Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?

[Jordan Erickson]

Ogra,

Very well put. I second your call to action - the community needs to be 
more involved. I am personally putting as much time as I can in 
collaborating and understanding these issues, and I hope to be a benefit 
to Edubuntu, Ubuntu/LTSP, and everything related.

Once you get the ball rolling, it's easier to collaborate and get things 
accomplished.


Sincerely,
Jordan



Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> On Mi, 2008-09-10 at 09:37 -0700, Jordan Mantha wrote: 
>   
>> The reality is that there has
>> only ever been 1 person paid to work on Edubuntu/LTSP, and in fact
>> that person has been moved to another project for his paid time and is
>> now volunteering like the rest of us to work on Edubuntu. 
>>     
>
> that person would be me ... 
>
> i'd like to note beyond the fact that i did the initial edubuntu
> deveolpment i was also the lead developer and upstream of ltsp until the
> 7.10 development cycle where fedora joined ltsp upstream development and
> we turned ltsp upstream over to a kind of consortium made up by
> participants of all the involved distros, which indeed makes ltsp move
> slower as we have to regard the need of all parties, have to accept
> changes that are not necessarily helping our particular distro but
> improve the overall experience at some point if all bugs are shaken
> out ... imagine a dictatorship vs democracy, the first years of ltsp5
> development i could make the decisions for ubuntu ltsp only while since
> 7.10 i try to keep the pieces in shape and working for ubuntu after
> others made the changes ...
>
> one thing coming up often here since 7.10 are apps hanging around ...
> please note *this is usually a faulty app* i made various requests to
> the people complaining to please file bugs about the apps not exiting
> properly if their parent session goes away (the first request for that
> was around the 7.10 development cycle over a year ago) so i can point
> the app developers to fix these bugs (whih they will gratefully do). up
> to today not a single bug for any of the apps was put into launchpad
> only many hackish workarounds came up that kill apps on startup in very
> intrusive ways ...
>
> another thing i asked for as well in the 7.10 cycle (where i still could
> invest worktime into edubuntu) various times was to help testing *during
> the development cycle* at a time where i can fix bugs, my last request
> got me two new testers, mainly David van Asche and Asmo Koskinen ... you
> will notice that these two are the guys who apparently dont have any
> problems at all, both deploying huge setups of edubuntu with ltsp. with
> hardy our policies changed and i will be able to apply fixes even to the
> released version, that will give you the opportunity to help improving
> the LTS release to your requirement, all this needs is that developers
> get clear bugs, i will do what i can to help out here but please note
> that my time is very limted, beyond me there is Jordan Mantha around to
> help with educational apps and Scott Balneaves can help with the ltsp
> side of things, but what we need for that is a set of clear bugs to work
> on, ranting or blaming anyone for anything wont get us anywhere. 
>
> if we want edubuntu to stay around, please help, file bugs and lets
> clearly identify whats at fault and just fix it ...
>
> gnome, openoffice and firefox being ignorant to multiuser setups
> upstream is a fact since years we wont easily change (check their ML
> archives if you dont belive me). the latter two simply through the fact
> that their core development happens on windows, often people forget that
> they are ports to linux. gnome started to listen to the complaints a
> while ago and starts to make attenpts towards multi user support (but
> trying to do it the right way takes its time and will still take more,
> consolekit and friends are a first good step). this is simply nothing
> *we* can change but we can help pointing out the problems to upstream.
>
> i know scott and jordan are planning bugdays soon if you want ltsp or
> edubuntu be in good shape, please help them ... 
> if you think fedora is better for you, feel free to try it out, but bear
> in mind that the ltsp code we all use in debian, fedora, ubuntu and
> gentoo is identical, we all work on the same code since a year and in
> the end provide the same scripts to our users for running thin
> clients ... 
>
> i'm personally a bit disappointed not having as much time anymore as i
> did for edubuntu and was also hoping the upstream changes in ltsp  with
> new distros joining the development wouldnt have any effect on the end
> user experience but that apparently was the case. all i can do here is
> beg you guys to help out and help compensating my missing time, i will
> do what i can but have full time duties in other areas and the day only
> has 24h... putting blames on people or ranting wont help, we *can* do
> something for hardy as well as we can for intrepid but it needs proper
> identification of the problems and proper bugs filed.
>
> ciao
> 	oli
>