > Software)
> > * Universe (Community Supported, Free and Open Source Software)
> > * Multiverse (Community and Canonical Supported, Non-Free
> > [proprietary] Open Source Software)
> > * Restricted (Proprietary/3rd-Party Supported Trusted Software)
> > 
> > Edubuntu is built from a mix of Main, Universe, and Multiverse. For
> > instance, Dia is found in the Universe repository (community
> > support), but gnome-calculator is found in the Main repository
> > (Canonical support).
> > 
> > Items listed as Depends and Recommends in control files of packages
> > simply list what packages are in relationship to each other.
> > Recommends are simply soft-dependencies, meaning they can be
> > removed without breaking the package that soft-depended
> > (recommended) them. If they were listed as Depends, then if they
> > are removed they also remove the package that depended them. This
> > is outlined in the Debian Packaging basics here: Chapter 7. Basics
> > of the Debian package management system By the way, as a packager
> > myself, this is something I had to spend a couple years learning.
> > 
> > Bugs get filed via Launchpad and (hopefully) get reported to the
> > upstream developers, but that's not always guaranteed. Sometimes
> > bug triagers, if they remember to do so, will recommend to the
> > reporter to file the bug upstream to Debian (since the vast
> > majority of our packages come sync'd from Debian each development
> > cycle), and if it's not just Debian and Ubuntu that's affected,
> > then to the upstream developer. Part of getting a bug fixed, and
> > reporting a bug, is to be willing to go all the way to report the
> > bug. The vast majority of the time people will report bugs to the
> > distribution and consider it "not my problem anymore, it's theirs
> > to fix now" when that's not true because at that point they're
> > still consuming. If one wishes to contribute by reporting bugs,
> > that's how they contribute, not consume.
> > 
> > I hope that helps clarify. I'm sorry if the descriptions were
> > confusing, we can definitely get that cleared-up before 23.10.
> > Remember, 23.04 was the first release in 9 years and it's not even
> > a long-term support release.
> > 
> > --
> > Erich Eickmeyer
> > Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
> > Technical Lead - Edubuntu

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