My first post to our groups mailing list

[Christopher Rohde]

I dont know... in the spirit of the Great Compromise (hooray for american
history classes rearing their heads) I think that both of you are on the
right track re: edubuntu. While I agree with Mark in most respects here, I
don't think Mike is trying to trick anyone or misrepresent what we are
advocating. If we were to market edubuntu in the way that Mike is
recommending, why not recommend it in the same way we would to friends and
family? ie "Listen, I know this is a change, and new challenges will present
themselves, but you have X number of resources out there, not the least of
which is the Ubuntu Florida team" and so forth. let them know about the
advantages of ubuntu not only in educational software, but in parental
control and the inability to install/remove w/o the root password, etc.
I think this is definitely an avenue worth pursuing, and maybe if we could
meet up in IRC one night and talk it out, we may have come up with a short
list of goals to set for ourselves on the wiki finally ;)
Speaking of Parental Controls, Lando is working on something interesting in
that regard too, and I think it would be a nice way to dive in if he were to
need any help.

What school did you go to Mark? I went to Pine View in Sarasota

Chris

On 3/12/07, Mark Sisley <msisley at ufl.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello all :)
>
> My name is Mark Sisley and I just joined the list. I'm from
> Palmetto/Bradenton/Sarasota area (in descending order, in hoping
> that you'll recognize one of the former), but am at UF in
> Gainesville for college. I idle in the ubuntu-fl room as Mark007.
>
> While I just joined the list yesterday, I was looking through the
> archives, and would like to respond to Mike's message.
>
> >> Edubuntu is the "educational operating system"; promote it as
> >> "educational software" that makes learning fun for the "kids".
> >> I have
> >> been looking at this distribution as a gateway into the household
> >> computing market.
>
> This is an excellent idea. I had never thought of the merit of
> marketing to parents about Edubuntu. I had always thought of it as
> something for schools to use in teaching students. Kudos for the
> idea.
>
> >> So you just let them know that they can keep windows and have
> >> this great
> >> "educational software" too. All they have to do is pick which
> >> one they
> >> want to use when they turn their computer on.
> ...
> >> Note: Forget terms like "dual-boot" or other things that will
> >> scare
> >> them.
>
> This, however I feel a little differently about. When I first read
> this post yesterday, I thought, "That's a pretty good idea."
> However, pulling the wool over someone's eyes like that is
> dangerous for several reasons. First, and most importantly, we can
> never be entirely certain that (edu/x/k)ubuntu will work on a
> particular set of hardware. Just yesterday I was about to install
> Edgy on a computer at home, but was completely unable to get
> xserver to start when loading the live cd. Turns out, there are
> some problems with ATI video cards that I was unaware of in that
> particular version of xserver. While it may be fixed in 7.04, the
> case still stands that somehow, somewhere ubuntu will not work on
> someone's hardware. If you market it as software and something
> comes up like X not starting, uninformed users will worry that
> they've screwed up their computer and won't have the slightest
> idea how to get around.
>
> I'm trying to formulate exactly what I mean clearly. I was going
> to state a second reason as being potential problems with
> partitioning and the bootloader, but ubiquity has really done a
> lot to remove those for the most part. However, I just don't think
> it's right to pull the wool over people's eyes and market this
> completely as educational software. Fact is, it's linux. Say the
> user wants to uninstall this piece of software; what do you tell
> them? There's no autouninstall feature for ubuntu so that the user
> can get their hard drive space back. What gives? It's simply
> dangerous catering to a completely uninformed audience.
>
> Having said that, I'm going to take it all back. Sort of, at least
> :) I don't know if you all have heard of the install.exe project,
> but it's quite interesting
> (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/install.exe/Prototype). I had a friend
> try it, and it didn't really work too well so I wouldn't advise
> using it till it's stable, but this has the potential to offer
> something that _would_ have an uninstall process. I'm not sure how
> they would implement uninstalling the boot loader that is
> installed, but maybe if they could have some way of replacing the
> windows bootloader, then that particular facet of the problem
> could be solved.
>
> Essentially, the idea is that NTFS writing is safe only so long as
> you don't change the file size of the file you're writing. So, if
> you create an ubuntu file while in windows, you can then modify
> the file in ubuntu. You just have to give ubuntu xGB of space to
> work with in the first place. Now, all of the problems involving
> drivers and hardware problems would still apply, but it is
> remarkably less intimidating and daunting than the prospect of
> repartitioning or reformatting your hard drive (if your hard drive
> has errors, then it won't be resized for the ubuntu install - this
> was the case for me - I had to completely remove windows and start
> over again, and that kept me from ubuntu for a while).
>
> So, in essence, the gist of my meaning is that we really can't
> market it as something that simple. There's too much that could go
> wrong, and it would then be hard to justify our actions. However,
> I have no qualms with marketing the product in new ways. I just
> don't want to pretend that there is no risk involved to those less
> informed than linux geeks :)
>
> Hopefully that's not too many words <grin>
>
> Mark
>
>
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Christopher Rohde
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