[Ubuntu-Classroom] Promoting Lernid PPA

[John S Gruber]

Nathan has been going through Lernid bugs recently and I sure
appreciate it. Lyz has been incredibly helpful in testing, scheduling,
debugging, moral support, and just everything. Thanks again to you
both.

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Jono Bacon <jono at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On 07/13/2011 09:15 PM, Elizabeth Krumbach wrote:
>>
>> John and I have been very busily testing Lernid for the past week.
>>
>> I can't speak for John, but here are the following considerations:
>>
>> There are still problems with Lucid and Maverick (793780 which
>> essentially locks up my Lucid netbook for a couple minutes and causes
>> 806804 to be much worse) and Xubuntu Natty (808982) and I believe
>> there are still some problems related to python changes in Oneiric.

I agree with Lyz that these are two high priority bugs that should be
addressed pronto--particularly the first. I just finished constructing
a fix for the second and the fixes for both are proposed for merging
(which might make it easier for anyone curious to see what the changes
are). The fixes will be able to be tried from the PPA
https://launchpad.net/~jsjgruber/+archive/lernid-proposed , which
contains the instructions for installing the recipe constructed
packages it contains for Lucid , Maverick, Natty, and Oneiric. The
fixed package, internally version 0.8.1.5, should build within a few
hours (the build farm must be backed up). The packages will have an
old debian version numbers beginning with 0+227+20110715. As I said,
see the above link for installation instructions and About->Help will
display 0.8.1.5 as long as you have the correct new version.

It would be simply great if anyone would have time to try these over
the next week. (I'm hoping Lyz reads this line since she's good at
getting the Xubuntu one to happen, hint, hint). I've tested the first
patch most of the week, but not the Xubuntu one.

>
> While I can see value in us providing improvements for Lucid as it is an
> LTS, I don't think you folks should worry too much about Maverick. Obviously
> Oneiric is an edge case now with only crazy people such as myself running
> it.
>

I haven't tried Oneiric since the last alpha release. I can try it
again, but I agree we need not wait for Oneiric to work before
proceeding with most things.

>> In Ubuntu Natty it's looking pretty good, but they will not be able to
>> just apt-get install lernid from the standard repository because this
>> will get them the old, broken version. Users will have to install
>> ppa:lernid-devs/lernid-releases

The current version *is* much better than the downstream Natty version
(which at least does start and contains the flash hang fix and a
couple of others). That's where I started my Lernid journey.

>
> This seems reasonable; I suspect most people joining learning weeks, who are
> Ubuntu enthusiasts, will be running Natty at this point.
>
>> John - do you have the download statistics for Lernid that you shared
>> with us the other day? While there were more people downloading on
>> Natty, there is still a solid chunk of users on Lucid and some on
>> Maverick.
>
> Would be good to see this. :-)
>

I only have the lernid-releases ppa statistics. Currently they are:

Lucid: 51
Maverick: 30
Natty: 172
Oneiric: 7

All according to the Launchpad count of downloads. These may certainly
include some duplicates.

>> John has been doing really amazing work and this latest release of
>> Lernid is a HUGE improvement but I don't think we're there yet for
>> people who aren't willing to install a development ppa and deal with
>> stray bugs.
>
> Thanks so much, John, for all your incredible work. I am delighted to see
> Lernid stabalizing. In terms of the outstanding bugs, is there a list of
> critical bugs triaged that when fixed will make Lernid a viable option for
> the classroom team?

I'd like to thank everyone for all of the kind words and encouragement.

I don't have any list of blockers. As far as I know everything on the
bug list is Medium or Low once the above two are fixed.

I'd propose releasing those two fixes in a maintenance fix release,
0.8.1.5, in just about a week, in time for Cloud Week. Is everyone
okay with that? I'd wait until the end of Community week next week to
do the uploads to the lernid-releases PPA and would expect them to be
automatically downloaded to most lernid-releases PPA students over
next weekend. We could also do a test session next Friday but there
are no new features at all, just those two fixes.

If they work is the Classroom team good to go? If so I'd like then to
start work on getting this new upstream Lernid into Natty.

For the next two weeks it will be important for students using
upstream Lernid to have good event descriptions on ubuntu-owl. During
both testing sessions people have had trouble when not connecting to a
good event (containing a valid session calendar). Unless people
connect to a correct calendar the recent anti-phishing security fix
will mean they won't see new web pages (and, as always, won't see
slides).

Thanks.

John

ps. I'll be away from my computer much of the time until Thursday or
so, but hope to check in some. (Family Stuff)