[Showme-devel] Fwd: ShowMeBox Kick-off

Thu Aug 27 09:22:47 UTC 2015

Hi Kris, and others,

[keeping CC's for now, and adding Siri + Kris' alternate addresses]

Quoting Kristoffer Rose (2015-08-27 07:12:04)
> The ShowMeBox got an enthusiastic reception here at Two Sigma! So as 
> far as I am concerned, we should find out what can truly be done.

Great!

Graham and I have started tinkering with hardware - notes here: 
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/showme/box.git/tree/README

> 1. Who is part of the project? I put our names in the ShowMeBox 
> wiki[1] but please add further names. (Two Sigma has not yet committed 
> to be an official partner but it may happen.) Should we have a mailing 
> list?

I have created Alioth project account "showme", added all of us 
currently listed as admins, and granted git write access to all DD's.

I will ping Wookie, Vasudev and Rajesh, encouraging them to join.

I recommend everyone to subscribe to the wiki page changes (link at the 
top when logged in).

> 3. Jonas, what do you need to find the ideal <$100 server hardware to 
> use and create an initial Debian image for it, RSN?

What can generally help is more hands and more boards.

Makes sense to look at it as two parts...:

Hardware-related part
---------------------

I have a [LIME2] with 1GB ram, Graham now has as a [LIME] with ½GB ram.

Those boards are Open Hardware and work well even in strong heat and 
powered by [battery], but memory might be too tight - especially if it 
should run both java and a modern Xorg-based browser at the same time.

It can help to explore alternative boards: I can buy them and put up the 
money at first, but cannot afford to pay them myself.  Can Two Sigma 
help there, or can someone in the team ask Debian to cover those costs, 
or maybe vendors directly to sponsor some?

First alternative I would like to explore is CubieTruck - as that should 
be well supported by Debian Installer.  We might want to explore more 
alternatives, however, to be better prepared for surprises in features 
(e.g. inability to work in heated/dusty environments or with battery or 
just having bootup quirks rendering it unsuitable for non-hw-tinkers).

Helpful is therefore (promise of) money for 1-5 alternative boards.

Helpful may also be (promise of) money for boards for other hardware 
tinkers (Graham, Rajesh, Vasudev?) - but I'll let them speak for 
themselves.

Hardware-agnostic part
----------------------

An open question is if the box should only host web served tool, or also 
act ask desktop machine, or maybe either/or (with a desktop per 
participant and a server per team): Likely simplest, cheapest, and most 
reliable to develop is a server-only box, so I implement that first. 
Then a desktop-only - and maybe (if needed) a combo last.

Another question is if Beaker will be usable for our project (memory 
demands may conflict with other hardware features like reliable battery, 
computing power may be too scarce, or packaging may take too long).  
Until Beaker exists as a (draft) Debian package I use ipython-notebook.

Helpful here is software tinkers - i.e. others in our team testing our 
[boxer] profile(s) - should be possible also on amd64 or i386 hardware.

> 4. Everyone, if Two Sigma decides to outsource the "proper debian 
> packaging of beaker-notebook[2] and dependencies", do any of you know 
> a DD or DM who would take the job (at decent pay)?

I didn't look closely but suspect it involves both Java, Python and R 
packaging (and likely Javascript too, possibly more).  As such I 
recommend to not seek a single person but ask relevant teams to help 
find ones for each part of the task.

Aome teams are listed at https://wiki.debian.org/Teams#Packaging_teams - 
others might be revealed by simply looking at Maintainer field of 
packages of relevant types.

> There are more questions (like "how many competition sites - 100 or 
> 10000?" and "any other locations than Capetown?") but lets take those 
> later.

I also have a bunch of questions, and I know Siri does too.

Maybe create wiki subpage ShowMeBox/Questions and throw them there - 
unordered at first just so as to have it in the air rather than 
potentially duplicated and/or fading away in individual heads, and then 
delete/restructure as we progress in both development and discusions.

 - Jonas

[LIME2]:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2/open-source-hardware

[LIME]: 
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-LIME/open-source-hardware

[battery]: https://olimex.wordpress.com/?s=battery

[boxer]: https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/showme/box.git/

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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