[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2009-08-05

[Art Hunkins]

My feedback on new SoaS snapshot:

New version is slower loading, and contains numerous short blackouts on 
screen (as activities load).

The Logs activity was disastrous for me; I was never able to get in to that 
activity.

The inability to display text (composed for the OLPC) full-screen remains as 
on SoaS-1.

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com>
To: <community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Cc: "iaep" <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; "Sugar-dev Devel" 
<sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 2:04 PM
Subject: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2009-08-05


> ===Sugar Digest===
>
> 1. As Caroline Meeks and I are wrapping up the Sugar-on-a-Stick summer
> programs, it has been a time to reflect upon what we have learned and
> what challenges face us in September (Many thanks to Greg, Anurag,
> Jennifer, et al. for their help). The goal of our pilots was to
> identify any issues we might face with a school-wide rollout of Sugar
> on a Stick and to work through many unknowns regarding the logistics
> of deployment.
>
> We learned a great deal, e.g., replication of custom keys: be sure to
> remove any owner keys in the .sugar/default directory before copying.
> And we experimented with a number of different workflows regarding how
> to prepare for a class: use USB extension cables if possible; preload
> helper boot CDs; have the children turn on their computers and then
> gather for a discussion of the lesson plan while the machines are
> booting; have a cache of hot spares since some keys inevitably will
> not boot (more on this in a moment); have the children shutdown the
> computers and then gather for a wrap-up discussion while the machines
> power off; etc. And we uncovered some bugs in our sharing logic (See
> my post from last week); and experienced some issues regarding
> robustness of the USB images.
>
> It is this latter topic that was the subject of much debate on the
> Sugar mailing lists this week and which I would like to touch upon
> today.
>
> While we did experience some "failures", given the circumstances, we
> were not able to do a very systemic analysis of the situation. We know
> that some sticks fail to boot and some have corrupted user data. We
> don't have an actionable characterization of the circumstances under
> which these problems occur.
>
> James Cameron summed up the situation:
> "If any state is preserved by the children on the USB sticks, and
> there is no copy of the state kept elsewhere, and there is a
> possibility of power failure, premature removal, or other
> interruptions, then every software component that uses the saved state
> must be either capable of detecting corruption of the saved state, or
> graceful recovery from apparently invalid state."
>
> Meeting this challenge is not trivial; the more clarity we can bring
> to the use cases, the more likely we will be able to engineer
> solutions.
>
> In the meanwhile, we need to: experiment with more USB manufacturers;
> be more careful about characterizing the different failure modes; do
> some workflow experiments to see if we can minimize failures; try
> different file formats; and come up with simple and robust
> backup/restore mechanism so that we can end run failures.
>
> Greg Dekoenigsberg has suggested we take advantage of Fedora Test
> Days] to put a more rigorous analysis together. But we need a testing
> plan which means we need to first come to consensus on what it is we
> are trying to test.
>
> Variables include:
>
> * Which Sugar-on-a-Stick image is being tested?
> * What customizations have been made?
> * What process was used to create the key?
> * What size and brand of key is being tested?
> * What hardware the key is being tested on?
> * What is the nature of the failure? (no boot, corrupted data, etc.?)
> * What was the history of use prior to failure?
>
> Let's get a plan together and take advantage of this generous offer
> from the Fedora community.
>
> 2. Jeff Elkner reports that Jamie Boisture completed his summer
> project: using GASP with 15 middle-school summer-enrichment students,
> and it worked wonderfully! Jamie also submitted a merge request with
> Pippy to have GASP included in Pippy. (Jamie was sponsored by Jeff in
> a program modeled after Google Summer of Code. We should try to do
> more such programs.
>
> ===Help wanted===
>
> 3. It is not too late to sign up as a candidate for the Sugar
> Oversight Board. Also, please add yourself to the Membership List in
> the wiki if you are not already listed.
>
> ===In the community===
>
> 4. Werner Westermann reported that "Patricio Acevedo left the audience
> shocked after presenting Sugar [http://prezi.com/139914/] in the 2nd
> Innovation Workshop: The Creative Teacher, held in the Metropolitan
> Educational University, in Santiago, Chile." It was the first official
> activity of the newly formed Sugar Labs Chile.
>
> 5. Squeakfest USA [http://squeakland.org/squeakfest/usa/schedule/] is
> next week in Los Angeles.
>
> ===tech talk===
>
> 6. Sebastian Dziallas announced the availability of a new SoaS
> snapshot 
> [http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/SoaS3-200908021950.iso]
> that includes the latest Sugar Release 0.85.3. It is a developer
> release--any testing would be greatly appreciated.
>
> ===Sugar Labs===
>
> 7. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on
> the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-July-25-31-som.jpg]]).
>
> -walter
> -- 
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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