Last few months I have been working on the OS-level of the OLPC School Server, there was a ton of work to do there before I could spend time on user visible features. After many long days and nights, that stage is coming to an end, and it's time to look at running Moodle properly on the XS.
So I am building the next release ('xs-0.5') which is based on Fedora 9 and will include a "first cut" Moodle integration. The first cut still takes quite a bit of work and I only have ~2 weeks to get it done - I hope to be starting work on different aspects of it today/tomorrow...
As usual, I'll be working on a branch off 19_STABLE, aiming at rebasing/merging the worthwhile bits into HEAD. I'll post here the link to the repo that uses the funny-named SCM...
Here's what I'll be working on --
Basic OLPC theme
Keep it simple, ensure it plays well with the gecko-based 'Browse' activity in the XO. Phillip Colburn has posted a theme here and I wonder if I can get some help reviewing it from Theme experts...
Testing Moodle on Browse
The OLPC laptop ships with a custom webbrowser (Browse) and a custom desktop (Sugar). Browse is gecko based, so it mostly Just Works(tm) but of course that's only true until you test it I count on finding a few oddities there. One area of concern is that Sugar is a single-window-at-a-time Destop/WM so... I just don't know happens when Moodle tries to open a popup window.
Will post some notes on how to test Moodle on a Sugar image...
Localisation
OLPC uses gettext-style PO files, which don't work well for Moodle, but I have to bridge the gap. There are upsides to Moodle (more localisations, better interop with downstreams that use PO files like Ubuntu and OLPC). We discussed this a while ago here -- help and review will be welcome in this area too.
Performance
A favourite. This time aimed at limiting resource usage (Apache/PHP and Pg get only a small slice of the 1GB RAM on the box) and still delivering good performance on very limited HW.
User page hooks
Extending the 'user/view.php' page with new 'tabs'. Not sure how pluggable that is -- I might set some hooks there (or thank anyone who does!)
Preconfigured "admin" options
This Moodle will ship preconfigured and pretty locked down. I want to hide most/all admin options and/or put them behind a big scary warning. For now at least... with a bit more time I want to rework /admin so bits can be hidden selectively...
Various OLPC plugins
Authentication, handling of enrolment and a myriad other things I plan on writing OLPC-specific plugins. If any turn out to be generally usable, I'll post about it and see if there's enough interest to package separately or to pitch for inclusion in Moodle proper.
The full plan
Here's the complete Moodle plan, a good part of it is very OLPC specific. Focus on 'stage 1' of it, that's what I want to get covered in the next 2 weeks. This is all part of a 5-week release cycle following this roadmap.
It's a ton of work, I know. But it's also a ton of fun
Edit: some additional bits of news
I forget that I haven't been keeping people up to date on where is OLPC, so here's a brief update...
- We are about to release "8.2", a new OS+Activities release for the XO laptop, and it's looking good!
- Mid/late November we'll reopen the G1G1 program so you can donate one, and get one.
- We're shipping 55K laptops per month; we've shipped around 500K laptops. Major deployment countries are Uruguay (recently handed out the 100.000th laptop) and Peru (~240K). A few other countries are about to roll out large numbers...
- All the laptops I mention are shipped with one OS - Linux. The G1G1 program recipients will be offered a 'full desktop' image based on Fedora 9 that they can download and use as an alternative to Sugar. (May need an extra SD card or USB flash disk as it's far bigger than the Sugar desktop...).
- And of course, the XS is about to get its very own Moodle...
