Edubuntu 2.0

I should really blog about Edubuntu more. The Edubuntu project initially kicked off nicely, but with time as things changed things ended getting somewhat stale. Earlier this year we decided to rebootstrap the project. Edubuntu Project 2.0 is real and we’re getting some really good momentum going. We now have a new Edubuntu Council voted in, of which I’m really happy to be part of again. Revolution Linux also gives me and Stéphane some time to work on Edubuntu related things which is really awesome!

Tonight we had quite a good meeting, I posted a dump of the notes to the edubuntu-devel list.

What’s happening for Lucid

• Scott Balneaves is working on parental control features that will be included in upstream Gnome (he is now an upstream Gnome developer as well)
• Stéphane and myself will be the release contacts for Lucid
• Live LTSP session for the Live DVD, if this works in time for Lucid then many packages can be dropped from the alternate installation
• Menu editor based on groups
• We’ll attempt at revamping the artwork for Lucid, if we can’t get nice artwork in time we’ll fall back on Ubuntu artwork rather than have outdated Edubuntu specific artwork
• Sabayon is now in a really good state, Scott has done lots of work on it and it’s teachers should now find it very useful
• Nanny has been uploaded to the archives in the last week, it will be used to implement parental controls in Lucid
• With the Ubuntu archive reorganization, there will be an edubuntu-dev group with upload rights for the appropriate packages. We’ll sort out most of this after the holiday season
• Netbook edition: We’d like the option of installing a netbook edition from the Ubiquity, which basically entails installing a few UNR packages such as maximus and the netbook launcher. I’ll write a spec for this in the coming week

Community

We’re planning some hug days! More details and announcements will follow on the Fridge, etc. For now write these dates in your diary:

• 12 January 2009: Edubuntu Bugs Hug Day
• 21 January 2009: Edubuntu Wiki Hug Day

We’ll spend some time specifically for documentation as well, most likely in February some time.

We want to extend to other projects more. Currently Stéphane is working with the Guadalinex-edu people. I’m going to be working with the Qimo project to get their packages in Ubuntu. Scott  is working to become a Skolelinux/Debian-Edu developer and David van Assche is an OpenSuse-EDU developer so we’re making some progress with our relationships to other projects. We need someone to liaise with the Sugar project, so if anyone is willing to get involved with that please give us a shout!

Our next Edubuntu meeting is on 29 December at 19:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting on the freenode network so if you’re interested in getting involved you’re welcome to join in. If you can’t make it, meetings times will be made available on the Ubuntu Fridge.

Happy holidays!