[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction

[Sebastian Dziallas]

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi...
>
> This could result in having, at last, what I have been asking for for
> over a year now... a stable, easy to use version that I can encourage
> teachers and others to use. That would be wonderful!

We think so too :-)

> The ideal version would:
>
> Be easy to make either a usb or live cd version for Linux (both Fedora
> and Ubuntu), Mac, and Windows operating systems... hopefully without the
> need for a boot helper or virtual box... something the average teacher
> or parent could create without too much trouble.

We're currently working on making the instructions generally easier for 
v3 and are also trying to get the graphical LiveUSB Creator working on 
other distributions, so that everybody could use the same interface - 
without having trouble.

Right now, the sticks should boot on most reasonably-modern computers 
running Windows or any variant of Linux. We can make sticks that boot on 
some Macs, but because of the different architecture, those sticks only 
work on Macs (if they work at all). The creation process for sticks to 
boot on Macs is also quite tricky and given the low success rate we've 
had, it's probably not worth recommending, other than marking it as 
"experimental".

However, you can make the Windows/Linux sticks in any operating system - 
so it's "just" Mac stuff that doesn't work. We'd like to figure this out 
for future releases, but will need help from engineers who know about 
this kind of thing (and have Macs at home - we don't) - if you know 
anyone who'd like to help, that would be great. ;-)

> On April 24 I will have another chance to distribute SoaS to a fairly
> large group of teachers and parents at the LAUSD InfoTech event at the
> LA Convention Center. Is there any possibility that this will be able to
> happen in time?

We'd be happy to create a custom remix for you - just tell us what 
Activities you'd like to have on it, and we can work on that together so 
you have the image a few days (or a week, or however long you need to 
burn media) in advance.

In fact, we're happy to make a just-in-time custom demo remix (images 
for liveusb and/or livecd) for anyone who wants - with the understanding 
that these images are *demo* sticks, haven't been tested, and are *not* 
suitable for deployment. This is how we'd like to support folks going 
out to demo this at conferences and such - if you tell us the Activities 
you want and the date you'd like the image on, we'll spin it up the day 
before and you'll have the most recent code for all of the Activities on 
your image, instead of having to use 6-month-old code.

> Caryl
>
> P.S. A live cd would be great because we could afford to make some in
> advance and hand them out at our booth (CUELA).

As Tim said, you can simply burn the .iso image onto a CD. So if we 
created such a remix, you could just burn it in time for the conference. 
Would that work for you?

--Mel and Sebastian

>  > Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:19:00 +0100
>  > From: sebastian at when.com
>  > To: soas at lists.sugarlabs.org
>  > Subject: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
>  >
>  > Some of you may have overheard activity in #sugar-meeting today
>  > discussing the upcoming beta freeze for SoaS, and the engineering
>  > capacity we have to work on things for the upcoming release (in May,
>  > since as a Fedora Spin we are tied to the Fedora release schedule).
>  >
>  > The short version is that we'd like to try something pretty drastic -
>  > prior SoaS versions have included large numbers of Activities, which
>  > weren't always maintained and didn't always work, so we propose shipping
>  > a slimmed down version of SoaS with a small number of known-to-work
>  > Activities with active upstream maintainers (that we'll have the
>  > bandwidth to thoroughly test between now and May's release, and the
>  > bandwidth to relay deployment feedback back up to) and creating
>  > resources on how to find other excellent material at
>  > http://activities.sugarlabs.org.
>  >
>  > Here's a draft kickstart file of what a slimmed-down SoaS release might
>  > look like. It includes a few core Activities that will help you get,
>  > debug, and ask questions about more Activities (Browse, Log, and IRC),
>  > as well as a few well-tested Activities with active upstreams that we
>  > think tend to "demo well" for a variety of audiences and contexts
>  > (young/adult audience, large/small audience, dev/user/teacher audience,
>  > hands-on-lab/demo-on-projector audience, etc).
>  >
>  >
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/soas/repos/mainline/blobs/master/fedora-livecd-soas.ks
>  >
>  > And here's the image it produces - we haven't had time to download and
>  > test it yet, but are working on that right now, so you may beat us to
>  > finding out whether it works or not. ;-)
>  >
>  > http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/soas-3-20100319.iso
>  >
>  > In comparison, here's the old kickstart file with a large number of
>  > Activities, and the image it produced - if you try it out, you'll find
>  > that many of the Activities don't work, the quality of experience is
>  > inconsistent, and... well, we hope you'll see why we'd like to narrow
>  > the scope of this release's features to the amount of work we can
>  > comfortably maintain.
>  >
>  >
> http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/spin-kickstarts?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob;f=fedora-livecd-soas.ks
>  >
> http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/soas-i386-20100318.17.iso
>  >
>  > The rationale behind this is as follows:
>  >
>  > 1. Our ultimate goal is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with a
>  > wide variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers, plus
>  > resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
>  > communities of other learners. This was clarified in the earlier Sugar
>  > on a Stick Mission Statement:
>  > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-September/008322.html
>  >
>  > 2. Since we don't currently have the resources to do this, we think a
>  > good intermediate step is to produce a rock-solid deployment image with
>  > a SMALL variety of many Activities with active upstream maintainers,
>  > plus resources to engage users with those upstream communities and with
>  > communities of other learners. This sets the bar for both the quality of
>  > the Activity and maintenance, and the level of interaction that Activity
>  > upstreams can expect from users.
>  >
>  > 3. Saving a good number of known-to-be-awesome Activities for
>  > http://activities.sugarlabs.org and creating (kid-tested and
>  > teacher-tested) resources on how to get stuff from ASLO sets a dynamic
>  > of experimentation, trying-stuff-out, and user community engagement that
>  > we want to see.
>  >
>  > We don't know if this is a good idea or not. We think so, and we don't
>  > have much time to decide as Beta Freeze is this upcoming Tuesday, March
>  > 23. Feedback? Questions? Comments? Firestorm?
>  >
>  > We'll be tinkering further on this over the weekend - we can do another
>  > kickstart on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so we have 3 drafts left to
>  > figure this out with. Please join us (sdziallas & mchua on #sugar) and
>  > ask questions if you have any, or join in and help if you have ideas on
>  > how to improve this.
>  >
>  > Thanks!
>  >
>  > --Mel and Sebastian
>  >
>  > PS: We're going to ask more specific questions on the marketing and
>  > activities lists about this in a moment, for those of you following
>  > those sections of SL as well - and send a general iaep notification that
>  > these conversation threads are going on. One second...
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