local apps, Edubuntu site and community structure

[Ace Suares]

Excellent approach for discussion!
The non-developers can really make a difference here. Experienced users 
are also very valuable to the whole. I like the ideas you bring forward.

ace

Joseph Hartman wrote:
> Jordan: I think Ace is right about firefox. It seems to work fine for me 
> for research purposes, especially since I don't install the flash plugin 
> so no banner ads slow things down. The problems really reveal themselves 
> when a bunch of students start working with google docs (which uses a 
> lot of AJAX I think) to save papers/spreadsheets and manipulate images 
> in presentations/websites and such. I've heard that native Firefox in 
> Linux is slow altogether, slower even than Firefox in a virtualized 
> Windows OS running in a Linux system, but I don't know if that's true 
> and that's not what my primary trouble is. Mostly I have problems with 
> flash and google apps. Thanks for the offer of help, I'll see how far I 
> can get tomorrow and if I run into trouble I'll try to have some 
> specific questions for you to help me with. Cheers!
> 
> Ace: I think it could be helpful to have an area on the wiki that told 
> about different setups schools around the world have done. I know there 
> are some others on the list who also work at schools and have done what 
> I've done or better. Uwe //Geercken and Asmo Koskinen both come to mind 
> as I've learned a lot from their posts to the list. You certainly have 
> my permission to use any and all of my information.
> 
> Scott: when I reflect on my own frustrations with ubuntu and ltsp, I 
> think they mostly stem from a lack of structure. You say "there has to 
> be *some* structure, *some* tool that's acting as a gateway." and I 
> completely agree. The problem I've encountered is that the structure in 
> place is unclear at best and ambiguous in many cases. Most of the time I 
> think people just have a problem they want to fix and instead of there 
> being an obvious or even single destination to get the information or 
> resources they need there are many different resources of varying 
> complexity. For example, with this particular issue of local apps, I 
> follow this list, I follow the wiki (which there are apparently 2 of I 
> learned today?) I follow this thread on ubuntu forums 
> <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7647569#post7647569>, I follow 
> a few people's blogs, I randomly google it sometimes, and I can 
> evidently get on IRC and chat with you. I've never used IRC before but I 
> could probably figure it out without too much difficulty, but that's a 
> level of complexity above googling "ltsp local apps ubuntu".
> 
> Additionally I think there is a lack of structure organizationally in 
> the community itself. Until today I thought Gavin was employed by 
> Canonical or something just because he posts helpful stuff all the time. 
> I've been using Ubuntu since Dapper Drake and following this list for 
> years, but I'm still a complete amateur. Meanwhile there are 
> professional Linux developers out there who might be on the list for the 
> first time today, and there is no way to differentiate between the two 
> of us. Half the reason I post to ubuntuforums and my own blog instead of 
> the wiki is because I know I'm authorized to do so and won't be screwing 
> anything up by adding my own information.
> 
> Perhaps this is just the way things have to be for a community shared 
> distribution, but it seems to contrast with the way much of the rest of 
> ubuntu is run, such as launchpad, with it's ability to track users and 
> statistics and permissions. I'm not too familiar with launchpad, so 
> maybe I'm wrong and it is as much of a rat's nest as what I'm doing now, 
> but I know from what I've read about it that it's quite respected in 
> many circles. I noticed that Stephane Graber was made an "official" 
> developer of Ubuntu or something in Launchpad recently, and at least 
> that helps to establish a hierarchy of expertise in the community 
> structure. (Congrats to Stephane BTW) Ubuntuforums does a good job of 
> this by denoting the number of contributions each member has made as 
> well as which members are moderators.
> 
> In any case, I think it is confusing that in the edubuntu jaunty release 
> notes <http://www.edubuntu.org/releasenotes/904> it says "Installing 
> Firefox inside the LTSP chroot and setting /LOCAL_APPS_MENU=True/ in 
> |lts.conf| will make Firefox to run locally on the thin client. The XDG 
> integration takes care of adding the application in the menu or 
> replacing it by the local application if it's already present." but then 
> does not include a hyperlink or anything to actually direct a reader to 
> a place where they can read more about how to actually implement local apps.
> 
> You ask: "So, once again, what's the solution?  How can we make things 
> easier?  Ok, lets say we're not going to kick things upstream.  Lets 
> say, starting right now, Edubuntu, the entity, is going to look at every 
> bug, fix it, and if upstream needs fixing, we'll spearhead it."
> 
> I'm more concerned with documentation than bug fixing and more familiar 
> with google's tools than I am with forums and wikis, but I'll try to 
> describe what I would do at my school if I had the problems I've 
> described above:
> 
> First I would establish a google site to house all things 
> Ubuntu/Edubuntu LTSP related and divide the site into sections for each 
> release since many pages on the wiki apply to one release but not 
> another. Then I would "invite" all the "developers/experts" on this 
> list, launchpad, or whatever to be "collaborators" on the site. These 
> collaborators would be able to change the website pages while all other 
> people would not be able to change the actual documentation pages, but 
> would be able to leave "comments" at the bottom of the page to suggest 
> changes for the collaborators to make to the page, bring attention to 
> outdated/changed information, relate personal experiences, etc. This 
> would, in my opinion create a hybrid of ubuntuforums and the wiki where 
> the canon information is in the page while discussions and experiences 
> about the information on the page took place in the comments section below.
> 
> I would borrow from ubuntuforums' member rating graphic setup to 
> distinguish between experts and noobs or, since google can't do this, I 
> would require each member to rate themselves on a scale of 1-20 by 
> answering questions about how long they've been using ubuntu/ltsp, how 
> many times per week they post comments to the site, how many hours per 
> week they spend using Linux, etc. and then put this number in their 
> avatar or username (probably avatar though since it would have to change 
> over time).
> 
> I would install a google talk widget on the homepage and bypass IRC 
> altogether by allowing visitors to click on the homepage to chat with a 
> collaborator if one were available. (you can see a google sites example 
> of this here <http://www.kainoshealth.net/>) Another nice feature of 
> google sites is that it allows the public to follow changes to any given 
> webpage within the site via email, just like RSS. Therefore, I would 
> include a widget on the homepage that automatically highlights recent 
> changes made to the site so anyone could get site updates via email just 
> by "following" the homepage.
> 
> I would require all collaborators to include information about 
> themselves, their accomplishments, qualifications, and areas of of 
> expertise in their profile so that regular lurkers could single out a 
> collaborator for help with specific issues. I would also give 
> collaborators titles depending on their tenure so the longest serving 
> collaborators could be easily recognized. I would divide up the 
> collaborators by last name and assign A-G last name collaborators to 
> upkeep the area of the site related to one release, H-N last name 
> collaborators to the next release, and O-Z collaborators to the release 
> after that.
> 
> Finally, I would create two google forms to encourage member 
> participation in the site. The first form would allow members to submit 
> ideas/walkthroughs/howtos/experiences in written or video or audio or 
> screencast or whatever form for the collaborators to review and either 
> include or exclude from the site. The second form would be a nomination 
> form for the user to nominate either themselves or another member for 
> collaborator status.
> 
> There's actually a pretty good example of a google site 
> <http://www.evonypedia.com/> doing much of what I described. (I don't 
> actually play the game, but I do subscribe to the Google Apps twitter 
> feed) You'll notice there aren't any comments at the bottom of any 
> pages, but that's just because they turned them off.
> 
> I don't imagine Canonical is too interested in employing Google for 
> their support services, but I believe much of what I described is 
> possible with other FOSS tools like Drupal, (in fact, wasn't launchpad 
> just opensourced and released?) and as long as the movement is towards 
> more structure both in terms of the community and the information I 
> think it would go a long ways towards clarifying where Edubuntu as an 
> entity and community stands in terms of strengths and weaknesses and 
> would enable more valuable participation by part-timers and amateurs. -joe
>