Jordan: I think Ace is right about firefox. It seems to work fine for me for research purposes, especially since I don't install the flash plugin so no banner ads slow things down. The problems really reveal themselves when a bunch of students start working with google docs (which uses a lot of AJAX I think) to save papers/spreadsheets and manipulate images in presentations/websites and such. I've heard that native Firefox in Linux is slow altogether, slower even than Firefox in a virtualized Windows OS running in a Linux system, but I don't know if that's true and that's not what my primary trouble is. Mostly I have problems with flash and google apps. Thanks for the offer of help, I'll see how far I can get tomorrow and if I run into trouble I'll try to have some specific questions for you to help me with. Cheers!
Ace: I think it could be helpful to have an area on the wiki that told about different setups schools around the world have done. I know there are some others on the list who also work at schools and have done what I've done or better. Uwe **Geercken and Asmo Koskinen both come to mind as I've learned a lot from their posts to the list. You certainly have my permission to use any and all of my information. Scott: when I reflect on my own frustrations with ubuntu and ltsp, I think they mostly stem from a lack of structure. You say "there has to be *some* structure, *some* tool that's acting as a gateway." and I completely agree. The problem I've encountered is that the structure in place is unclear at best and ambiguous in many cases. Most of the time I think people just have a problem they want to fix and instead of there being an obvious or even single destination to get the information or resources they need there are many different resources of varying complexity. For example, with this particular issue of local apps, I follow this list, I follow the wiki (which there are apparently 2 of I learned today?) I follow this thread on ubuntu forums <http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7647569#post7647569>, I follow a few people's blogs, I randomly google it sometimes, and I can evidently get on IRC and chat with you. I've never used IRC before but I could probably figure it out without too much difficulty, but that's a level of complexity above googling "ltsp local apps ubuntu". Additionally I think there is a lack of structure organizationally in the community itself. Until today I thought Gavin was employed by Canonical or something just because he posts helpful stuff all the time. I've been using Ubuntu since Dapper Drake and following this list for years, but I'm still a complete amateur. Meanwhile there are professional Linux developers out there who might be on the list for the first time today, and there is no way to differentiate between the two of us. Half the reason I post to ubuntuforums and my own blog instead of the wiki is because I know I'm authorized to do so and won't be screwing anything up by adding my own information. Perhaps this is just the way things have to be for a community shared distribution, but it seems to contrast with the way much of the rest of ubuntu is run, such as launchpad, with it's ability to track users and statistics and permissions. I'm not too familiar with launchpad, so maybe I'm wrong and it is as much of a rat's nest as what I'm doing now, but I know from what I've read about it that it's quite respected in many circles. I noticed that Stephane Graber was made an "official" developer of Ubuntu or something in Launchpad recently, and at least that helps to establish a hierarchy of expertise in the community structure. (Congrats to Stephane BTW) Ubuntuforums does a good job of this by denoting the number of contributions each member has made as well as which members are moderators. In any case, I think it is confusing that in the edubuntu jaunty release notes <http://www.edubuntu.org/releasenotes/904> it says "Installing Firefox inside the LTSP chroot and setting *LOCAL_APPS_MENU=True* in lts.conf will make Firefox to run locally on the thin client. The XDG integration takes care of adding the application in the menu or replacing it by the local application if it's already present." but then does not include a hyperlink or anything to actually direct a reader to a place where they can read more about how to actually implement local apps. You ask: "So, once again, what's the solution? How can we make things easier? Ok, lets say we're not going to kick things upstream. Lets say, starting right now, Edubuntu, the entity, is going to look at every bug, fix it, and if upstream needs fixing, we'll spearhead it." I'm more concerned with documentation than bug fixing and more familiar with google's tools than I am with forums and wikis, but I'll try to describe what I would do at my school if I had the problems I've described above: First I would establish a google site to house all things Ubuntu/Edubuntu LTSP related and divide the site into sections for each release since many pages on the wiki apply to one release but not another. Then I would "invite" all the "developers/experts" on this list, launchpad, or whatever to be "collaborators" on the site. These collaborators would be able to change the website pages while all other people would not be able to change the actual documentation pages, but would be able to leave "comments" at the bottom of the page to suggest changes for the collaborators to make to the page, bring attention to outdated/changed information, relate personal experiences, etc. This would, in my opinion create a hybrid of ubuntuforums and the wiki where the canon information is in the page while discussions and experiences about the information on the page took place in the comments section below. I would borrow from ubuntuforums' member rating graphic setup to distinguish between experts and noobs or, since google can't do this, I would require each member to rate themselves on a scale of 1-20 by answering questions about how long they've been using ubuntu/ltsp, how many times per week they post comments to the site, how many hours per week they spend using Linux, etc. and then put this number in their avatar or username (probably avatar though since it would have to change over time). I would install a google talk widget on the homepage and bypass IRC altogether by allowing visitors to click on the homepage to chat with a collaborator if one were available. (you can see a google sites example of this here <http://www.kainoshealth.net/>) Another nice feature of google sites is that it allows the public to follow changes to any given webpage within the site via email, just like RSS. Therefore, I would include a widget on the homepage that automatically highlights recent changes made to the site so anyone could get site updates via email just by "following" the homepage. I would require all collaborators to include information about themselves, their accomplishments, qualifications, and areas of of expertise in their profile so that regular lurkers could single out a collaborator for help with specific issues. I would also give collaborators titles depending on their tenure so the longest serving collaborators could be easily recognized. I would divide up the collaborators by last name and assign A-G last name collaborators to upkeep the area of the site related to one release, H-N last name collaborators to the next release, and O-Z collaborators to the release after that. Finally, I would create two google forms to encourage member participation in the site. The first form would allow members to submit ideas/walkthroughs/howtos/experiences in written or video or audio or screencast or whatever form for the collaborators to review and either include or exclude from the site. The second form would be a nomination form for the user to nominate either themselves or another member for collaborator status. There's actually a pretty good example of a google site<http://www.evonypedia.com/>doing much of what I described. (I don't actually play the game, but I do subscribe to the Google Apps twitter feed) You'll notice there aren't any comments at the bottom of any pages, but that's just because they turned them off. I don't imagine Canonical is too interested in employing Google for their support services, but I believe much of what I described is possible with other FOSS tools like Drupal, (in fact, wasn't launchpad just opensourced and released?) and as long as the movement is towards more structure both in terms of the community and the information I think it would go a long ways towards clarifying where Edubuntu as an entity and community stands in terms of strengths and weaknesses and would enable more valuable participation by part-timers and amateurs. -joe
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