What version of Edubuntu will you run this fall, and why?

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Wed, 09 Jul 2008, john wrote:

> I am trying to figure out if I want to iterate this summer. Its taken
> me nearly a year to get the kinks in 7.04 adjusted to the kinks on our
> lan and I am really loath to go through that again.

Could you give us an idea what sort of customisations you had to make?  In
our case there's been relatively few.

> I've been running hardy on my workstation since it came out, but I am
> not convinced that it offers the kids much more than Fiesty did
> (besides perhaps an updated firefox and openoffice experience). I was
> wondering what version of edubuntu or ltsp you'll be presenting kids
> with this fall and why you chose what you did.

We're upgrading feisty->gutsy->hardy today actually.  A few reasons off the
top of my head:

1. Feisty will not be security patched for the whole year.  There have been
   several very serious security vulnerabilities recently.  I wouldn't feel
   happy without security patching.

2. I don't want to wait until next year to upgrade
   feisty->gutsy->hardy->intrepid->jumpy (or whatever it's called) as I'm
   not even sure the gutsy repositories will still be available.  I also
   don't want to reinstall the server.

3. Firefox 3, while still slightly unstable, is really quite a good
   improvement both in terms of the user and the admin (its ram usage is
   substantially lower on both the thin client and the server).

4. The latest OpenOffice version will be best at opening the new Microsoft
   Office formats (actually I think you need an external filter for this so
   maybe not?) 

5. I want support from the ubuntu community at large who will be using
   hardy.

6. Hardy is LTS which means we need not upgrade again for several years if
   we don't wish to.

Gavin