Debian Jr. Readying for Release
February 4th, 2002
It has been a while since I've reported on how Debian Jr. is going. Yes,
we're still here and still forging ahead. A number of improvements
have been made to the Debian Jr. web site to give people a better
idea of what we've accomplished, and where we are headed. So please
have a look:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr
Here are the important developments over the past year:
- Most of our energy today is focused on ensuring Debian Jr. packages
are all at least in a releasable state for Woody. We help to
deal with bugs against packages we list, or find suitable
replacement packages if the ones we have chosen cannot be
made ready for release.
- We have completed a good base set of 'junior-' meta packages
for Debian Jr. users. The task-junior package is now obsolete,
replaced by the new tasksel entry which is functionally equivalent.
Selecting "Debian Jr." in tasksel will populate your system with
most of the packages in Debian Jr. The rest can be obtained by
individually installing those 'junior-' packages that are not
installed by tasksel. See the junior-doc package for details.
The "quick guide" in this package covers installation.
- The logo page has been updated. It is linked from our home page,
listed above. I honestly cannot say if we're any closer to deciding
on one at this point. (Logo selection is fairly low priority
compared to getting things ready for release.)
- While continuing to look for someone to form a separate debian-edu
group, it has become fairly clear that since nobody has stepped
forward to do this yet, Debian Jr. will need to cover some aspects
of Debian in education. We have therefore taken membership in the
newly formed Schoolforge
coalition, a group of "independent organisations that advocate,
use and develop open resources for primary and secondary
education". Over the coming year, we'll be on the lookout for
developers who would like to see Debian used in the schools and
find work for them in Debian Jr.
- The child-oriented menus design discussion, as interesting as it was
at the time, fizzled, producing nothing. I blame first my own lack
of interest in carrying the implementation forward. Second, it seems
the principal work, that of simply packaging free children's software
for Debian, and ensuring it is all release ready, consumes all
of our energies for now.
- OSEF, the Open Source
Education Foundation, has kindly donated a vintage laptop (K6-233,
810M drive) to the Debian Jr. project. It is en route to my
house as I write this. We are grateful for the donation which
will be immediately put to use as a Debian Jr. system in my
household. It will be kept up-to-date with sid and will be
valuable in identifying strengths and weaknesses of our packages on
such older hardware.
