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

[john]

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

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The two biggest fixes for us were:

(1)  We had to put in place was a script that would clean up left over
users processes. The script is based on Matt Oquist's Xterminator
script, but its called by the user from /etc/profile (I think Matt has
a different way of doing this). At the start of the session the script
spawns a daemon that watches the user processes, when that user logs
off, the daemon makes sure that all of the users left over processes
are cleaned up, then it kills itself. Since we use LTSP in classrooms
and libraries, a substantial part of our 1000 students user base may
check in on any given day.  This version of the Xterminator script has
helped control creeping memory usage that was really adding up for us.
I sent our fixes back to Matt a couple months ago, I don't know if he
plans to release this again as a .deb or not.  In fact we done some
work since I sent him stuff so I guess I owe him another update.

(2) The default OpenOffice setup needed major tweaks for us to be
happy with it. We wanted everyone to have their defaults set to M$
formats, we wanted them to save auto-magically to the correct remote
drive, and be spared the licensing chat. We also had some weird issues
surrounding logoff/logon and leftover Openoffice session that the
Xterminator script rewrite solved for us.

Other things we did  which took some time to set up were getting
single source authentication via Active Directory to work seamlessly
for LTSP users, and using a Linux File server to share student files
via NFS for LTSP users and SMB for windows and Mac users.

Although not strictly LTSP related, probably the coolest thing we did
was moving the student file store from MS AD to Linux, that in turn
allowed us the NFS/SMB options. This fall we're rolling out "files
from home" using sftp which was made possible by the move away from MS
based file storage. We think that we have this set up simply enough
for middle and high-schoolers to use.  We spent the spring testing
with a group of  students and making sure we were on top of (we hope)
the security related issues for the fall.



>
> 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.
Good point. I am concerned about security, but I feel like our LTSP
systems are pretty safe on the LAN. I've also found
myself holding off on patching the system during the week, even for
security stuff, since I am paranoid that a fix will break something.
Perhaps this is a bad way to proceed. I'd be interested to hear how
other folks handle this.

>
> 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.
Understood.
>
> 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).
I am interested to hear this. Firefox is a terrible hog it's probably
the biggest offender out there for us.
Right now I am running edubuntu Hardy/ Firefox 3 on my workstation via
a ntavo 6030 tc, here's what top tells me:

 8183 john      20   0  380m 220m  33m R    4 10.9 108:54.42 firefox

I think this is still pretty high. And I am not trying to watch flash
video like the kids are. So I am not sure if I see a memory savings
here for FF3. I'd be interested to hear your response.

Opera seems to have a lot smaller footprint, with a bunch of windows
open here's what top says:

22767 john      20   0  169m  86m  18m S    0  4.3   0:13.15 opera


Also Opera is WAY more configurable. We can do all kinds of things
globally with Opera that we can't seem to do with firefox. However I
believe Opera is non-GPL software.
>
> 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?)

Yeah, I think that .docx is support under the version of OO that ships
with Hardy.

>
> 5. I want support from the ubuntu community at large who will be using
>   hardy.
>
I understand, although often times I found my questions/problems are
more general than
that, so I am not sure running Hardy/Intrepid etc will be critical.
Although it would be for solving
Hardy/Intrepid related problems ;-)

> 6. Hardy is LTS which means we need not upgrade again for several years if
>   we don't wish to.
>
Good point. Fiesty is not an LTS version, so that may be a compelling
reason. One possible downside to LTS releases is that I am not clear
that Open Office is back-ported to them. I wasn't able to find it just
now as I looked through the previous LTS release. Maybe you know the
answer to this?


Thanks again for taking the time to share your approach. I really appreciate it.

John