Edubuntu 7.10 - A Released Debacle and a Practice in Failure

[Jeremy Visser]

On Tue, 2007-12-11 at 08:14 -1000, R. Scott Belford wrote:
> I am very disillusioned with Edubuntu, the leadership (or lack thereof) 
> and the false claims of functionality.

I can't tell you how happy I am to see this post — and happy to see that
somebody else sees it the way I do. I don't see your post as a troll
(although it is certainly flamebait).

I have been trialling Edubuntu LTSP on-and-off for the last couple of
years, and every experience has been nothing short of painful. It's been
riddled with bugs, visual glitches, incomplete documentation, and is
generally of inferior quality compared with the quality and polish of
the Ubuntu desktop distribution.

I'm not saying it's the developers' fault that Edubuntu is like this.
Obviously, it's the lack of contributors and bug testers (QA currently
sucks) that is really hurting the project (so, if anything, it's my
fault, as I should be contributing). My point is that what _really_ gets
to me are the false claims that the project makes that the parent talks
about.

If Edubuntu is "riddled with bugs, visual glitches, and is generally of
inferior quality" (quoting myself here), then don't say "Thin client
deployments offers clients a lower TCO (total cost of ownership),
simpler installation and easier maintenance than typical IT
deployments."

I think we need to see respins (a.l.a. 6.06.1) instead of turning a
blind eye (ignorance is bliss), longer development cycles, and possibly
even skipping shipping Edubuntu every other Ubuntu release to focus on
quality.