[seul-edu] ISO progress

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

I'm going to do a recap of where we are on the various phases of the ISO 
project.  I'll include in that requests (pleas!) for people to take a 
hand in helping move forward on this project.

Phase 1

We've had some nice efforts in reviewing the websites of applications 
listed in our Index, but we need more work to be done.  As I mentioned 
last week, there are some categories that no one's looked at yet, and 
some categories that have only had some subset of the applications 
examined.  I'm working with some teacher friends where I live to have 
them do some of these, but we _really_ need more people to do them! 
These evals aren't difficult; please take the time to look over some 
area of the App Index that you have an interest in and knowledge of, and 
give us the benefit of your opinions?

Phase 2

Some of the people who have done Phase 1 evals for us have taken it upon 
themselves to install and test the apps they're working on, which means 
their results become Phase 2 evals.  This is very gratifying.  However, 
we have a number of apps listed as having passed Phase 1 and waiting for 
Phase 2 (http://www.seul.org/edu/Phase1.txt).  If you have the 
opportunity to install and test some of these that would be a very great 
contribution to the effort!  I hope to do so with some subset of the 
listed apps in the next few weeks and have my teacher friends work with 
them, but the more the better.

Phase 3

Darryl Palmer has done us a tremendous favor in beginning to package 
some of the apps that have passed Phase 2 
(http://www.seul.org/edu/Phase2.txt).  I'd like to see more people work 
on this aspect of the project, but not to the neglect of the first two 
phases.  Darryl, if others step forward to help with the packaging, 
would you be willing to coordinate the efforts?

Phase 4

We haven't actually done anything about Phase 4 yet, but I think it's 
about time we discussed how we want to proceed with it.  I've been 
pushing this project in a couple of directions which we should probably 
examine to see if those are the proper ways to go.  First, I've been 
saying we need to package everything as DEBs, RPMs, and TGZs, so as to 
be as widely applicable as possible.  That was also so distro 
manufacturers could take our work and bundle it with versions of their 
distros to make education-oriented versions.  Since there already was a 
DebianEdu, I thought we should join with them to make the DEB package 
for each app the reference package and develop the RPM and TGZ packages 
from that.  This brings up a few questions.

First, are the two plans for our ISO (to create an easily installable 
compendium of educational software for end users to download, and to 
have that compendium easily bundlable with standard distros) actually 
compatible?  If they are, will the effort to do both add more work to 
the project than we can reasonably expect to accomplish?

Second, if we are working through DebianEdu to develop the DEB versions 
of our apps, does it make sense for us to put the DEBs on our ISO? 
After all, they'll be part of Debian and should be installable over the 
internet using standard Debian tools and methods, right?

Third, what sort of installation wrapper application should we use? 
There are numerous programs that we might use:

http://freshmeat.net/browse/147/?topic_id=147
http://freshmeat.net/browse/865/?topic_id=865

along with some that don't show up on these lists like Synaptic.  I have 
been pushing Synaptic, but if we don't include the DEBs much of the 
benefit of Synaptic over other methods goes away.  Also, there are 
programs like Autopackage that try to provide a distro-neutral packaging 
system--should we think about using something like this and foregoing 
the idea of having our work easily bundlable with existing distros?

Fourth, how should we organize our software for installation?  By 
category, as in the existing App Index?  By age appropriateness?  By 
utility and fit to various national curriculums?  By some combination of 
all those ideas and/or more?

Phase 5

We don't have to worry about this yet, given all the work that remains 
on the first 4 phases.  I'm sure you all find that to be a relief!

I'd like to get some committments from people here to do some of the 
Phase 1 and 2 evals.  I'd also like to have some people step up and help 
Darryl with Phase 3 packaging.  And right now I'd like to get some good 
discussion on the questions I've posed under the Phase 4 section of this 
(overly long) message.

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Doug Loss                 Courage is resistance to
Data Network Coordinator  fear, mastery of fear --
Bloomsburg University     not absence of fear.
dloss@bloomu.edu           Mark Twain