[SoaS] Fwd: [IAEP] SoaS installation frustrations

[Frederick Grose]

See the posting below with inline suggestions.  The posting was to the IAEP
mailing list for the general Sugar audience.  I've copied the discussion
here to the SoaS list for technical followup.  Perhaps we could interest
some Google Code-In or GSOC applicants to innovate on the installation
issues.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>
Date: Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 107, Issue 15
To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org


Consider an potential adopter who wants to try out Sugar. As Caryl knows
from Scale, an adopter wants to know:

1 - What are the capabilities of Sugar, what are its strengths, who is
using it, are there success stories, testimonials from users?
2 - How is it supported? If I were to deploy it and needed help, is it
available?
3 - How can I install it on my PC to try it out?

Going to the Sugarlabs website, the first screen features: Activities,
Wiki, Social Help. The next statement describes Sugar as a collection of
tools.
Being persistent, if you scroll down several screens, you get to a block:
Get Sugar featuring SOAS and Gnu/Linux.

For Sugar on a Stick, I am directed to another page. It starts out well -
how to make a stick with Windows (but 7). The instructions say to download
650MB and burn a CD. At this point the instructions become incoherent. They
say to mount a 2GB or more stick and then boot from the CD and start
running Sugar from it using the Terminal activity and su.

Then I am told that a change in Fedora 24 (the adopter is saying 'what's
that?') requires the use of the command:

sudo dnf install livecd-tools

No potential adopter would persist even to this point.

​>> We should go back to including the livecd-tools package in SoaS and we
should also copy the livecd-iso-to-disk script to the /LiveOS/ folder as
was previously standard in Fedora, because installing SoaS with persistent
storage is essential for the project goal of having a resumable Sugar
environment in your pocket.​

This is something Peter Robinson, our SoaS packager, can accomplish or
advise us on.

The other panel claims Sugar is available on most Gnu/Linux distributions.
The accompanying instructions from the links on this panel are even more
intimidating and provide evidence of lack of support for Sugar.

In fact, I believe that Ubuntu 16.04 enables yum install of Sugar 0.110.
This should be featured.

Like Pixel, I would like to see a current Sugar image available for
download which can be transferred to a usb stick by a single dd command.
This stick would operate as SOAS but also support installation in an
available block of hard drive on any amd_64 machine.

​>> This is currently available, but not featured in our instructions as
such an installation lacks persistence of user/learner Activities between
boots.  However, it is the easiest way to demonstrate a live SoaS system​.
Instructions should be updated.

A second image ideally would be installable as a Window application with a
supported Windows installer (like wubi did). Finally, there should be a
Debian image which can be copied to an SD card and booted by a Raspberry Pi
3 (and possibly 2).

Finally, our hypothetical adopter should find this 'get Sugar' information
on the main screen, not down six screens.

Tony

On 02/15/2017 11:20 PM, iaep-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:15:05 +0000
From: Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> <cbigenho at hotmail.com>
To: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> <bert at freudenbergs.de>
Cc: IAEP SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org> <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Subject: Re: [IAEP] pixel
Message-ID:
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<CY4PR19MB1061668D2FC5EEF8CBBCD2CDCC5B0 at CY4PR19MB1061.namprd19.prod.outlook.com>
	
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

+1 for Tony's comment!

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 15, 2017, at 12:51 PM, Bert Freudenberg
<bert at freudenbergs.de<mailto:bert at freudenbergs.de>
<bert at freudenbergs.de>> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Tony Anderson
<tony_anderson at usa.net<mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net>
<tony_anderson at usa.net>> wrote:
This is what I hoped Sugarlabs would do:
https://opensource.com/article/17/1/try-raspberry-pis-pixel-os-your-pc

Tony

Isn't that exactly what SoaS does?
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Installation

- Bert -

______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep​


For those interested alleviating these frustrations, the following links to
previous efforts provide some background:

https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Resources​ <goog_127419843>

https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Goals
​
https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO

   --Fred
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