This wiki will help us collect our thoughts.

Design goals

• Make LOUD easily installable under a virtual machine. How do we accomplish this? How about this.

1) User gets cd.

2) User puts cd into computer.

3) Something runs automatically and asks the user to grant permission to install LOUD.

4) The user is prompted with an informational screen and LOUD begins installing in the background.

5) After some time passes, user launches the loud platform. To them it feels like an application. A pristine development environment that also happens to play every video format under the sun. Works with youtube, plays mp3s, has every possible codec installed, etc. Basically, all the things that irritate you when they don't work as expected. Things that you are sick of installing manually every time you bring up a new distribution.

Target host operating systems:

• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• GNU/Linux (deb, rpm, tar.gz)
• MacOS X

Update: 10/11/2007

OS compatibility (order of importance): 1.) Windows Vista 2.) Windows XP 3.) Linux 4.) Mac OS X

Graphical LOUD PreInstallation:

• - Username and Password - Prompt for installation type
  • - Basic Installation
    • - Full Installation
    - Experimental Installation
  - License Questions

---Consider PreInstallation appearence (Screenshots)

Other Considerations:

• Squid Proxy:
  • - Configuration - Possibly create LOUD package for Squid
  loud-universe

---Think about all other requirements for the project.

Update 10/14/2007

I've been thinking more about requirements. Rather than build on ldapper, we should instead jump to developing the lead version of LOUD, which will be called lhardy. With the release of the Gutsy Gibbon, repositories will soon be created for the Hardy Herron. All LOUD Platform development should be done on that release. Think about some advantages:

*) Get to work with the latest bleeding edge software. We'll get to follow the process that Ubuntu uses to start a new version in real time.

*) Will get to demo a preview version at the Computing Fair in the Spring. This will allow faculty and staff to see the version of LOUD that is slated to be deployed in the Departmental labs on July 1, 2008.

Now, moving to a new versions means re-evaluating some core decisions. For example, LOUD is currently based upon Debian Installer. However, there is a new version of the Ubuntu installer named Espresso that is the Graphical Live CD installer. I would assume it has hooks to it that would relatively easily allow custom questions to be answered. It may make more sense to integrate more directly with espresso. This is getting more into implementation details, but I'm planting seeds. This still doesn't change much in terms of the requirements for the LOUD installer. They are still the generic questions that we want to present to our users at install time. Whether or not we integrate them into espresso or build our own app, they still need defined.