EdubuntuAddonEnhancements

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Summary

Edubuntu's server addon CD currently drops the user into gnome-app-install with a list of apps on the CD, we need to allow easier installation of default applications sets and perhaps theming.

Rationale

Edubuntu is a targeted distribution for educational environments. However, educational environments can be quite varied and developing the ability to adapt Edubuntu to a variety of educational situations is an important step in widespread adoption. For Edubuntu 7.04 a Server Addon CD was added to provide more educational software and allow to add back in software from the Ubuntu seeds removed in previous Edubuntu versions. However, this added greater complexity in installation.

Use Cases

  • Mark is a primary school ICT manager and is setting up an Edubuntu LTSP classroom. After installing the base system from the Server CD he puts in the Server Addon CD and selects the "primary" entry in gnome-app-install to install the edubuntu-addon-primary metapackage.
  • Maria is a university student in the sciences who is trying to get Edubuntu/Ubuntu in her department. To demo Edubuntu she does a workstation install with the Server CD and then puts in the Server Addon CD and installs the "secondary" entry in gnome-app-install to install the edubuntu-addon-secondary metapackage. She then installs the edubuntu-universe-science metapackage in Synaptic to finish out the applications selection for her department.
  • Joan owns a day-care center and would like to have a computer for the kids to learn computer skills in an educational environment. She uses the Edubuntu Server CD to do a workstation install and then uses the Addon CD to install the edubuntu-addon-young metapackage.

Design

During the 7.04 development cycle gnome-app-install was extended to allow for addon CDs. Now what is needed are several sets of metapackages to define software sets and with .desktop files that can be used by gnome-app-install. The sidebar menu (on the left) in gnome-app-install needs to more clearly categorize the contents of the Addon CD by subject and age appropriateness.

Implementation

  • Menu for gnome-app-install
    • .desktop files for packages on the 2nd CD need to have good categorization in the first place in order for applications.menu to properly work.
    • a custom applications.menu with the desired menu structure. This might require manually putting apps in the categories we want when freedesktop.org categories fail to give sufficiently fine-grained categorization.
  • Edubuntu age-appropriate metapackages
    • edubuntu-young, edubuntu-primary, edubuntu-secondary which will depend on the educational applications on the 2nd CD for preschool, primary/elementary age, secondary/high school/university level students and educators. It would be nice if we could change the Edubuntu artwork along with these packages. If significantly more packages make it onto the Gutsy Addon CD then we can split edubuntu-secondary into content areas such as science, math, writing, etc.

    • edubuntu-universe-young, edubuntu-universe-primary, edubuntu-universe-secondary will be corresponding metapackage depending on educational applications in Universe. They will not be on the Addon CD but will be useful for users and help Edubuntu developers review applications for promotion to Main and the Addon CD.

Remaining Discussion Points

  • We will still need feedback from the education community about what applications to include in the metapackages, the EdubuntuApplicationReview spec should help with that.

  • The metapackages will not neccessarily be Edubuntu-specific. We might consider a more general namespace such as education- or ubuntu-education- . The education- namespace is currently used by Debian-Edu so we would need to work something out if we wanted to use that.


CategorySpec CategoryEdubuntu

EdubuntuAddonEnhancements (last edited 2009-03-04 17:36:12 by chance)