Notes from the Skolelinux developer gathering at Kongsvinger September the 16th-18th, 2005 Around 15 contributors where gathered at the Skolelinux 2005-09-gathering :-). Pictures: http://developer.skolelinux.no/~knuty/bilder/2005-09-gathering/index.html Friday 16th September --------------------- Halvor Dahl arrived 13:30 at the school and got the overview of the rooms etc. The rest of the developers arrived between 18-19 in the evening. The network was connected to the admin-net to Kongsvinger municipality through the Skolelinux-server to the translators. At the dinner we talked about how to cooperate with edubuntu, with the desktop, the process, and about stability. Everybody at the dinner though that we should cooperating with edubuntu. We should find ways to make this happen. It's the right time to do this right now. The desktop and the laptop support with (k)ubuntu is the way to go, and the Skolelinux-server-architecture is a proven concept we should get into edubuntu. It's pretty clear, and an common agreement between the developers and translators in the Skolelinux project, that we should continue an strengthen our relationship with the edubuntu-effort and work together. We should not duplicate our effort when others want to reuse our solutions. http://www.skolelinux.de/wiki/Kooperation/Edubuntu Trond Mæhlum, the project manager at Kongsvinger, pointed out that the stability with Skolelinux server, and the connectivity was that he needed with an regional installation with 500-800 clients at 9 schools. Update every year, or every other year was out of the question when it came to the server. Update-cycle could be 3-4 years with the Skolelinux-server, and update every year with e.g K12LTSP on the thin clients. The connections is done easily with a RedHat-tool (system_config_authentication, a LDAP connection hook which just adjust the necessary config-files and authentication through pam). A stable Skolelinux-server is excellent with the option to change the desktop with updates programs every year. With the RedHat connection-tools this is extremely easy, takes a couple of minutes to connect. If K12LTSP shifts to be based on edubuntu, the LDAP-connection tools should be ported. We should already now use edubuntu/kubuntu on the laptops with adjustments, so it's possible to dock a laptop to the Skolelinux-network. Work has to be done to do that. This should be our second step in the edubuntu-effort that has already started. Ragnar Wisløff also told us about the LTSP-gathering and the cooperation with Canonical. There are also work done to include half thick clients in the new and light weight LTSP, and a new and faster boot-up init-solution. Petter Reinholdtsen is contributing with this. Saturday 17th September ----------------------- Two new teachers visited the developer-gathering to contribute. They was immediately recruited as translators. It went well with learning cvs, and Kbable. They committed many translation throughout the day. Vidar, one of the teachers, handled unstable Kbabel also caused bye some new features in the translation tool. 14:30 Trond Mæhlum started his presentation of the use of Skolelinux on around 450-500 thin clients in 9 schools at the city of Kongsvinger. He explained the network with 1 Gbit/s fibre to 5 of the schools. The whole system was operated centrally. Mr Mæhlum also did an impressive walk-through of the selection of programs. They selection of programs have matured over 1 1/2 year since the project start in January 2004. The menu is tailor-made with 48 applications, also some Wine emulated ones (e.g programs as Mons og Marte i regneskogen). The 8 Wine emulated Windows-programs is not in so much use, but keep the objections away from teachers who believe that this kinds of programs is necessary, and don't know about new browser-applications that has the same functionality easily reachable from the Internet. F1 Schooltool was an new application in K12LTSP that did exactly what the a teacher needed to give messages to the pupils, forced logouts, give the pupil guidance with VNC etc. He also showed how to connect K12LTSP to the Skolelinux LDAP with a easy to use menu, thats standard from RedHat 8.0. The leader of the IT-operation in the municipality also was present. He talked about their strategy, and the importance of using the programs in the education. Just before 24:00 Ragnar Wisløff had a successful installation of a newly build CD. Finally he had documented how to add packages to the Sarge-build of the CD with guidance from Finn-Arne on IRC. Vidar Bakke announced 2 month ago that he should help out doing this, but he said before this developer-gathering that the release-team was dead. Also Conrad Newton said earlier when he arrived Saturday, that he would participate with this release-work together with Ragnar and others. Frode Jemtland fixed 5-7 bugs and closed 4 obsolete bugs. Sunday 18th September --------------------- Frode Jemtland will invite people to participate in a international technical release-team. They will help out building an release new CDs for technical testing, bug-fixing and developing. Halvor Dahl will invite user of Skolelinux and free software in schools to a product-team. The main task is to pick the applications in real use in the schools, and get them into the CD. We have also asked Trond Mæhlum and others to participate in this work. Harald Thingelstad has done bug-fixing and improvements on the script that auto-replaces words from e.g Danish to Norwegian. The work translating KDE 3.5 is on track. The next gathering will probably be when electing new board in FRISK. We have to ask some school to borrow because we also will arrange developer-gathering. The date is already fixed Saturday, October the 15th. The gathering should be arranged from 14-16th of October. Request for change from CVS to SVN. The translates want to change to SVN. Developer Øyvind A. Holm (sunny AT sunbase org) in Bergen could help us with this. We have also to change the documentation for doing this. Other things ------------ We got patches and a lot of tips an tricks from Trond Mæhlum after 18 moths of operation with Skolelinux. He says the Skolelinux server is excellent, and it's easy to connect K12LTSP thin client servers with the RedHat tool system_config_autentication (a LDAP connection hook which just adjust the necessary config-files). On laptops Kubuntu is recommended. The password-handling is still not acceptable. It does not work with "junior admin" as the had hoped, told two of the IT-contacts at the schools in Kongsvinger. This was the situation even after Andreas Shuldei said he had fixed that issues. The teacher should be given permission to change pupils passwords, and not as a super-user, but a "change-password to pupil"-user. Today changing of password gives unnecessary work, and the fix that was made don't work. Unfortunately Ragnars harddisk failed around 12:30. He has to rescue his disk before he can commit the guide on how to add new programs to the Skolelinux-build on Sarge. Link to the menu in use at the schools in Kongsvinger, and the remove unfortunate dialogs in OpenOffice when saving files: http://developer.skolelinux.no/dokumentasjon/configs/ By Knut Yrvin Sept 19th