[Sugar-devel] Community XO software builds

[Tony Anderson]

It would be helpful to have more specifics.

The problem with videos on the XO-1 is the speed of the processor and 
the bit-rate of the videos. As with all Linux distributions, the codecs 
are available for installation by the user. The process for doing this 
for the XO has been documented many times on these lists. Installation 
of the codecs does not require a local repository or an os-builder. It 
can be done with a simple bash script (and the necessary files).

The only solution I can see is to reprocess videos to reduce the 
bit-rate. It would be valuable if someone would experiment with videos 
from YouTube to determine a realistic processing capability for the XO 
(should differ by model), and to publish the conversion parameters to 
produce videos within those limits (e.g for ffmpeg).

Naturally, this solution does not work for casual browsing of YouTube. 
However, I believe our primary goal to provide better educational 
opporunities on the other side of the digital divide - where this 
routine access to the internet is not available.  This means the 
deployment has a fixed set of available videos which could be 
reprocessed to play smoothly.

I am not aware of any reported problems with Browse, which as the 
gateway to the schoolserver is the most-used activity in the deployments 
which I support. Naturally, the users at these deployments do not have 
experience with the internet or with other browsers. I can't imagine 
anyone at these deployments being aware of the switch to Webkit, for 
example. They accept that the home page consists of a set of non-working 
links to the internet and that the only relevant one for them is the 
'local schoolserver'. (an obvious challenge for web confusion is to 
design a more interesting and useful page).

OLE Nepal continues to use Firefox for E-Paath based on the inability of 
Browse with Gnash to provide adequate support for Flash activities. The 
Webkit version of Browse supports the E-Paath activities but there is no 
compelling advantage to change from Firefox. So, the deployments which 
are unhappy with Browse could install Firefox.

Tony


On 05/07/2015 05:22 AM, sugar-devel-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
> They all seem to want a better browser and better codec support to
> >view various+sundry videos, within Sugar ideally, but if that's not
> >possible then within Gnome.  One group per week asks me for the
> >above, above all else (often more than one deployment/group per
> >week).