Announcing Edubuntu Revival

Absolutely magic, @eeickmeyer

You did, indeed, answer my questions, and then some. I immensely appreciate the insight; it is both interesting and educational.

I have an identical opinion of modern browsers; their footprint is positively insane. How do you plan on tackling that issue? Making use of a Firefox fork? Using opera?

You have my support here; If I can help with anything, please reach out.

And thank you.

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We’re going to use Firefox as Edubuntu is, staying true to the original, going to be an add-on to the Ubuntu Desktop from an .iso image development point of view. However, for under-powered machines, there is always the option of switching that out. Unfortunately, switching to a different flavor of Ubuntu doesn’t tackle that issue as all flavors use Firefox by default.

Additionally, we can’t seed Opera as it doesn’t meet the licensing requirements of Free and Open Source Software. While they do offer a .deb and have a Snap version, and it is Chromium under-the-hood, the license is proprietary for the user interface in the same manner as Google Chrome.

For lightweight browser options, there are browsers such as Falkon by the KDE community that is readily available in the software repositories that could help under-powered machine with basic browsing, and also includes ad blocking. If resources are at a REAL minimum, there’s always the text-mode web browsers that can be run in the terminal such as Lynx, but I don’t think you’ll need to go that far. :slight_smile:

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Could the “Launchpad Ukrainian Translators”
Be included with Ed-Ubuntu Revival ? Most of these children
are in the country of Poland…! They are stranded in a foreign country . These are Ukrainian young children, left their country, left the ones that speak their language. War was not the child’s
choice.
This group would have to be approached to Translate EdUbuntu
into
https://translations.launchpad.net/~lp-l10n-uk Ukrainian.


@eeickmeyer If with some help from … My friend Mark…

Hi Bernard!

Considering we’re not starting from scratch but building on top of the exising Ubuntu Desktop, the vast majority of the translations are already there. Translations might be needed eventually for the edubuntu-menu package and the edubuntu-installer package, but those are some time out, and we could use the help of the entire Launchpad Translations team at that point.

There’s also the matter of the edubuntu-docs package, but we’re likely to deprecate it and have it removed from the archive as it’s basically ancient GNOME Yelp files that barely even work anymore. The ideas are definitely valid there, but much of everything that’s there needs to be rewritten from scratch. This would be a vast undertaking and probably wouldn’t make it in time for the first release.

I hope that answers some of your questions, but we’re definitely keeping translations in mind. Right now, nearly everything we need translated is translated, but when we need more translated, we’ll be enlisting help at that time. :slight_smile:

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Thank You for keeping the Ukrainian children in mind.
Thank You for taking on the very huge task.
Perhaps it could be a flavor by time the next LTS is out.

@eeickmeyer Just my viewpoint here, but KDE is (in my experience) more lightweight than Gnome, and using KDE also allows us to use Qt app theming as well as GTK app theming.

Another reason for the KDE suggestion is the wide usage of windows, and how being familiarized with a more similar interface (you probably won’t want to include dash to panel and a menu app with gnome) would be more helpful to certain student groups in the long run.

My other slight problem with the current implementation (although this is specific) is that Firefox and certain webapps do not play well… As a Firefox user myself, this is their fault, but in the interest of compatibility with certain web apps (e.g teams) wouldn’t it be better to include a chromium fork like ungoogled-chromium or vanilla chromium builds? You are already (probably) including a snap of FF so I think it might be acceptable to include Chromium as a snap. (This brings up the point of lower-end hardware and FF being generally more ram efficient though)

These are just my questions as to the way that this is currently being designed.

Oh, and thanks for remaking edubuntu! I (as a student and sole IT person for my school a couple of years ago) had a couple Linux computers and managing and finding educational apps for them was not my favorite thing :smiley: so I can imagine a proper education distro being extremely useful to schools and students. Sadly, my current school makes me use a Chromebook so…

Hi @traman124!

So, just one point of clarification: KDE is not a desktop environment. It’s a community of developers that develop several applications. I think you’re likely referring to Plasma, which is the desktop environment developed by KDE.

I’m no stranger to Plasma. The desktop environment of Ubuntu Studio is Plasma, and I, until recently, was employed as a developer with the Kubuntu Focus project, and am considered one of that project’s founders. In that time, I learned a lot about what it takes to maintain Plasma as a desktop environment for a distribution, and it’s no small feat, especially when the upstream releases a version of the DE that is very buggy (Plasma 5.25, for instance).

Additionally, there’s the matter of the system installer. Ubiquity, which is the installer for all Ubuntu flavors except Lubuntu and Ubuntu Studio, has two frontends: a GTK frontend and a Qt frontend. The Qt fontend is hard-coded to Kubuntu and is not easily changed without multiple changes and pull requests to the maintainers of Ubiquity, which can take weeks or months to get through. Additionally, the Qt frontend does not get the same amount of maintenance or attention as the GTK frontend, and the Kubuntu developers do not have direct access to fix bugs in the Qt frontend. Those with direct access do not let anyone else touch the code without reviewing pull requests, which can, again, take weeks or months. So, for my wife’s sake (who is a new contributor) and my sake, we’d rather not deal with that.

So, to keep maintenance at a minimum, we’d rather keep the delta as minimal as possible between Edubuntu and Ubuntu Desktop. But, this is where the aforementioned Edubuntu Installer application will come-in so that people can install any official flavor of Ubuntu (read: any desktop environment) and install whatever Edubuntu metapackages they need. This includes Kubuntu.

The other advantage using Ubuntu Desktop as a base has is that, quoting myself from a previous comment:

This is a good point, and there’s nothing stopping an administrator from installing Chrome directly from Google, or installing Chromium from the snap store. I’ll talk to Amy about this and see if she wants to seed both Chromium and Firefox, just to see what she thinks would be best, because this is definitely a valid point. The only thing is that, in my testing and in other’s testing, snapped web browsers with installed webapps don’t do well in offline mode anyhow, so that could be a factor, but might require more testing. Definitely something to think about.

To your point about Ungoogled Chromium, this is not in the software repositories and I’m not about to package it as maintaining a web browser is a gigantic undertaking and, arguably, a much higher undertaking than maintaining a flavor of Ubuntu (I considered packaging Seamonkey at one point in time before I slapped myself out of it!).

So, TL;DR: We’re going with GNOME because that keeps our delta with Ubuntu Desktop at a minimum, it gives us the advantage of having Canonical’s team in our corner, the metapackages will be install-able on any official flavor, and we’ll look into seeding Chromium, but I’m not making any promises right now.

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I do understand your point about KDE releases being buggy (and I have encountered this firsthand - just recently, the Bing Wallpaper started crashing my KDE system after the 5.26 update on Fedora - ugh). Also, your point about ubiquity makes sense - afaik Kubuntu uses Calamares, which has a proper Qt port.

As for snaps, I personally hate them but as I thought you, as a flavor maintainer, would need to package snaps instead of debs. If possible, not having snaps is preferable for the average user :smiley:

Kubuntu uses Ubiquity. Lubuntu and Ubuntu Studio use Calamares, but only because of the aforementioned issues with Ubiquity’s Qt frontend.

No, seeding snaps is do-able, but only if the snap meets a certain set of qualifications in order to be seeded. I maintain an application that could only be a snap to be seeded as it could not be packaged traditionally as a Debian package, but many snaps in the snap store are fair game. To be clear, I’m not anti-snap especially since they are improving by the day, but I lean toward traditional Debian .deb packages.

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I meant that I thought that you would need it use snaps. I’m not a flavor maintainer, and my last comment was poorly worded, so sorry for that.

Oh, and the installer looks a bit like Calamares

Here is Calamares (as a new user there is a image limit)

Yes, I’m highly familiar with Calamares as that’s the installer that’s used in Ubuntu Studio (I’m the project leader there). However, and as I’ve said (and given my qualifications having been involved with Kubuntu as well) Kubuntu uses Ubiquity.

I think I need to make one thing clear: the official flavors of Ubuntu are not separate distributions from Ubuntu. There is no line, they’re all Ubuntu, just different spins or default out-of-the-box configurations of Ubuntu maintained by different teams. We all pretty know what each other is doing, so believe me when I say I know what is going on and what installers are being used and where.

So no, Kubuntu does not use Calamares, but Ubiquity. If you want examples of Calamares in use in Ubuntu, look at Lubuntu and Ubuntu Studio. However, that is not in the scope of Edubuntu at this time. We plan to use the new flutter-based Ubuntu Desktop Installer which replaces Ubiquity and will be default for Ubuntu Desktop. Barring that, for whatever reason, we’ll be using Ubiquity.

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Thanks for clarifying. I was not implying that you were wrong (you are right) but stating that the Qt port of Ubiquity looks like Calamares…

Also, just because I’m curious, I’m assuming the new flutter installer doesn’t GTK theme.

If you want to get real technical, you could say that Calamares looks like the Qt port of Ubiquity as it predates it by nearly a decade. :smiley:

I’m not sure how the magic works there, but in my testing (you can try it by downloading a daily build of Ubuntu Lunar Lobster), it’s indistinguishable from the default Yaru theme.

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I wonder if it’s just because the colors are set to yaru.
. I have some basic flutter knowledge (taking a course) and I am curious - but that doesn’t concern edubuntu.

My other question would be if it is possible to bundle a panel and menu with edubuntu (same reason as before - windows usage in the world) rather than the stock Ubuntu layout.

I don’t believe this is necessary. From a commenter on the Phoronix article covering this announcement:

No to emulating what other OS’s do. Why? Kids are surprisingly flexible and adaptable, if they’re not autistic and get upset at change (so a PC is the least of their worries). Flexibility was part and parcel of our upbringing in the 80’s; the sheer number of options was astounding. DOS’s galore, GUI’s from Apple and Amiga (damn, that 3D), the list goes on.

Nothing worse than hearing from a narrow minded old fart “oh, I only know Window’s”. They never do, and Windows changes its colours every release anyways.

I can actually relate to that very comment. I grew-up mostly without a computer in the house until I turned 10, then it was a Commodore VIC-20, then a Commodore 64, then an Amiga 1000, and then an Amiga 2000 through high school. It wasn’t until after high school that I had my first actual Windows machine that was any good. However, until high school, all of my school’s computers were all Apple Mac.

So, the “real world” argument is really a red herring.

Furthermore:

That was easy to do using the built-in settings.

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That’s a good point (I am still under 18 and have used and can use Windows, Mac, and a lot of DEs proficiently - I don’t think I’m stuck yet :smiley:) and I did not mean for that to be misleading… My point seems ill thought out at this point, and thanks for pointing that out :smiley:

Solid argument @eeickmeyer

@traman124

Keeping in mind, that Ubuntu (and almost all of the other Linux based distros) is fairly good at being adjusted, changed, themed, whatever; Edubuntu should not be any different.

Also… this may give rise to community driven options (scripts, applications, whatever)… Exciting stuff, don’t you think?

You dont need a script @voryzen you only need dash-to-panel and arc-menu, and it can be done the same way as vanilla Ubuntu.

I’m sorry for having this mindset @eeickmeyer and at this point, people can learn to use what they are asked to.

That wasn’t my point, but thank you for the instruction, @traman124
I appreciate that

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