[SoaS] Fwd: [IAEP] SoaS installation frustrations

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi Guys...


I'm sorry to stick a pin in your balloon, but I really think it is time to (gasp) retire SOAS! If your target market is education, it is still far too complex for most educators to want to even try to install it, much less write lesson plans that will utilize Sugar's Activities to help their students learn. As Tony knows, teachers simply don't have the time to learn about things like Terminal commands, what Gnu and Linux are etc. Unfortunately this is why Apple has such a grip on technology in schools... in the words of Steve Jobs (I think he was the one who said it) "It just works!"


That is why I think our focus should shift to Sugarizer. It just works! Teachers, students, parents , and everyone else knows how to install an app on their device and Sugarizer is available to install on almost any device.


What it needs now to make it a viable option for schools and other educational projects is some great documentation with lesson suggestions for the various Activities that are relevant to the work the students are doing... learning language arts by reading and writing, learning math by doing math, music by making music etc.


This is one reason why I made a proposal last summer (that no one picked up on) that we begin with a special small edition, Sugarizer Primero or Sugarizer1° (1° is primero). It would have just those Activities that would be useful in the K-2 (Primary School). This small version would not include any war games so it could be used more universally.


We could find some willing educators to test it and help develop lesson plan suggestions. These teachers should be paid for their work (from SugarLabs funds). We would need someone very familiar with using Sugar with students and with access to a lot of teachers and classes to test it. It seems that the perfect person for this would be Rosamel Norma Ramirez in Uruguay.


So... as I said... sorry! But it is time to realistic about this and move on.


Caryl


P.S. For Tony... are you in the US? Are you coming to SCaLE March 3-5?



________________________________
From: SoaS <soas-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org> on behalf of Frederick Grose <fgrose at sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 6:23:31 AM
To: soas at lists.sugarlabs.org
Cc: tony_anderson at usa.net
Subject: [SoaS] Fwd: [IAEP] SoaS installation frustrations

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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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><mailto:cbigenho at hotmail.com>
To: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de><mailto:bert at freudenbergs.de>
Cc: IAEP SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org><mailto:iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Subject: Re: [IAEP] pixel
Message-ID:
        <CY4PR19MB1061668D2FC5EEF8CBBCD2CDCC5B0 at CY4PR19MB1061.namprd19.prod.outlook.com><mailto: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><mailto:bert at freudenbergs.de><mailto: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><mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net><mailto: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<mailto: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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