Monthly Archives: October 2010

A week in Orlando (Ubuntu Developer Summit – Natty Narwhal)

Currently flying from Orlando, FL where I had an awesome Ubuntu Developer Summit I wanted to quickly share what happened this week.

Ubuntu and Linaro banners

I had the chance of being able to participate in plenty of very different and interesting sessions over the week.

Here’s a quick overview of my interests for the Natty development cycle.

Edubuntu
I received a LOT of feedback regarding Edubuntu. There was a lot interest for Edubuntu WebLive.
I gave a plenary on Tuesday about what’s Edubuntu, why we are doing it and what are our plans for Natty as well as announce the availability of daily Edubuntu builds on WebLive.
For Natty we mostly plan on growing our user community and getting more feedback from. Our installation process should be a lot faster and let the user choose what kind of education software he wants.
We also reviewed around 20 new applications, most of them are already available in Edubuntu in Natty, two will need to be packaged.

Containers
For this UDS, we were lucky to have Daniel Lezcano from LXC attending.
So we had a few very interesting sessions on what needs to be done to get LXC to the point where it can be used as a replacement of OpenVZ.
We also discussed how we could use containers and similar technologies on ARM and on a regular desktop as a way to sandbox applications.

Desktop in the cloud
Following my demo of Edubuntu WebLive during Tuesday’s plenary, we had two cloud track related to it.
One on how to let users test Ubuntu (awstrial) and another on the Desktop in the Cloud image. We discussed the various technologies available for remote desktop and will try to get an official desktop in the cloud image for Natty.

Community
Being an Application Review Board member, I attended the 3 sessions on the topic. We discussed the application review process as well as the technical implementation and the current limitations the ARB noticed. We should soon have a clear process for reviewing new applications and will be able to start getting new applications in Ubuntu 10.10’s extra repository.

It was really great seeing everyone, discussing and working together this week. I’m now flying to Bangor, ME for the yearly LTSP by the sea meeting, then driving back to Sherbrooke, QC to start implementing everything we discussed!

See you all in Budapest next year!

Posted in Conferences, Edubuntu, LXC, Planet Revolution-Linux, Planet Ubuntu | 1 Comment

Edubuntu WebLive now features Edubuntu 11.04 daily builds

A bit over a week ago I announced Edubuntu WebLive, probably the easiest way to test Edubuntu from any computer (Linux, MacOS, Solaris and Windows) running Java.

Yesterday during the Edubuntu plenary at the Ubuntu Developer Summit I announced that you can now try the latest development release from WebLive.

weblive logo

Just go on our website and select “Edubuntu 11.04 (development release)”. Then try the all latest features, check if your bugs have been fixed or look for regressions. As with the production server, you have two hours to test it.

So far, close to 4000 users tried Edubuntu using WebLive!

Posted in Edubuntu, Planet Revolution-Linux, Planet Ubuntu | Leave a comment

Edubuntu live now available online !

Try it now

As you may know, Edubuntu ships as a DVD.
While that’s a great thing because it gives us a lot of space for language packs, applications and content, it’s a bit of an issue for users who just want to try it out.

After thinking about it for a while and spending the weekend coding the infrastructure for it, I’m proud to announce the availability of Edubuntu Try it now!.

It’s basically a VM of the latest stable release running on some dedicated server where you can request a free test account.
The account will let you access the VM using NX for 2 hours.

A maximum of 10 users can connect at the same time. The VM cleaned up using the tools from LTSP-Cluster and reinstalled from scratch daily.

Future improvements include the availability of a Natty Narwhal VM as soon as it’s stable enough to be installed.

Posted in Edubuntu, Planet Revolution-Linux, Planet Ubuntu | 4 Comments

Edubuntu 10.10 is released !

Edubuntu 10.10 is out !

Edubuntu logo

Just like its big brother Ubuntu, Edubuntu 10.10 was released this morning, the 10/10/10 at 10:10 UTC.

Short list of what’s changed in that release (taken from the announcement):

  • With version 10.10, Edubuntu builds on the work done in the previous version. Changes that occurred in Ubuntu 10.10 are also reflected in Edubuntu.
  • LTSP installation as well as the Netbook interface are now installable directly from the installer, allowing a much more intuitive installation process. (see here)
  • Unity now replaces the Ubuntu Netbook Launcher as the netbook interface, it is designed from the ground up to provide a superior user experience for smaller displays.
  • Edubuntu Menu Editor has undergone bug fixing and now has documentation available.
  • Gnome Nanny provides teachers and parents with a method of controlling how kids use a computer. It also includes basic content filtering.
  • New wallpapers are included from various artwork communities.
  • Language support has been expanded, allowing you to use Edubuntu in more than 142 languages.

Thanks to everyone involved in releasing Ubuntu 10.10 and all its derivatives.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Orlando, FL.

Posted in Edubuntu, Planet Revolution-Linux, Planet Ubuntu | Leave a comment