Romanian readers:
fir de discutii
There's a CS/informatics competition for high school students being held this weekend in Cluj and it is combined with educational software presentations from software companies for informatics professors.
I asked the organizers if our Free Software Group could hold a short session about the benefits of FOSS in education, with references to Ubuntu, Edubuntu and Kiwilinux and we were given a slot after the ones which had already been planned a while ago - those of Microsoft, Cisco and a local company that sells education software for Romanian schools.
That was two days ago but yesterday we were notified that the Microsoft representative in charge with the education strategy had requested the organizers to pull the Ubuntu presentation because it is 'unfair competition' to hold such a presentation at an event sponsored by them. They are indeed co-sponsors but the conference is organized by the Ministry of Education and its local office, and is being held on the premises of a public University.
It is sad to know they are resorting to this sort of coercing and that they have such influence over the educators but looking on the bright side of it, and that's how I perceived it after thinking a bit about it, THEY ARE SCARED :)
We were also promised to be given the opportunity to present at a later date to a similar group of professors in June.
Showing posts with label en. Show all posts
Showing posts with label en. Show all posts
Friday, May 23, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Ivan Krstić essay on the state of OLPC
A very interesting and insightful post by Ivan Krstić about the recent disappointing changes at One Laptop Per Child, including a bit of prehistory of the project and ideas for the future.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Kiwilinux 8.04 released
First of all hello Planet GNOME readers, since I forgot to say this in the previous two posts, and thanks to Jeff for adding me. While I am still an Xfce user, I tend to contribute more to GNOME lately as the clear roadmap, strict release schedule and the active community make it the more appealing project.
Kiwilinux 8.04, the Ubuntu derivative mostly for Romanian and Hungarian users is released. It is package archive and schedule compatible with Ubuntu and the changes to it are minimal but important for first time Linux users. Switching back and forth between Ubuntu and Kiwi is very easy.
Here's the FAQ for those wondering why the world needs another distro and what's with the name, and here's the downloads page.
The question of which video player and codec stack to choose was settled, it is totem-gstreamer with the restricted codecs on the CD, with a workaround in totem to play the BBC News WMV streams. The package, along with the other changes to Ubuntu are in the Kiwilinux team's PPA in Launchpad. A signed mirror of that along with the Medibuntu repositories are the additions to the default Ubuntu archives.
Kiwilinux 8.04, the Ubuntu derivative mostly for Romanian and Hungarian users is released. It is package archive and schedule compatible with Ubuntu and the changes to it are minimal but important for first time Linux users. Switching back and forth between Ubuntu and Kiwi is very easy.
Here's the FAQ for those wondering why the world needs another distro and what's with the name, and here's the downloads page.
The question of which video player and codec stack to choose was settled, it is totem-gstreamer with the restricted codecs on the CD, with a workaround in totem to play the BBC News WMV streams. The package, along with the other changes to Ubuntu are in the Kiwilinux team's PPA in Launchpad. A signed mirror of that along with the Medibuntu repositories are the additions to the default Ubuntu archives.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Status of Sugar in Ubuntu 8.04
In this mail posted today to the Sugar mailing list you can find the current status of Sugar support in the Ubuntu8.04 official repositories. For those not familiar with it, Sugar is the novel graphical shell and collaborative learning environment developed for the One Laptop Per Child projects' XO laptop, but which can be run on any Linux box.
Monday, April 28, 2008
which is the most complete multimedia stack?
For the Kiwilinux derivative of Ubuntu one of the main goals has always been including reasonably complete support for multimedia content on the CD so the user does not need to search and install the bits needed for restricted formats.
By default Ubuntu uses Totem with the Gstreamer backend for both file based and streaming media.
The easy codec installation feature has made support for most restricted formats fairly straightforward although still incomplete in my experience.
So far our choice in Kiwi has been mozilla-mplayer for streaming and totem-xine as the standalone player. Libxine's maturity, better support of DVD subtitles and menus and more compact packaging - one package vs. 5-6 Gstreamer ones - made it a better pick.
For the 8.04 release I have briefly revisited the issue and I still cannot find a way of supporting the most common formats with only a single multimedia stack. The problems I have found so far include:
* VLC - although reportedly supports all conceivable formats the browser plugin is broken in Ubuntu 8.04
Bugs in Launchpad and upstream
* Totem-gstreamer - DVD menu support lacking (not a big issue but still) and apparently no consistent way of getting ASF streams to work (BBC News short videos for instance).
* Totem-xine - conflicts with PulseAudio, reported on the forums and LP and in my experience too; after a short while of playing audio goes mute and the app claims that the audio device is being used by another app.
* MPlayer - it seems to be closest to the goal but it does not have a decent and simple GUI like Totem (gnome-mplayer is promising but buggy)
I'd be happy to be proven wrong and given either the simple workaround for Xine and PulseAudio, a list of gst plugins that correctly play streaming media in the browser or an easy fix for VLC.
Until then like most other people I know I'll have all of these libs and players installed and use the most appropriate for each scenario :)
And Kiwi 8.04 is likely to include both Totem and MPlayer for the same reason just like the previous releases have.
By default Ubuntu uses Totem with the Gstreamer backend for both file based and streaming media.
The easy codec installation feature has made support for most restricted formats fairly straightforward although still incomplete in my experience.
So far our choice in Kiwi has been mozilla-mplayer for streaming and totem-xine as the standalone player. Libxine's maturity, better support of DVD subtitles and menus and more compact packaging - one package vs. 5-6 Gstreamer ones - made it a better pick.
For the 8.04 release I have briefly revisited the issue and I still cannot find a way of supporting the most common formats with only a single multimedia stack. The problems I have found so far include:
* VLC - although reportedly supports all conceivable formats the browser plugin is broken in Ubuntu 8.04
Bugs in Launchpad and upstream
* Totem-gstreamer - DVD menu support lacking (not a big issue but still) and apparently no consistent way of getting ASF streams to work (BBC News short videos for instance).
* Totem-xine - conflicts with PulseAudio, reported on the forums and LP and in my experience too; after a short while of playing audio goes mute and the app claims that the audio device is being used by another app.
* MPlayer - it seems to be closest to the goal but it does not have a decent and simple GUI like Totem (gnome-mplayer is promising but buggy)
I'd be happy to be proven wrong and given either the simple workaround for Xine and PulseAudio, a list of gst plugins that correctly play streaming media in the browser or an easy fix for VLC.
Until then like most other people I know I'll have all of these libs and players installed and use the most appropriate for each scenario :)
And Kiwi 8.04 is likely to include both Totem and MPlayer for the same reason just like the previous releases have.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Romania maintains OOXML approval
This past Tuesday the Romanian committee debated and voted over the OOXML issue, and the result remained 'Yes' as in September. Back then there were 12 committee members and the Yes/No/Abstain breakdown was 10:1:1 . This week 26 members voted, 13 of them joined the committee in the past two weeks, and even if almost all of the new members prominently feature the MS Partner logo on their websites the result was a much more balanced 15:6:5 . The debate was a relatively moderate argument between MS, a MS partner and three of us opposed to the fast track process. Many of the other members were probably waiting for it all to end, so we could vote and go home :) Can't blame them, it's not like they were interested or knowledgeable about the topic.
The ASRO rules state that only if consensus is reached should a final decision be made, but there's no clear rule to determine what to vote in such cases. An Abstain would have been much more logical, but it's up to them to decide.
For many more details in English check this blog, while Romanian readers can check out this one.
While I agree with the 'let's make free software better' part of Miguel's blog post I think he downplays the role of activism and non-development side of FOSS. It's not OOXML per se that people are pissed off by, but the nontransparent, often corrupt and hurried process by which it is being pushed along and which in turn will affect FOSS - bug count, codebase size, compatibility issues and user confusion to name a few.
As a somewhat stretched analogy: Miguel, how about instead of you criticizing the Bush administration and their cohorts, and praising Kucinich, Gravel, Paul or Obama you just accept whatever the mainstream media produces without a word, and run for Congress yourself? 'start walking' as you say in your post :) (nb: from what I read on Miguel's blog I agree with his political views)
There needs to be awareness among non-technical users of the implications of software and data freedom or else we're simply left with 'open source'.
The ASRO rules state that only if consensus is reached should a final decision be made, but there's no clear rule to determine what to vote in such cases. An Abstain would have been much more logical, but it's up to them to decide.
For many more details in English check this blog, while Romanian readers can check out this one.
While I agree with the 'let's make free software better' part of Miguel's blog post I think he downplays the role of activism and non-development side of FOSS. It's not OOXML per se that people are pissed off by, but the nontransparent, often corrupt and hurried process by which it is being pushed along and which in turn will affect FOSS - bug count, codebase size, compatibility issues and user confusion to name a few.
As a somewhat stretched analogy: Miguel, how about instead of you criticizing the Bush administration and their cohorts, and praising Kucinich, Gravel, Paul or Obama you just accept whatever the mainstream media produces without a word, and run for Congress yourself? 'start walking' as you say in your post :) (nb: from what I read on Miguel's blog I agree with his political views)
There needs to be awareness among non-technical users of the implications of software and data freedom or else we're simply left with 'open source'.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Document Freedom Day
Today, four days earlier than the rest of the world, we have held a small event attended by about 20 people including a local TV crew to celebrate the first Document Freedom Day. Adi and I gave two short presentations on open standards and their benefits, document formats, ODF , OOXML and the latter's ongoing and embarrassing standardization process. Even if OOXML is labeled 'Open Standard' soon by ISO, we're determined to continue the campaign of raising awareness and trying to educate the Romanian public about the merits of opennes and true interoperability.
Monday, March 17, 2008
OOXML vote in Romania, signs of committee stuffing
A brief intro for those unfamiliar with the subject:
Microsoft is pushing to get their new office document format, "Office Open XML" better known as OOXML, through the ISO fast track process in order to get it approved as an open standard.
This is increasingly a requirement from national governments that realized that data should be open and vendor independent. However there is a lot of criticism concerning both the OOXML specification and the process by which it is being promoted.
In September 2007, albeit by a small margin, OOXML failed to receive the percentage of votes required to approve it as a standard. The process was extended until March 2008 during which period comments of the national committees were analyzed and responded to by ECMA (where OOXML was already accepted), a meeting was held in Geneva at the end of February to modify the original spec based on some of these comments and national committees given a chance to change their votes from September in either direction during March.
In Romania the spec got a "Yes, without comments" in September, as explained later by some committee members due to confusion about the voting options and lack of much interest, since the committee's main area of focus is keyboard maps, character encodings and language support . So there was no foul play involved as it was in some other countries.
After the vote, during the past 6 months there has been a heated debate on a local mailing list about the topic, with the majority of those who expressed their opinion being against the acceptance of OOXML as a fast track standard. The major concerns raised were those written up on noooxml.org and odfalliance.org, in short technical ambiguities caused by the burden of introducing support for legacy MSOffice format quirks, insufficiently clear assurance from a legal pov, faulty process and lack of time to carefully review and improve on the ~7000 page long spec which is not even implemented in MS Office (what they propose for standardization now has quite a few changes since the previous version and the ones deployed in MSOffice 2007 installs)
Besides those of the Microsoft representative who is the ISV evangelist for Romania, there were no coherent arguments in favor of OOXML, with close to 10 people on the other side of the fence criticizing the spec and warning about the consequences of it being adopted.
After seeing that there is little chance of initiating a public discussion on the subject since the media is unaware or unwilling to touch it, two of us on the list got our small FOSS companies into the committee. The discussions on the mailing list proved that if arguments are researched and clearly presented some of those who had doubts and siding with OOXML are willing to change their minds.
The date of the local vote is not yet set by ASRO (Romanian Standards Organization) which apparently gives plenty of time to other companies to subscribe.
Today four have joined the committee, all of them seem to be MS partners (Fujitsu-Siemens is one of them, the others are local software companies). The sad thing is that these companies or people have not shown interest in the subject so far, have not participated in the 6 months online debate but are probably going to cast their vote in favor of OOXML . What they are doing is perfectly legal, after all anyone can join the committe, but it's sad to see attempts at public debate and the chances of it changing something getting offset by throwing money at the problem at the last minute.
I'll keep an update on how things are progressing and the results and details of the vote when it happens.
Understandably most governments will have no excuse of not choosing MSOffice and OOXML in future deployments when the lobbying resources of that camp are no longer countered by the fact that so far only ODF is an accepted ISO standard for office document formats. And that will be a setback for Linux desktops where a truly free and 100% compatible implementation of OOXML is unlikely to be available soon.
Microsoft is pushing to get their new office document format, "Office Open XML" better known as OOXML, through the ISO fast track process in order to get it approved as an open standard.
This is increasingly a requirement from national governments that realized that data should be open and vendor independent. However there is a lot of criticism concerning both the OOXML specification and the process by which it is being promoted.
In September 2007, albeit by a small margin, OOXML failed to receive the percentage of votes required to approve it as a standard. The process was extended until March 2008 during which period comments of the national committees were analyzed and responded to by ECMA (where OOXML was already accepted), a meeting was held in Geneva at the end of February to modify the original spec based on some of these comments and national committees given a chance to change their votes from September in either direction during March.
In Romania the spec got a "Yes, without comments" in September, as explained later by some committee members due to confusion about the voting options and lack of much interest, since the committee's main area of focus is keyboard maps, character encodings and language support . So there was no foul play involved as it was in some other countries.
After the vote, during the past 6 months there has been a heated debate on a local mailing list about the topic, with the majority of those who expressed their opinion being against the acceptance of OOXML as a fast track standard. The major concerns raised were those written up on noooxml.org and odfalliance.org, in short technical ambiguities caused by the burden of introducing support for legacy MSOffice format quirks, insufficiently clear assurance from a legal pov, faulty process and lack of time to carefully review and improve on the ~7000 page long spec which is not even implemented in MS Office (what they propose for standardization now has quite a few changes since the previous version and the ones deployed in MSOffice 2007 installs)
Besides those of the Microsoft representative who is the ISV evangelist for Romania, there were no coherent arguments in favor of OOXML, with close to 10 people on the other side of the fence criticizing the spec and warning about the consequences of it being adopted.
After seeing that there is little chance of initiating a public discussion on the subject since the media is unaware or unwilling to touch it, two of us on the list got our small FOSS companies into the committee. The discussions on the mailing list proved that if arguments are researched and clearly presented some of those who had doubts and siding with OOXML are willing to change their minds.
The date of the local vote is not yet set by ASRO (Romanian Standards Organization) which apparently gives plenty of time to other companies to subscribe.
Today four have joined the committee, all of them seem to be MS partners (Fujitsu-Siemens is one of them, the others are local software companies). The sad thing is that these companies or people have not shown interest in the subject so far, have not participated in the 6 months online debate but are probably going to cast their vote in favor of OOXML . What they are doing is perfectly legal, after all anyone can join the committe, but it's sad to see attempts at public debate and the chances of it changing something getting offset by throwing money at the problem at the last minute.
I'll keep an update on how things are progressing and the results and details of the vote when it happens.
Understandably most governments will have no excuse of not choosing MSOffice and OOXML in future deployments when the lobbying resources of that camp are no longer countered by the fact that so far only ODF is an accepted ISO standard for office document formats. And that will be a setback for Linux desktops where a truly free and 100% compatible implementation of OOXML is unlikely to be available soon.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The health benefits of receiving spam
Up until now I was at most smiling at the lack of imagination and shameless plagiarism characteristic of spam authors, but today another one passed gmail's filters and made me laugh out loud for a good while as I read it over. Congrats to Jaja (spammer slash executioner), for the courage of not choosing to go with the crowd of credit card fraudsters who rely too much on luck and gullibility, and being proactive instead in trying to create a niche for himself and his boys.
This is what the message looks like
executor jaja
This is what the message looks like
executor jaja
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Kiwilinux 8.03
The second and last release of Kiwi to be based on Ubuntu 7.10 is ready for downloading today.
Since 7.10 there are a few changes:
* German language packs are added in addition to English, Romanian and Hungarian
* Medibuntu repositories are activated by default, thus Skype, Google Earth and other packages are installable via Synaptic.
* Bugfix and security updates from the 7.10 archives are up to date as of March the 3rd
* There's a Zenity based tool on the LiveCD that helps restore a GRUB menu - enough people install Windows after Ubuntu and loose the ability to boot into it to make it worth adding.
* Inkscape was removed because of lack of space.
For those hearing for the first time about Kiwi: it is named after the fruit not New Zealand, and is the Ubuntu derivative that tries to stay as close as possible to Ubuntu while in the same time adding some features that commercial distros have, like multimedia support. Other notable changes from Ubuntu are the inclusion of the not-quite-free but in some parts popular Speedtouch 330 USB modem ADSL driver and Thunderbird and Audacious as the default mail and music apps.
It is i386, LiveCD, GNOME-only.
Visit the project's website for more details.
Since 7.10 there are a few changes:
* German language packs are added in addition to English, Romanian and Hungarian
* Medibuntu repositories are activated by default, thus Skype, Google Earth and other packages are installable via Synaptic.
* Bugfix and security updates from the 7.10 archives are up to date as of March the 3rd
* There's a Zenity based tool on the LiveCD that helps restore a GRUB menu - enough people install Windows after Ubuntu and loose the ability to boot into it to make it worth adding.
* Inkscape was removed because of lack of space.
For those hearing for the first time about Kiwi: it is named after the fruit not New Zealand, and is the Ubuntu derivative that tries to stay as close as possible to Ubuntu while in the same time adding some features that commercial distros have, like multimedia support. Other notable changes from Ubuntu are the inclusion of the not-quite-free but in some parts popular Speedtouch 330 USB modem ADSL driver and Thunderbird and Audacious as the default mail and music apps.
It is i386, LiveCD, GNOME-only.
Visit the project's website for more details.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Sugar finally in Hardy universe!
I started moving Sugar (the GUI for the children's XO laptop) from the PPA into the main archives. It is aimed at people willing to try out or develop for Sugar but would rather not spend too much time with jhbuild and also a good way to set up a Sugar environment to collaborate with laptops already in your range. With Xubuntu already running on the Asus EEE these packages can be used to turn that laptop into a reasonable child's toy :)
If polished enough by release it could be installed on Edubuntu boxes that are used by younger children.
The core Sugar and a few activities are already there and testable if you run Hardy and have universe enabled:
$apt-get install sugar-emulator sugar-calculate-activity sugar-chat-activity sugar-connect-activity sugar-journal-activity sugar-logviewer-activity sugar-memorize-activity sugar-pippy-activity sugar-terminal-activity sugar-turtleart-activity sugar-web-activity
Then run sugar-emulator and try out the existing activities. Use F1 through F4 to switch between the four views, use Alt-q to quit.
To try out the collaboration facilities connect, chat and memorize at least work. You can run two or more emulators on the same machine by setting different SUGAR_PROFILE envvars for each for example
$SUGAR_PROFILE=pig sugar-emulator
To see other people on the net, those either with a similar emulator setup or actual XO hardware, you'll need to set the default jabber server on which to meet. Unfortunately the ones used for development are down right now, and others too are being swamped by existing users from the Give One Get One program.
The server can be set using the sugar-control-panel command. For the enterprising ones willing to set up your own ejabberd server the OLPC wiki has details. It involves patching ejabberd from svn, Ubuntu packages of it would be nice :)
Things that need work and help from existing MOTUs and packagers:
* the write activity needs Abiword 2.6 for its collaborative editing features and python bindings. I was told 2.6 is to be released by the end of February so hopefully it will get packaged by Debian or us before April.
* the etoys activity requires the Squeak Smalltalk environment. AFAIK Jordan Mantha is working on getting that into shape for Edubuntu 8.04.
* the TamTam sound editing activities and sound in general depend on Csound 5 . It was released in 2005 but Debian and Ubuntu still carry Csound 4 . It is a serious packaging task but it would me most welcome
* the read activity is based on a modified Evince, those patches would be nice to be upstreamed so no duplication occurs.
* there are also smaller tasks of packaging more activities. Some are in the NEW queue, some not yet uploaded and some not packaged properly but the above ones are more critical, as activities can be installed even without .debs by just unpacking the bundles under ~/Activities.
These are all tasks that take time to talk to upstreams and plenty of work but if you want to help let me know which part you're interested in.
If polished enough by release it could be installed on Edubuntu boxes that are used by younger children.
The core Sugar and a few activities are already there and testable if you run Hardy and have universe enabled:
$apt-get install sugar-emulator sugar-calculate-activity sugar-chat-activity sugar-connect-activity sugar-journal-activity sugar-logviewer-activity sugar-memorize-activity sugar-pippy-activity sugar-terminal-activity sugar-turtleart-activity sugar-web-activity
Then run sugar-emulator and try out the existing activities. Use F1 through F4 to switch between the four views, use Alt-q to quit.
To try out the collaboration facilities connect, chat and memorize at least work. You can run two or more emulators on the same machine by setting different SUGAR_PROFILE envvars for each for example
$SUGAR_PROFILE=pig sugar-emulator
To see other people on the net, those either with a similar emulator setup or actual XO hardware, you'll need to set the default jabber server on which to meet. Unfortunately the ones used for development are down right now, and others too are being swamped by existing users from the Give One Get One program.
The server can be set using the sugar-control-panel command. For the enterprising ones willing to set up your own ejabberd server the OLPC wiki has details. It involves patching ejabberd from svn, Ubuntu packages of it would be nice :)
Things that need work and help from existing MOTUs and packagers:
* the write activity needs Abiword 2.6 for its collaborative editing features and python bindings. I was told 2.6 is to be released by the end of February so hopefully it will get packaged by Debian or us before April.
* the etoys activity requires the Squeak Smalltalk environment. AFAIK Jordan Mantha is working on getting that into shape for Edubuntu 8.04.
* the TamTam sound editing activities and sound in general depend on Csound 5 . It was released in 2005 but Debian and Ubuntu still carry Csound 4 . It is a serious packaging task but it would me most welcome
* the read activity is based on a modified Evince, those patches would be nice to be upstreamed so no duplication occurs.
* there are also smaller tasks of packaging more activities. Some are in the NEW queue, some not yet uploaded and some not packaged properly but the above ones are more critical, as activities can be installed even without .debs by just unpacking the bundles under ~/Activities.
These are all tasks that take time to talk to upstreams and plenty of work but if you want to help let me know which part you're interested in.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
critical mass and stuff
Yesterday I joined for the first time the monthly biker celebration ride that is being held since last September in Cluj-Napoca as the local critical mass event. It was a nice 15 minute ride of approximately 60 bikers around the city center. It is happening on the last Saturday of every month, and will probably attract more people as the word spreads and weather turns warmer.
Unrelated to biking here's a very clearly presented 20 minute flash movie about consumption, suitable even for children http://www.storyofstuff.com/
Seeing this, and the recent news of China banning plastic bags prompted me to start reusing the existing plastic bags when at the market, and asking the merchants to not bother giving me a new one for every single item. They would just pile up and be thrown away after a single use, wasteful even though non-obvious.
Unrelated to biking here's a very clearly presented 20 minute flash movie about consumption, suitable even for children http://www.storyofstuff.com/
Seeing this, and the recent news of China banning plastic bags prompted me to start reusing the existing plastic bags when at the market, and asking the merchants to not bother giving me a new one for every single item. They would just pile up and be thrown away after a single use, wasteful even though non-obvious.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sugar for Hardy PPA
To get Hardy testers, and in preparation of eventually uploading to Hardy universe I made a new Sugar team in Launchpad and put the Sugar packages in its PPA.
Sugar Team PPA
To test install sugar-emulator and sugar-activities, then run sugar-emulator.
The web browser activity is not working with the stock hardy xulrunner-1.9 will have to see if it's the same thing that was fixed in the Gutsy PPA or something else.
I was told that Edubuntu developers and upstream deb packagers of Squeak are planning on getting Squeak and possibly Etoys into 8.04. That would be really nice, as those bits I have not looked at at all so far, but they are an important part of the OLPC pre-installed software.
The music composition and sound synthesis activities - the TamTam family - need csound 5 which is newer than the older one in Ubuntu. I have seen it would be useful for UbuntuStudio as well, but not sure if anyone has started work on it.
If you have packaging skills and are interested in having Sugar on *buntu top notch for 8.04 feel free to join the team and lend a hand!
Testers on non-GNOME environments please let me know if some dependencies are missing. It's mostly GNOME/GTK/fd.o so minimalist desktops or KDE may not have everything pre-installed and the packages may lack a few depends fields.
Sugar Team PPA
To test install sugar-emulator and sugar-activities, then run sugar-emulator.
The web browser activity is not working with the stock hardy xulrunner-1.9 will have to see if it's the same thing that was fixed in the Gutsy PPA or something else.
I was told that Edubuntu developers and upstream deb packagers of Squeak are planning on getting Squeak and possibly Etoys into 8.04. That would be really nice, as those bits I have not looked at at all so far, but they are an important part of the OLPC pre-installed software.
The music composition and sound synthesis activities - the TamTam family - need csound 5 which is newer than the older one in Ubuntu. I have seen it would be useful for UbuntuStudio as well, but not sure if anyone has started work on it.
If you have packaging skills and are interested in having Sugar on *buntu top notch for 8.04 feel free to join the team and lend a hand!
Testers on non-GNOME environments please let me know if some dependencies are missing. It's mostly GNOME/GTK/fd.o so minimalist desktops or KDE may not have everything pre-installed and the packages may lack a few depends fields.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Xubuntu/Sugar LiveCD
Having chased down the problem with xulrunner backtracing when used from the Sugar web browser activity, and having the correct package uploaded, the Sugar environment on Ubuntu became a lot more usable. PDFs or images can be downloaded from the web to the journal and viewed later on.
I made an update of most activities and they are available for 7.10 from the PPA
For those without Ubuntu 7.10 there's a new method for trying it all out: a Xubuntu 7.10 based live CD. There was plenty of free space on Xubuntu so nothing got removed. The sugar emulator is in the Applications/Others menu and can also be started as a desktop session if logging in again with user ubuntu and no password.
Since it is a normal Ubuntu liveCD it can be installed to the disk. It can also be run from a USB stick after converting the ISO image using as described in USB.README in the download directory.
Download directory
Missing bits, help is welcome:
Squeak and Etoys need packaging as the Squeak in Ubuntu is too old I think.
The TamTam audio activities also need to be packaged, csound's python bindings are not in Ubuntu.
The plan is getting it all soon in Hardy universe so 8.04 has a working Sugar environment that can communicate with real XO laptops or Sugars on other computers. A use case I see is Edubuntu labs where the machines are shared between young and older students, and they can switch between Sugar and regular Edubuntu easily.
I made an update of most activities and they are available for 7.10 from the PPA
For those without Ubuntu 7.10 there's a new method for trying it all out: a Xubuntu 7.10 based live CD. There was plenty of free space on Xubuntu so nothing got removed. The sugar emulator is in the Applications/Others menu and can also be started as a desktop session if logging in again with user ubuntu and no password.
Since it is a normal Ubuntu liveCD it can be installed to the disk. It can also be run from a USB stick after converting the ISO image using as described in USB.README in the download directory.
Download directory
Missing bits, help is welcome:
Squeak and Etoys need packaging as the Squeak in Ubuntu is too old I think.
The TamTam audio activities also need to be packaged, csound's python bindings are not in Ubuntu.
The plan is getting it all soon in Hardy universe so 8.04 has a working Sugar environment that can communicate with real XO laptops or Sugars on other computers. A use case I see is Edubuntu labs where the machines are shared between young and older students, and they can switch between Sugar and regular Edubuntu easily.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
GSoC t-shirt and the other planet Ubuntu
The t-shirt sent by Google for participating as a mentor in the Summer of Code for Ubuntu this year has arrived today. It is really nice. Too bad the student did not pursue the project after the SoC ended, so there's nothing too useful to actually show users. Lesson learnt for possible next GSoCs.
I use Google Reader, but today checked out the planet.ubuntu.com page directly. In the right pane I discovered there's a planet for Ubuntu users, and the posts I read there I found more interesting on average than on this planet.
http://ubuntuweblogs.org/
I use Google Reader, but today checked out the planet.ubuntu.com page directly. In the right pane I discovered there's a planet for Ubuntu users, and the posts I read there I found more interesting on average than on this planet.
http://ubuntuweblogs.org/
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