[SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction

[Caryl Bigenho]

Wow! This is an offer I can't refuse.  I'll come up with a list for you in a few days.  One of my problems is that I am a Mac "person" and these would have to be made on a PC... right?  I may have to try to find an inexpensive old Windows machine to use for this... alas. Maybe I can find a small used notebook that will do the trick.

Is there any way the sticks and CDs could be made on a Mac even if they won't run on it?

Caryl

> Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:35:24 +0100
> From: sebastian at when.com
> To: cbigenho at hotmail.com
> CC: mel at melchua.com; soas at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [SoaS] Sugar on a Stick Changing Engineering Direction
> 
> 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...
> >  > _______________________________________________
> >  > SoaS mailing list
> >  > SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >  > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
> > =
> >
> >
> >
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