[Ubuntu-Classroom] lernid bugs

[John S Gruber]

For those who don't know me, I'm John Gruber, a new member of the
Lernid team, and I have been working the last several months on fixing
bugs in Lernid.

Though students using Lernid should be a Lernid maintainer's first
concern, those organizing and supporting classes must be a very close
second--there's no reason to use Lernid without interesting classes.
Therefore I'm writing to tell you about recent progress, my plans, and
to ask a favor.

I started with the Ubuntu downstream when I saw that Lernid wouldn't
start for me (or others) in Natty while it was under development.
There were two bugs to be addressed, LP: #716937 and LP: #727232. As I
used Lernid for an all day set of sessions it hung 15 minutes before
the last session ended after being in use all day. By stress-testing I
tracked that problem down to LP: #749848 and suspect that the
classroom teams may have had to deal with it before. Lernid would just
hang there, unresponsive, after displaying almost any web page
containing flash content. I think a member of the #ubuntu-classroom
team mentioned these symptoms.

More recently we finally released fixes that others had prepared last
summer, and a few lower profile patches as well. Two weeks ago a
two-hour long testing session was held in #ubuntu-classroom.

Currently I am looking at improving Lernid when it faces network
problems (mostly at start-up), and I also hope to have addressed each
of the critical and high priority bugs on the list with the possible
exception of LP: #793788 (slides). While we won't be able to speed up
the connection process (LP: #604773) we can try to set reasonable
expectations.

I plan to release a new version by the end of this month and get it
synced to Oneiric. I'd also like to issue another in August addressing
LP: #793788, LP: 533279, and whatever usability issues seem opportune
and appropriate.

As a favor, could I ask that the classroom teams take a look at the
ubuntu bug list in the next couple of days and let me know if there
are bugs which importance I have underestimated, or left as new or
unconfirmed? Are there any essential bugs missing from the list? My
hope is that with next week's release lernid will be fit for use in
Ubuntu's classrooms so please let me know, in particular, which bugs
should be considered blockers.

Leandro, I wasn't sure how many of your teammates speak English, and
I'm afraid I don't speak any Spanish, so I'm hoping that you can reach
out to your team for me. I'd also like to draw your attention to LP:
#533279 and its related blueprint at
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/lernid/+spec/lernid-config-file-improvements
. I'd like your team's feedback (and, I hope, approval) for these
plans.

I'd like any of you to feel free to write me with any other concerns
you may have that you think I may be able to address, now and in the
future.

Thanks.

John