[IAEP] SoaS change of direction: heads-up on convos in other lists

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Martin,

On 20 Mar 2010, at 15:54, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>> The short version is that instead of "include all Activites by default,"
>> we're thinking of shipping very few (6) Activities by default - the ones
>> that help users get further Activities and help
> 
> I read Sebastian's post... and is less drastic than that. He seems to
> say: include only the well tested, known to work, actively maintained
> activities, with an eye towards activitries that serve as a good intro
> to the platform and that demo well.
> 
> But you say only 6... Which one is it?

This is what I see in the kickstart file:

	http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/fedora-livecd-soas.ks

# == sugar activities ==
sugar-browse # Because they need this to install activities.
sugar-log # Because they need this for debugging.
sugar-physics # Because this is a great demo example (quick demo).
sugar-terminal # Because this makes debugging easier.
sugar-turtleart # Because this is a great demo example (extended demo).
sugar-xoirc # Because this helps us help them.

> The initial proposal I like; makes a lot of sense and raises the bar.
> IT basically increases the chances of a satisfactory first use.
> 
> Six activities not so much -- you need many steps + internet to add
> activities... and it'll be "random activity from ASLO, may well be
> unstable or useless". It significantly _reduces_ chances of
> satisfaction.
> 
> All IMHO...

+1, six does seem rather slim, more of a technical taster for a developer audience (not necessarily a bad thing in the right context). Walter mentioned perhaps making this a Fedora spin, rather than an official SoaS release aimed at our real target users (teachers/children)?

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. I am worried about reports of several previously well working activities that seem to be currently broken in recent SoaS builds (Write and IRC), unfortunately I don't have time to often test under SoaS (other than the official Blueberry) as well as my regular day to day sugar-jhbuild set-up (F10).