Life after LTSP

Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) jonathan at ubuntu.com
Fri Nov 12 14:53:48 GMT 2010


Hi Charl

These are all good questions, I'll try to respond from them from my
point of view...

On 11/11/2010 23:00, Charl Wentzel wrote:
> 1. Is Edubuntu = education software?
> This was the obvious starting point, delivering FOSS eductional software
> to kids/schools.  Is this "big" enough.  It seems that educational
> software is only on of the aspects a school looks at.  It seems
> infrastructure is becoming more important, i.e. websites for schools to
> make content available to schools, tools to assist schools with
> scheduling, tools to make information available to parents, etc.  More
> and more customers/schools want total solutions not parts. Edubuntu
> cannot survive on its own and will either increase its scope over time
> or partner with other projects.  

Currently, (kind of officially) Edubuntu is a group of people who want
to make Ubuntu a great system to use in schools and homes for education
purposes (maybe even one day universities). That surely includes getting
the best of free educational software out there into Ubuntu and part of
the Edubuntu installation. From a technical perspective, I think it
should certainly include non-education specific tools that could make
Ubuntu more desirable and friendly in schools. Tools that bring down
system administration, such as LTSP, certainly is useful in many
environments. Then there are also tools like Schooltool that we'd like
to get included, while it's not education-specific, it is specific to
schools. There are also many other software that we should really pay
attention too, but with limited resources we have to prioritise.

Besides the technical aspects, we also need to think about our
community, other communities in education and especially our end users.
There are many people, processes and systems to take in to account in a
project like this, especially considering that mixing technology and
education in some cases is like mixing oil and water! In particular,
some technologists know very little about education and all the terms
and technical terms that are used, and also vice-versa. There's
sometimes a big gap and I think part of the Edubuntu project should be
to help bridge that gap.

> 2. Is Edubuntu = LTSP?
> This is obviously one of Edutubuntu's strong points which fall into the
> catagory of infrastruture.  The aim is to lower the cost of implementing
> labs at schools.  Is LTSP the only options?  The conversation started
> wiht DBRL.  I've been playing with it and I had it running in an
> instant, something which I still can't do with LTSP.  And it has both
> Thick and Thin client modes, plus extra!  Don't through the idea away if
> you haven't tried it at all.

Hmm? I'm not sure I understand. LTSP is a 2 click installation when
installing Edubuntu, and doing a fat client build is only two switches
to ltsp-build-client :)

> Either way, LTSP or DBRL, both offer a good solution for overcome the
> problems of kids with their own laptops at school.  You can use a lab PC
> or do a network boot over the network on you own PC.  In both cases you
> end up with a pre-configured environment with the things you need (and
> are allowed to use)

DRBL does indeed offer similar benefits than LTSP, if we have enough
people in Edubuntu who are willing to support it, then there's
absolutely no reason for it not to become an officially supported part
of the system. Personally I'd be only to happy for Edubuntu to support
DRBL well. Also, from a personal perspective, we already have LTSP so
there hasn't been any reason for me to do any work on it in Edubuntu.

> 3. Enabling different modes of operation
> The discussion spoke about people with PC's at home (their own top of
> the range or donated entry-level).  Using bootable USB stick is an
> excellent idea, it would definitely keep parents happy, not messing with
> their PC's.  How does Edubuntu make it easier to do this?  Do most
> people even know they can boot from the DVD and install on a USB stick?

Nor sure, although we do mention that a live DVD can be transferred to a
USB stick in our installation guide:
http://edubuntu.org/documentation/10.10/installation-guide#Using_a_USB_Disk_

> The question is: Are we looking ahead?  There are plenty of
> individuals/companies looking ahead, but is Edubuntu as a project
> looking ahead?... far enough?  How do we assist those forward thinking
> guys?  How do we bring back some of those idea into Edubuntu so that
> everybody can benefit from it?  Is mentioning these ideas in the forum
> enough?  Shouldn't the Edubuntu road map reflect some of these ideas?

Currently we focus on the next release and what we can do during the
next release cycle. We have vague ideas and know of a lot that needs to
be done in a longer than 6 month period, and we cut that down a bit
further with every release that passes. So yes, I'd definitely say we're
looking ahead (and moving forward). Far enough? I don't know. When it
comes to ideas, we've always had enough of those, we just need more
people to implement :)

So no, just mentioning ideas in forums is certainly not enough. That
doesn't mean that ideas aren't welcomed though, we love them.

I think our roadmap does an ok job of including ideas that are planned
for implementation in the short-term. We shouldn't include things in our
short-term roadmap if we know that they won't be done, though.

> To be honest, I don't know.  I know what I'll be doing this week...
> reading, lots and lots of reading! 

Great.

-Jonathan



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