Hi Ludovic, And thank you for your interest into our project :).
> i am an It Operations Manager (admin of 180 servers over 3 platforms) > a Michelin company specialized in e-commerce (popgom.com) in 15 > countries and i decided to join the project trying to help you with my > competences and experiences. What a good idea! We're hiring :). > a quick look behind me would show that i am into the opensource > community since 1998, i've been part of official knoppix support > during 3 years (2002-2005) , i also created the first 100% opensource > cyber coffee and created beside it a complete solution for cyber > coffees (2006) including captive web portal. > > i belong to the admin group of the Proxmox PVE group (on IRC/ Fb), to > the FreeBSD france community and some other ones. > > i think i'll be able to help in shell scripting, functional study, > docs writing, commuincation. Only good news. I can't see how you could not find ways to help our project :). There are several hot topics, I suppose you've read the thread about our future 2.0. Welcome! > - impossible to install it on eeepc 701 using the installer (it > does'nt see the disk i had to modify the PCI script) and can't chroot > so won't boot at the end. > > > i installed it from minimal Debian install which worked great after > a couple of tricks Yes we're very late… We really need to publish 2.0 and then to focus on its successor. DDL is not used only on old computers, but also on very recent ones that keep looking slow with their default OS :p. They need us! > - the main page is not (to my point of view and after my daughters > remarks) logically functional I suppose you're talking about the first screen displayed after DDL has booted. We call it the menu of activities. > > ex : gcompris is a main entry menu, when you get into it you have > the internal gcompris menu with its own categories, but the other ones > get into an openbox profil with icons which are not at all like the > gcompris ones which is normal, but could disturb a child dued to the > graphical different interface. To my point of view it would need that > all the entries of the main page get into an openbox one, even if > there is only one entry, so all would be iso in term of logical I think you're talking about an issue that we've been talking about for a long time with Elisa, one of our graphic designers: UI graphical consistency. One of the weaknesses of DDL is currently that it is made of many applications that are all developed by different people or teams, without concertation. As a result, categories, icons, ways to quit the application, fonts, colors, etc., are all different… Moreover some sub-activities may be redundant. The only solutions we have imagined right now are: 1. Patch every application that needs to, to look like a predefined standard 2. Rewrite some applications, for example using Html5 to make them easily portable (the dream of Elisa) Of course 1) may be quite long and painful, especially if the job is to be redone for each major release of the applications… The solution 2) sounds better but we may have a performance issue on low end computers, especially ARM, due to the interpretation layer of Html5. Trials are needed, maybe a proof of concept with a recent web browser and a small application easy to code. Personally, I'm not in favor of using an openbox session for each activity of the main screen because I'd like the first activities (on the top of the screen) to be very easy and intuitive to use (thus as few clicks as possible). Does someone else find that this is currently an interface inconsistency that should be solved? > - network manager doesn't keep connections dued to keyring manager and > local profil rights I have no explanation unfortunately. I've just installed the development version on my “old” eeepc and it worked as expected using the password “live” for the password manager. As I should have told you privately, the issue is that DDL sessions are implemented with fake users whose password is not used by the authentication system PAM to avoid asking it to children (this is a feature!). As a result, the password manager believes users have not been authenticated and then asks user's passwords when necessary. Unfortunately, if you provide the correct password (live), this was failing for an unknown reason. I must say I can't remember if this issue was for Gondwana or the development version. > -removing packages not configurable, removing some, and adding some What do you mean? Let users install other apps from the Debian repositories? It sounds good. We'd need in this case a simple package manager or, better, something like the Ubuntu web system: packages are described in web pages and clicking on the link “install” triggers a standard Debian package installation (kind of appstore ;) ). I saw in Debian packages that Linex reused this system, see the package aptlinex. Note however that we are using Epiphany as a web browser, which means a new plugin would have to be written (Python or C/C++). > - adding a real installer (which is a need but has to be really deeply > rethought) there are plenty of existing installers I'm working on it ;). > - for eeepc 701 (there are plenty which could be used for DDL in > school) adding a kernel module for eeepc control giving the ability to > overclock, or modify the light and the fan speed Debian Squeeze can't do that out of the box? I agree that there are many useless netbooks that could find a new life. I plan to write a post on our blog on this topic. I'm even in contact with a team of Galician people willing to collect such netbooks in order to refurbish them with DDL :). I offered them my help if needed. > > it could be automatically done with a script recognizing the > eeepc701 Gérald has similar concerns. He's working specifically on ARM hardware and the main issue with these hardware is the lack of standard. He's then planning to include in the initramfs image scripts that would load the correct drivers for the detected ARM hardware. We could use it for eeepc's too. In the end a standard Debian package would be built to allow a clean install of these new early boot scripts. > - writing docs Argh… I must say I have very few time for this… Welcome! :) > > it needs a doc for the children themselves, devs, or simply > non-geeks parents Any improvement to the website is welcome. As indicated in the thread about DDL 2.0, this new major release is a good opportunity to change our website. It is then time to start to discuss about this. I'm wondering whether I should not freeze immediately Spip in order to let us the time to change it and also to translate it! > - communication over the project Of course, the more we communicate, the more people will use it. Let's communicate! > it a simple first mail but i am pleased to help you all Thanks for all these interesting comments and suggestions. I suggest to open new threads to discuss each point separately when you feel it's time to deal with one of them. Unfortunately our project management software (Redmine) is down so I can't tell you to rush at it to create tickets… I'm currently discussing with our host provider to determine why Redmine can't restart. It appears they did a major upgrade on their servers but I don't remember to have been informed! -- Cheers, JM.
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