Ultimately, the responses are very mixed, but the important thing is that some of us can reliably get folks up and running quickly with a consistent environment, even if they hit a snag with VirtualBox (which is what we're using now for local installs). I need to be fairly disciplined about this, as once folks are in the "trying to get software to work on my laptop" mode, it's very hard to convince them to give up (for the time being).
There's some nuance in doing all of this, though, and providing the same setup can leave folks frustrated or very grateful depending on how it's presented. I can't reliably communicate how to do that (and, honestly, some of what I do may be mere "incantation"!). But part of what I *think* works, is emphasizing that this is a full-featured, batteries included environment (including some tricky installs, even for linux), and that after we're done the training, we're happy to help configure their laptop however they'd like. Best, D On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Greg Wilson < gvwil...@software-carpentry.org> wrote: > Thanks for the background, Dav - how are Windows users reacting to all > this? > Cheers, > Greg > > > On 2014-10-26 1:48 PM, Dav Clark wrote: > > As Aron suggested, we are actively considering the use of Docker now at > Berkeley. In particular, boot2docker 1.3 has made some nice changes that > allow for easier mapping from inside the inner container all the way to the > host level (though it's still not there yet for port mapping). I apologize > if I was part of the telling you "to get lost" crowd. I do have a set of > concerns that are somewhat articulated above, but it boils down to the > following two use-cases: > > 1. Having an installation process that relies on familiar and reliable > GUI operations to get started with the new programming environment. > > 2. Having a more-or-less already configured VM / account for some users > in "the cloud" (where, "the cloud" might be my development server in D-Lab). > > Docker may be useful for (2) now, but I think it's still not worth the > extra work beyond either setting up your own multi-user server, or simply > having a straight-up cloud VM (i.e., not Dockerized, but rather an EC2 AMI > or DigitalOcean droplet, etc.). A lot of *instructors* are not > necessarily skilled sys-admin / ops types (like me, for example ;). So even > though we are insulating our students in (2), we still should keep things > simple for our instructors. > > But I agree that Docker is getting to where it's likely to be more > useful than difficult soon, and I certainly don't want to discourage anyone > from exploring how to make that easier! Perhaps it's important to > distinguish between development efforts and current suggestions for > provisioning student environments? > > FWIW, the above-mentioned pioneer, Carl Boettiger, has been submitting > changes to the standard VM we're using at Berkeley to show us the way > forward with Docker: > > https://github.com/dlab-berkeley/collaboratool/pull/90 > > We certainly welcome folks to contribute / fork / extend our work there. > We've made strong arguments about why it makes sense to use Packer as the > BASE configuration tool (gloss: it can provision pretty much anything). But > nothing is set in stone. > > Shine on, you crazy Dockers, > D > > On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Aron Ahmadia <a...@ahmadia.net> wrote: > >> Hi Trevor and Greg, >> >> My understanding from interacting with the tmpnb server [live demo at >> https://tmpnb.orge] is that it is a zero-install approach. The >> installation/maintenance load is reshouldered onto system administrators, >> and the users can focus on getting work done. >> >> I think that assumption [1] There's no room in the schedule..., should >> probably be [1A There's no room in the schedule] OR [1B The learners will >> be working from this cloud infrastructure in the future]. It looks to me >> that a number of groups, from the D-Lab at Berkeley to JuliaBox at MIT, to >> DIT4C at University of Melbourne, are moving at full steam on providing >> this back-end support. >> >> Does this make sense? >> A >> >> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 4:31 PM, W. Trevor King <wk...@tremily.us> >> wrote: >> >>> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 12:20:39PM -0400, Greg Wilson wrote: >>> > 5. The learners are already familiar with Linux, explicitly want to >>> > learn it, or it's an authentic task worthy of a lesson in its own >>> > right. >>> >>> Docker is trying to branch out beyond Linux. For example, they're >>> working with Microsoft on a Docker engine [1] and native client [2] >>> for Windows Server. Not that many of our students are likely to show >>> up with the server-flavor installed on their laptop, but still, Docker >>> is aiming to be a generic deployment framework like existing virtual >>> machines, but without bundling kernels. I don't know how many >>> scientists use Windows Server boxes for their research, but I'm often >>> surprised by support for non-free OSes ;). >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Trevor >>> >>> [1]: >>> http://blog.docker.com/2014/10/docker-microsoft-partner-distributed-applications/ >>> [2]: >>> http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/15/new-windows-server-containers-and-azure-support-for-docker/ >>> >>> -- >>> This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). >>> For more information, see >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org >>> >>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> Discuss@lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> > > > > -- > Dav Clark > Data Scientist > UC Berkeley D-Lab > dlab.berkeley.edu > 510-664-7000 > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing > listDiscuss@lists.software-carpentry.orghttp://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > > > -- > Greg Wilson > Software Carpentry | http://www.software-carpentry.org/ > > -- Dav Clark Data Scientist UC Berkeley D-Lab dlab.berkeley.edu 510-664-7000
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