10:40 a.m.
Here is an idea I had which may be similar to other projects
(lfs,olpc), but interests me as it relates specifically to
fedora-livecds.
Imagine a spin/strain/variant of a fedora livecd, which had the
following properties-
###
a) boots up into firefox displaying a "howto program computers" page.
b) this howto presents a simple step by step procedure for creating a
simple text file with a favorite phrase in it (e.g. 'hello world').
Note
these steps include alt-tab or desktop-switching to-and-fro the howto
web browser page.
c) the howto then describes the steps (ideally one-button simple) to
create and test(virtual boot) and burn a new livecd which only differs
from the current one by displaying a splash screen with monster
letters, displaying the phrase created in the text file from (b), until
the user hits any key, at which point the splash screen disappears, and
things are otherwise normal (i.e. identical to the original livecd
environment)
###
basically what I am getting at is how to go about educating
children(/adults) about programming. Clearly the method I and others
went through (using logo on an atari, etc...) is not going to be the
way of teaching programming in the future.
What I like about the above self-reproducing-but-modified livecd
scenario, is that it is a very idealized complete system. I.e. "the
program" are these bits on the cd. As the programmer, you make a new
cd/program with a slight difference, and now the behavior is different
(big hello world splash screen).
From there, I would add longer tutorials, starting with a hello world
c
program (both as terminal under gnome-terminal, and graphical with some
educationally simple gui library). And then some simple html web page
programming.
I imagine of course that this sort of thing may have already been
discussed WRT OLPC. I've read a bit on LWN and slashdot, but haven't
really looked at it's development. But it seems like they are
targeting that type of education with the whole view source thing. I
wonder, will the firmware on OLPC be 'educationally reflashable' like
so? Maybe it would be ok, if there was an effectively irreplacable
boot option to restore the original firmware.
anything missing or wrong with this picture?
(of course I eventually want a full local copy of the
wiki-university-graduate-computer-engineering-video-lecture-series
included on the live-blu-ray as well...)
-dmc/jdog
____________________________________________________________________________________
Have a burning question?
Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.
1:02 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 08:40:04AM -0800, Jane Dogalt wrote:
Here is an idea I had which may be similar to other projects
(lfs,olpc), but interests me as it relates specifically to
fedora-livecds.
Imagine a spin/strain/variant of a fedora livecd, which had the
following properties-
###
a) boots up into firefox displaying a "howto program computers" page.
b) this howto presents a simple step by step procedure for creating a
simple text file with a favorite phrase in it (e.g. 'hello world').
Note
these steps include alt-tab or desktop-switching to-and-fro the howto
web browser page.
c) the howto then describes the steps (ideally one-button simple) to
create and test(virtual boot) and burn a new livecd which only differs
from the current one by displaying a splash screen with monster
letters, displaying the phrase created in the text file from (b), until
the user hits any key, at which point the splash screen disappears, and
things are otherwise normal (i.e. identical to the original livecd
environment)
###
basically what I am getting at is how to go about educating
children(/adults) about programming. Clearly the method I and others
went through (using logo on an atari, etc...) is not going to be the
way of teaching programming in the future.
What I like about the above self-reproducing-but-modified livecd
scenario, is that it is a very idealized complete system. I.e. "the
program" are these bits on the cd. As the programmer, you make a new
cd/program with a slight difference, and now the behavior is different
(big hello world splash screen).
>From there, I would add longer tutorials, starting with a hello world c
program (both as terminal under gnome-terminal, and graphical with some
educationally simple gui library). And then some simple html web page
programming.
I imagine of course that this sort of thing may have already been
discussed WRT OLPC. I've read a bit on LWN and slashdot, but haven't
really looked at it's development. But it seems like they are
targeting that type of education with the whole view source thing. I
wonder, will the firmware on OLPC be 'educationally reflashable' like
so? Maybe it would be ok, if there was an effectively irreplacable
boot option to restore the original firmware.
anything missing or wrong with this picture?
(of course I eventually want a full local copy of the
wiki-university-graduate-computer-engineering-video-lecture-series
included on the live-blu-ray as well...)
-dmc/jdog
I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone. This would
also allow the kids to take the CD's home and use them on their parent's
computers without having to install linux -- just reboot them with the
liveCD when you want to do school work and take it out and reboot again
when you are done.
1:09 p.m.
There are literally endless variations on this theme -- especially in the
education space. If Pilgrim can satisfy them, it will be very successful
indeed.
--g
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 08:40:04AM -0800, Jane Dogalt wrote:
> Here is an idea I had which may be similar to other projects
> (lfs,olpc), but interests me as it relates specifically to
> fedora-livecds.
>
> Imagine a spin/strain/variant of a fedora livecd, which had the
> following properties-
>
> ###
> a) boots up into firefox displaying a "howto program computers" page.
>
> b) this howto presents a simple step by step procedure for creating a
> simple text file with a favorite phrase in it (e.g. 'hello world').
> Note
> these steps include alt-tab or desktop-switching to-and-fro the howto
> web browser page.
>
> c) the howto then describes the steps (ideally one-button simple) to
> create and test(virtual boot) and burn a new livecd which only differs
> from the current one by displaying a splash screen with monster
> letters, displaying the phrase created in the text file from (b), until
> the user hits any key, at which point the splash screen disappears, and
> things are otherwise normal (i.e. identical to the original livecd
> environment)
> ###
>
> basically what I am getting at is how to go about educating
> children(/adults) about programming. Clearly the method I and others
> went through (using logo on an atari, etc...) is not going to be the
> way of teaching programming in the future.
>
> What I like about the above self-reproducing-but-modified livecd
> scenario, is that it is a very idealized complete system. I.e. "the
> program" are these bits on the cd. As the programmer, you make a new
> cd/program with a slight difference, and now the behavior is different
> (big hello world splash screen).
>
>> From there, I would add longer tutorials, starting with a hello world c
> program (both as terminal under gnome-terminal, and graphical with some
> educationally simple gui library). And then some simple html web page
> programming.
>
> I imagine of course that this sort of thing may have already been
> discussed WRT OLPC. I've read a bit on LWN and slashdot, but haven't
> really looked at it's development. But it seems like they are
> targeting that type of education with the whole view source thing. I
> wonder, will the firmware on OLPC be 'educationally reflashable' like
> so? Maybe it would be ok, if there was an effectively irreplacable
> boot option to restore the original firmware.
>
> anything missing or wrong with this picture?
>
> (of course I eventually want a full local copy of the
> wiki-university-graduate-computer-engineering-video-lecture-series
> included on the live-blu-ray as well...)
>
> -dmc/jdog
>
I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone. This would
also allow the kids to take the CD's home and use them on their parent's
computers without having to install linux -- just reboot them with the
liveCD when you want to do school work and take it out and reboot again
when you are done.
--
Fedora-livecd-list mailing list
Fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org
Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
-------------------------------------------------------------
1:56 p.m.
On 1/11/07, Andy Gospodarek <gospo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
..
I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone. This would
also allow the kids to take the CD's home and use them on their parent's
computers without having to install linux -- just reboot them with the
liveCD when you want to do school work and take it out and reboot again
when you are done.
I was able to build my own custom livecd with office suite hence
fedora-livecd-office.
I could experiment with another custom livecd with all development packages.
I guess I can call it fedora-livecd-development. :)
Regards,
--
Thomas Chung
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung
1:59 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 11:56:10AM -0800, Thomas Chung wrote:
On 1/11/07, Andy Gospodarek <gospo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>..
>I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
>all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
>could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
>storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone. This would
>also allow the kids to take the CD's home and use them on their parent's
>computers without having to install linux -- just reboot them with the
>liveCD when you want to do school work and take it out and reboot again
>when you are done.
I was able to build my own custom livecd with office suite hence
fedora-livecd-office.
I could experiment with another custom livecd with all development packages.
I guess I can call it fedora-livecd-development. :)
I made one with kadischi a while back and it worked pretty well. All I
added was gcc, cscope, and one or 2 other packages and I was still able
to fit those plus a gnome install on a CD.
2:04 p.m.
On 1/11/07, Andy Gospodarek <gospo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
I made one with kadischi a while back and it worked pretty well. All
I
added was gcc, cscope, and one or 2 other packages and I was still able
to fit those plus a gnome install on a CD.
My custom fedora-livecd-office is based on David Zeuthen's pilgrim project.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-December/msg0000...
I just added system-config-network and openoffice.org packages.
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/livecd/20070105/ChangeLog
BTW, what development packages would you put to call it
fedora-livecd-development?
Regards,
--
Thomas Chung
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung
2:43 p.m.
On 1/11/07, Thomas Chung <tchung(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 1/11/07, Andy Gospodarek <gospo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> I made one with kadischi a while back and it worked pretty well. All I
> added was gcc, cscope, and one or 2 other packages and I was still able
> to fit those plus a gnome install on a CD.
My custom fedora-livecd-office is based on David Zeuthen's pilgrim project.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-December/msg0000...
I just added system-config-network and openoffice.org packages.
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/livecd/20070105/ChangeLog
Here is package list (678 packages) of mine: http://vnoss.net/vn1244
* XFCE desktop
* Sylpheed, Wine, Openoffice 2.1, Stardict, Perl/Python/Ruby, Mplayer, ...
--
http://vnoss.org
2:12 p.m.
On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD
that has
all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.
Right, this is entirely possible to do with livecd-tools; just, as
Thomas says, fedora-livecd-development would be a good name and it would
most likely just be like fedora-livecd-desktop; e.g. build upon
fedora-livecd-gnome. Literally, it wouldn't take very long to do this.
Perhaps it would include things like Eclipse, perhaps that's another
live cd. It should probably be the same though; we don't really want a
tons of different officila live cd builds with hugely overlapping
feature sets.
If the computers to be used by the students got 1GB of RAM or more, it
would even be faster, or at least as fast, as using a native install.
We would need the "keep state on USB stick" feature but that is not a
lot of work. The most work with this feature are writing UI tools so the
user can designate all or part of a USB stick to be used for
persistence. Probably some small python app is the right answer.
I'm toying around with ideas of having the computers network boot from a
server (PXEBOOT) and download the .iso into RAM and run from there just
as on "run from RAM" livecd runs. Then everything would be centrally
managed. It shouldn't be a lot of work and my colleagues here at Red Hat
in the QA dept are screaming for features like that to test out new
builds. That would make lot of sense in a computer lab too. It's almost
like Stateless Linux.
David
2:40 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 03:12:47PM -0500, David Zeuthen wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
> I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
> all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
> could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
> storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.
Right, this is entirely possible to do with livecd-tools; just, as
Thomas says, fedora-livecd-development would be a good name and it would
most likely just be like fedora-livecd-desktop; e.g. build upon
fedora-livecd-gnome. Literally, it wouldn't take very long to do this.
Perhaps it would include things like Eclipse, perhaps that's another
live cd. It should probably be the same though; we don't really want a
tons of different officila live cd builds with hugely overlapping
feature sets.
Having a bunch of CD's isn't ideal. If we had one with just a few
compilers/interpreters and one or two small editors/ide's (as long as we
don't forget cscope!) I would be thrilled and it could be useful for
educational/teaching environments. The challenge maybe be to keep it
small enough to fit on a single CD.
You know what the 'killer app' would be for the any fedora-livecd:
pilgrim. I realize we don't want to have 30 'official livecds' but it
would be great to have one of them that made it easy for others to make
their own livecd. I once wanted to build a livecd to help someone clean
their system (since they were sure it was infected with a nasty virus)
and getting setup to build a livecd with the right tools was too
cumbersome based on the amount of time I had. Being able to download a
livecd and boot it (or run with qemu) to make another would be awesome.
It would allow me to make livecd's on almost any system. (Sorry if this
has already been discussed on the list, but I haven't been reading it
much lately.)
If the computers to be used by the students got 1GB of RAM or more, it
would even be faster, or at least as fast, as using a native install.
I didn't think of that, but it would be. I assume that you are using
tmpfs (or something similar) so the pages storing the applications allow
them to execute in place.
We would need the "keep state on USB stick" feature but that is not a
lot of work. The most work with this feature are writing UI tools so the
user can designate all or part of a USB stick to be used for
persistence. Probably some small python app is the right answer.
For the first pass, just being able to mount the usb stick easily and
read write files to it would be fine. Customization of the running
environment based on the contents of the stick would be great, but we
would probably want to focus on an easy way to have the stick mounted
and accessed. There might need to be some extra considerations as well
since everything should work with a FAT-formatted stick (so everyone in
the world doesn't have to reformat their sticks to ext/jffs to make them
work on the fedora-livecd).
I'm toying around with ideas of having the computers network boot from a
server (PXEBOOT) and download the .iso into RAM and run from there just
as on "run from RAM" livecd runs. Then everything would be centrally
managed. It shouldn't be a lot of work and my colleagues here at Red Hat
in the QA dept are screaming for features like that to test out new
builds. That would make lot of sense in a computer lab too. It's almost
like Stateless Linux.
Interesting....
2:44 a.m.
--- Andy Gospodarek <gospo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
You know what the 'killer app' would be for the any
fedora-livecd:
pilgrim. I realize we don't want to have 30 'official livecds' but
it
would be great to have one of them that made it easy for others to
make
their own livecd.
You pretty much described the central aspect of my original post. I.e.
make a default livecd feature the ability to effectively do a 1-button
regeneration from scratch* of the livecd, with arbitrary user
modifications. I.e. in the example, the first user modification is to
just add the text 'hello world' to a file, to demonstrate to the child
that all they have done to 'program a computer' is change one little
'instruction', then hit rebuild, and there you have a newly created
appliance/firmware/livecd that 'does your bidding'.
That seems to me like boiling down the concept and teaching process of
'programming a computer' to its simplest. (that involves some tactile
reward of holding onto a newly burned cd/media that 'does something')
*If you think about that crazy 'genesis' post I made a couple months
ago, you can see where I'm going. I.e. put the entire source code on
the cd (in standard fedora source repo format), and put the build tool
(pungi?) in place which can literally recompile everything from
scratch, and give you a trivially rebranded hello world distribution.
Of course this is sounding a lot like linuxfromscratch now, which I've
never had the time or justifcation to explore as much as I should have.
I once wanted to build a livecd to help someone
clean
their system (since they were sure it was infected with a nasty
virus)
and getting setup to build a livecd with the right tools was too
cumbersome based on the amount of time I had. Being able to download
a
livecd and boot it (or run with qemu) to make another would be
awesome.
It would allow me to make livecd's on almost any system. (Sorry if
this
has already been discussed on the list, but I haven't been reading it
much lately.)
Ahh... self-reproducing livecds... Nope, there hasn't been enough talk
of it yet IMO.
>
> If the computers to be used by the students got 1GB of RAM or more,
it
> would even be faster, or at least as fast, as using a native
install.
I didn't think of that, but it would be. I assume that you are using
tmpfs (or something similar) so the pages storing the applications
allow
them to execute in place.
Yup, we are definitely reaching the age where a 1GB fedora install can
start to become 'firmware' basically.
>
> We would need the "keep state on USB stick" feature but that is not
a
> lot of work. The most work with this feature are writing UI tools
so the
> user can designate all or part of a USB stick to be used for
> persistence. Probably some small python app is the right answer.
For the first pass, just being able to mount the usb stick easily and
read write files to it would be fine.
Hmm... mounting and using external drives easily. The never solved
linux problem.
Customization of the running
environment based on the contents of the stick would be great, but
we
would probably want to focus on an easy way to have the stick mounted
and accessed. There might need to be some extra considerations as
well
since everything should work with a FAT-formatted stick (so everyone
in
the world doesn't have to reformat their sticks to ext/jffs to make
them
work on the fedora-livecd).
This isn't a big deal, as you just store a filsystem image file (or
devicemapper snapshot device image) on the usbstick. That and
otherwise provide 'easy-to-use(tm)' access to the rest of the usb fat
fs from the livecd environment.
-dmc/jdog
____________________________________________________________________________________
Get your own web address.
Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL
2:41 p.m.
On 1/11/07, David Zeuthen <davidz(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
> I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
> all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
> could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need any
> storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.
Right, this is entirely possible to do with livecd-tools; just, as
Thomas says, fedora-livecd-development would be a good name and it would
most likely just be like fedora-livecd-desktop; e.g. build upon
fedora-livecd-gnome. Literally, it wouldn't take very long to do this.
Yup and it's begun.
I'm not an expert on fedora development packages but I've looked at
base/comps.xml and I've filtered out only mandatory packages for
development group to create fedora-livecd-development.conf
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/livecd/20070111/rpms/50-fedora-livecd-develo...
I'm building one as we speak. :)
Regards,
--
Thomas Chung
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung
2:41 p.m.
Thomas Chung wrote:
On 1/11/07, David Zeuthen <davidz(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
> > I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
> > all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
> > could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need
> any
> > storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.
>
> Right, this is entirely possible to do with livecd-tools; just, as
> Thomas says, fedora-livecd-development would be a good name and it would
> most likely just be like fedora-livecd-desktop; e.g. build upon
> fedora-livecd-gnome. Literally, it wouldn't take very long to do this.
Yup and it's begun.
I'm not an expert on fedora development packages but I've looked at
base/comps.xml and I've filtered out only mandatory packages for
development group to create fedora-livecd-development.conf
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/livecd/20070111/rpms/50-fedora-livecd-develo...
I'm building one as we speak. :)
We should release live CD's for some very common set and a bunch of
different configuration to build the usual set of images that folks ask
along with good documentation within the pilgrim package itself.
Rahul
2:45 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 12:41:11PM -0800, Thomas Chung wrote:
On 1/11/07, David Zeuthen <davidz(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Gospodarek wrote:
>> I've had similar thoughts centered around making a bootable CD that has
>> all the tools necessary to start doing C/C++ development. The students
>> could have usb keys for their active projects so the PC's don't need
any
>> storage and they also don't need to be maintained by anyone.
>
>Right, this is entirely possible to do with livecd-tools; just, as
>Thomas says, fedora-livecd-development would be a good name and it would
>most likely just be like fedora-livecd-desktop; e.g. build upon
>fedora-livecd-gnome. Literally, it wouldn't take very long to do this.
Yup and it's begun.
I'm not an expert on fedora development packages but I've looked at
base/comps.xml and I've filtered out only mandatory packages for
development group to create fedora-livecd-development.conf
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/livecd/20070111/rpms/50-fedora-livecd-develo...
I'm building one as we speak. :)
NICE!!!
6307
days inactive
6308
days old
livecd@lists.fedoraproject.org
12 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Andy Gospodarek -
David Zeuthen -
Greg DeKoenigsberg -
Jane Dogalt -
Rahul Sundaram -
Thomas Chung -
Vnpenguin