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ISO (was Re: [seul-edu] Re: Unified Front...)
"Stephen C. Daukas" wrote:
> I think the way to go is to craft an ISO that doesn't actually care which
> Linux you have. I believe the LSB is the standard to follow, because it
> allows binary distributions of software to run on any Linux system of a
> given architecture, regardless of which distro is being used. (I think we
> should include source, where possible, as well.)
>
This is an important point. This ISO needs to be non-distro-specific. We need to
make RPMs _and_ DEBs. If that's too complex, we need to use an installer that will
bridge the gap. I know there are some apps that will install RPMs on Debian
systems and some that will put DEBs on other distros; we could consider one or
another of those.
Since there is a standard to follow (LSB) that's what we should do. And of course
we need to include source! You never know when someone will want to actually _use_
the power of free software!
>
> Then, and of course some will tell me I'm optimistic, you make an effort to
> get vendors interested in it. Let them run with an "educational bundle"
> and worry about all the business issues.
>
If we can actually do this I know they'll be interested. Mandrake has already
shown an interest in this, although they didn't have the resources to help us
develop it. SuSE has donated large amounts of boxed sets to US high schools. I'm
sure there are others.
> OK, I'm going to ask a simple question. If we provided a ISO of the top N
> educational apps, HOW-TOs, documentation, war stories, got permission to
> distribute Star/Open Office, perhaps more, whatever (what I referred to
> once as a package), would that be enough to get a district excited and
> successful, or must we also include a Linux distro?
>
As someone else said, you make it non-distro-specific, available for download from
the net, and promote it to all the distros as something they can use to roll an
education "solution" (I hate the market-speak corruption of the word "solution").
> Only having briefly looked over some of the info I've learned about
> recently, would our ISO be suitable to bundle with the terminal server
> effort, or others out there?
>
That's up to them, but I think the answer is "yes."
OK. How to proceed? First, let's look through the entries in the Educational
Applications Index <http://richtech.ca/seul/> and identify candidates for inclusion
in the ISO. Not all the apps listed there are ready for deployment, and some just
aren't appropriate for school use (it says "Educational," not "Scholastic"). Also,
some of the categories we setup have become overly broad and should be separated
into more, smaller ones.
Once we've identified candidate apps, people have to install and test them. This
is where a fair amount of effort is involved. This is something that is best done
by teachers or people who can have teachers test it for them. We want to find out
what would actually be useful in school, not what looks like a good idea to us but
that teachers wouldn't use. After these tests we should have a list of available,
useful apps.
Then we need to package the apps. There's a fair amound of effort involved here,
too, but this can probably be done by fewer, dedicated people than the previous
task.
After that we need to come up with an installer. If the packages are included with
standard distros it should be up to the distro manufacturers to add hooks to their
various installers to add our stuff; but if someone is downloading our ISO we
should have some easy to use installer as an integral part of it. Matt Jezorek,
what are you using with Blue Linux?
Finally, we need to construct the ISO. That should be fairly easy, I think. After
that, we need to put it up for download, try to get CheapBytes to carry it, and
advocate it to all the distro people.
How's that for a plan?
--
Doug Loss All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu Ashleigh Brilliant