[Testing] [IAEP] SoaS Breakthrough!

[Rubén Rodríguez]

> I called Tom Gilliard today during his ski vacation (oops!) to get
> some help prepping for showing SoaS at SCaLE 10X Jan 20-22.  After we
> talked about several things I told him I had a "wild idea" that I
> thought the average non-techie teacher could handle.  Why not run
> SoaS from a Live CD and then save all the files you want to keep on a
> separate usb stick? This could include additional Activities
> downloaded from the Sugar Labs website that don't "live" on the Live
> CD.

This should work out of the box in TOAST -without extra activities-,
you just need to format the usb drive in ext2(-4) and label it home-rw.
Then, if you have it plugged during the live cd boot, it will be mounted
as /home and keep any user changes, downloads, activities, journal...

In any case, how is that an improvement over having both the system and
the home in the usb as usually?

> IMHO this could really be a breakthrough for getting Sugar into
> classrooms that can't get XOs.

I think live usb systems are nice for some tasks, but not for serious
deployments. The live usb persistence methods can -and do- fail,
specially if you don't shut the system down properly, as impatient kids
tend to do.

The method I think would be a breakthrough for a school is to use a thin
client environment. One server is enough to run a typical school, you
only need to manage one standard GNU/Linux computer, the clients need
no software or configuration, and they can keep whatever they already
have in their hard drives untouched and usable. Also all the students
data are in an easy to backup spot, installing an activity in the server
makes it available for everyone instantly, and you can also combine it
with class management software like iTALC.