Last week ubermix 1.0 was officially released into the wild, with hundreds of users downloading the image within the first few hours of it being posted. We've been thrilled by your enthusiasm and excited to see ubermix spread to reaches far and wide.
Understandably, a broader base of users leads to the discovery of unexpected issues, and a few important ones have come up that needed to be addressed right away, as follows:
- There was a glitch in the way ubermix was storing wireless connection information that caused the configuration to be tied to the MAC address of the device. The result of this was non-portable wireless settings, which meant that multiple machines imaged off of the same master had to log in again to the wireless. This issue would only affect those who are deploying ubermix off of their own custom images at scale.
- The disk scan option in the startup menu was no longer working in the 1.0 release version. This could be problematic for some, as unexpected shutdowns can, on rare occasions, cause a problem with the directory on the disk, with no easy way to repair it. ubermix does auto-check volumes at startup, however if it runs into a problem that the auto-check can't solve, repairing the disk becomes a much more complicated affair without the scan disk option.
These important issues have been addressed in ubermix 1.01. As a result, we strongly recommend that users of ubermix 1.0 download and install the updated version from http://ubermix.org/files.html
In addition, 1.01 brings an important improvement to the user interface that can significantly improve the experience for novice users. On ubermix 0.9x and earlier, open applications were always visible at the top of the screen (see the "Global Menus" section of my prior post for details), making it easy to tell at-a-glance what programs were already running and switch to them with a click. With the introduction of Global Menus in ubermix 1.0, while we gained valuable screen real estate for applications, we had to sacrifice the quick, "at-a-glance" visibility of open applications, in favor of the less assertive "application switcher" (again see my prior post for details). In theory, this alleviated the problem in an easy-to-use way, however in practice it introduced a bit of a learning curve for novice users, exacerbated by the lack of feedback upon clicking on the icon for an open application in the launcher.
In an effort to ease the learning curve, the launcher in ubermix 1.01 now reliably tracks open windows for applications and automatically brings them to the front when you click on a hidden application in the launcher. Users no longer have to rely on the application switcher to manage open applications. A big "thank you" to Colin Matheson (@cytochromec) at Carmel Unified for holding an early staff development on 1.0 and sharing the experience :-)
Keep the comments coming! You are the most important member of the ubermix development team!
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of ubermix 1.0, bringing a number of new features and enhancements that make ubermix better-than-ever for students and teachers. ubermix 1.0 is based on the latest version of Ubuntu - version 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" - which is a Long Term Support (LTS) release that Canonical (the parent organization) intends to provide updates and fixes for until 2015, making ubermix 1.0 a platform you can count on for many years to come.
Along with compatibility with the newest hardware and the latest innovations from the free and open source software world, ubermix 1.0 brings a number of enhancements that make the user experience even better, especially on devices with smaller screens, including:
Global Menus
One of the biggest challenges with using smaller devices is fitting all of the toolbars, palettes, and other user interface elements into a limited amount of screen space. Those familiar with prior versions of ubermix already know that one way we have traditionally optimized the use of small screen real estate has been to fold the top border of windows, including the close, minimize, and maximize buttons into the panel that runs along the top of the screen. ubermix 1.0 takes this idea one step further by introducing Global Menus, which pushes the menu bar of most windows into the top panel as well, freeing yet another row of screen real estate for use by an application's User Interface (UI). On a netbook, for example, the added height can make a big difference in a vertically oriented application like OpenShot, enabling a user to view more tracks or a larger preview window.
One of the challenges this introduces is keeping track of open applications. In prior versions of ubermix, icons for open application windows appeared in the top left corner, along with a round "go home" icon that displayed the launcher when clicked, as in the example below:
Since that space is now be taken up by menus, we created an application switcher at the top right to enable users to quickly go back to the launcher or switch to an open window, as follows:
Of course, the fastest way to get back to the launcher is still the left "Super" key ("Windows" key, if your device had the misfortune of originally shipping with Windows on it), and Alt+Tab still switches between open windows, but the application switcher offers the essential quick view of open windows on the system.
Overlay Scrollbars
Another display space saving enhancement is overlay scrollbars, which essentially fold up the scrollbars in most applications, like so:
As you can see, there is just a little marker to let you know where you are on the page until you point to it, at which point it expands into a "handle" you can grab or click the up/down arrows in. Again, this frees up some window space for smaller screens, making using those complex applications a far more pleasant experience.
Unified System Settings/Power Menu Enhancements
In an effort to further increase ease-of-use and reduce interface clutter, system settings have been moved to a control center app, simplifying the system tools panel in the launcher:
Quick access to common controls (like displays and printers) have been moved to the power menu, along with a "System Settings" option:
...which brings up a unified settings panel:
If that's not enough, there are a number of new applications in ubermix 1.0, bringing even more opportunities for creativity and innovation, including:
- Zim Desktop Wiki: Replacing Tomboy in this release is Zim Desktop Wiki, which is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of pages or notes. Designed to "get out of your way", Zim makes it easy to create simple text or sophisticated, media-rich content, with strong organization tools and a variety of plugins that enhance the application's functionality.
- Klavaro: Replacing KTouch is Klavaro, a better organized and more functional touch typing tutor.It features a variety of adaptability, velocity, and fluidity exercises, as well as graphical charts and a scoring mechanism.
- iGNUit Flashcard Trainer: iGNUit is a memorization aid based on the Leitner flashcard system. It has a GNOME look and feel, a good selection of quiz options, and supports UTF-8. Cards can include embedded audio, images, and mathematical formulae (via LaTeX). It can import and export several file formats, including CSV. Great for both long-term learning and cramming.
- VUE Visual Understanding Environment: The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University, focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.
- Freeciv: Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the Stone Age to the Space Age.
- Drawpile: DrawPile is a sketching oriented drawing program with a twist: you can share your drawing live with other users. There are no restrictions on who may draw where; every user has full access to the whole picture simultaneously.
- TBO Comic Creator: TBO Comic Creator is an easy and fun application for telling stories through comics. Comics created with TBO Comic Creator can be exported to PDF, SVG, and PNG for easy distribution. There are many ready-to-use characters, callouts, and templates which make TBO Comic Creator very easy to use.
- Nitro Tasks: Nitro is a light task manager, that presents via a simple yet fancy interface with a place to add, edit and manage task lists with due dates, importance level and logbook support.
- ffDiaporama Movie Maker: ffDiaporama enables you to create video presentations or slideshows from your photos, movie clips and background music. You can spice up your slideshow with custom title slides using text, images and animated effects as well as slide and background transitions. If you want quick results, you can simply add your images to the project and create a standard slideshow, or you can customize the look and feel by editing individual slides and apply zoom effects, object rotations, text annotations and other custom effects.
Of course, these new applications are only a fraction of those that come with the ubermix. We're thrilled to bring all of this innovation to you today for free, and look forward to discovering how you are taking advantage of ubemix in your learning spaces.
ubermix 1.0 beta1 is now available for download at http://ubermix.org/files.html This first beta release is relatively "feature-complete" and ready for testing. Those of you who grabbed the early alpha release will find that the basic functionality is relatively similar (see my prior post for details), however this build now has all of the applications updated for the new build, and all of the features you know and love from prior versions of ubermix are now functional. As a reminder, ubermix 1.0 is based on the latest version of Ubuntu - version 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" - which is a Long Term Support (LTS) release that Canonical (the parent organization) intends to provide updates and fixes for until 2015.
There are a few application changes from prior releases, including the following:
Of course, these new applications are only a fraction of those that come with the ubermix. So have a look, play with the new applications, test your old favorites, and provide feedback. The most important person on the ubermix team is you!
A few notes:
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There are a few application changes from prior releases, including the following:
- Zim Desktop Wiki: Replacing Tomboy in this release is Zim Desktop Wiki, which is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of pages or notes. Designed to "get out of your way", Zim makes it easy to create simple text or sophisticated, media-rich content, with strong organization tools and a variety of plugins that enhance the application's functionality.
- Klavaro: Replacing KTouch is Klavaro, a better organized and more functional touch typing tutor.It features a variety of adaptability, velocity, and fluidity exercises, as well as graphical charts and a scoring mechanism.
- iGNUit Flashcard Trainer: iGNUit is a memorization aid based on the Leitner flashcard system. It has a GNOME look and feel, a good selection of quiz options, and supports UTF-8. Cards can include embedded audio, images, and mathematical formulae (via LaTeX). It can import and export several file formats, including CSV. Great for both long-term learning and cramming.
- VUE Visual Understanding Environment: The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University, focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.
- Freeciv: Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the Stone Age to the Space Age.
- Drawpile: DrawPile is a sketching oriented drawing program with a twist: you can share your drawing live with other users. There are no restrictions on who may draw where; every user has full access to the whole picture simultaneously.
- TBO Comic Creator: TBO Comic Creator is an easy and fun application for telling stories through comics. Comics created with TBO Comic Creator can be exported to PDF, SVG, and PNG for easy distribution. There are many ready-to-use characters, callouts, and templates which make TBO Comic Creator very easy to use.
- Nitro Tasks: Nitro is a light task manager, that presents via a simple yet fancy interface with a place to add, edit and manage task lists with due dates, importance level and logbook support.
- ffDiaporama Movie Maker: ffDiaporama enables you to create video presentations or slideshows from your photos, movie clips and background music. You can spice up your slideshow with custom title slides using text, images and animated effects as well as slide and background transitions. If you want quick results, you can simply add your images to the project and create a standard slideshow, or you can customize the look and feel by editing individual slides and apply zoom effects, object rotations, text annotations and other custom effects.
Of course, these new applications are only a fraction of those that come with the ubermix. So have a look, play with the new applications, test your old favorites, and provide feedback. The most important person on the ubermix team is you!
A few notes:
- ubermix is now a universal build, so there are no longer two versions (formerly General Availability "GA" and Cedar Trail "CT"). If you 1.0 beta1 on a brand new Cedar Trail netbook, please follow the instructions at http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/Cedar_Trail_Devices
- If you have an HP Mini 1104, dm1z, 3115M, or another device with an Ralink RT3562 wireless card in it, follow the instructions at http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/Ralink_RT3562 to make it work
When it comes to prepping for the new year, I will usually wait until the last minute to create my final, master image and key. I typically do a lot of prototyping along the way, making sure that I write down all the things I do, then when I need to get going I download the absolute latest build and re-apply my changes to do my final tests against. I try everything to make sure that all works as expected, then create my master keys. The reason I don't build my master keys too early is ubermix updates track Ubuntu updates, and a new version of Ubuntu is always released at the end of April. ubermix releases follow shortly thereafter, with everyone downloading and testing the latest version, offering feedback, reporting problems, etc. Updates are typically fast and furious, as a result, so waiting until right before your ready to image is always a good idea. FYI, if you are currently gearing up for next school year, you can get started testing your devices with the first alpha release of ubermix 1.0 now. Details are at: http://goo.gl/zjPD4
When setting up my master machine, I always follow the instructions under "Rebuilding the Base Image" on the ubermix Customization page. Simple updates (as described on the Customization page) really aren't designed to be used for anything but adding printers, making minor settings changes, etc., and they take extra time to install. Not a lot of time, but extra seconds add up when you are working with thousands of machines.
Once I have what I believe to be my perfectly setup machine, I update my ubermix USB key, again following the instructions under "Rebuilding the Base Image" on the ubermix Customization page. If I plan to use that master to image several different device models, I'll test that image against those as well, just to make absolutely sure that they all work.
When I know that my image is ready to go, I then make a bunch of copies of that key by following the instructions in the Making copies of the USB key page on the ubermix wiki. USB keys are cheap and I can install on as many machines at one time as I have keys, so imaging using keys is always quicker than any sort of network-based imaging solution. While I'm waiting for the image to complete, I'll clean each device using computer wipes like these and dry cloths to dry up the excess cleaning fluid, making sure my machines are neat and tidy for the next batch of students. If the devices are in a cart, I'll be sure to clean up loose cabling and make sure that the timer still works. By the time I am done, all of the devices will be imaged and ready to return to the carts.
During the school year we rarely (if ever) update the devices directly. If we need to make changes, we take advantage of the Auto-update script to push them out to everyone without touching each device.
Obviously, there are a nearly-infinite number of ways to do it, this is just my approach. If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments, or better yet, on the ubermix wiki site.
Photo: Some rights reserved by jurvetson
Now that the weather is getting warm and summer is approaching, a number of schools and districts are looking into what netbook model they might want to purchase for the coming school year. With Intel having (finally) ramped up production of the Atom N2x00 (Cedar Trail) processor family and hard disk manufacturing back on track in Thailand, the market is flush with options. In an effort to help ubermixers make decisions around hardware, below are video reviews of models from the major players in the space. All have been tested with ubermix, and are known to work well.
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Asus EeePC 1025C vs EeePC 1011cx
Asus created quite a buzz around its new 1025C netbook model at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, but the 1011cx came out of nowhere and wowed ubermixers from coast-to-coast. The 1025C edges out the 1011cx on style and battery life, but the 1011cx is available with double the RAM and no Windows clogging things up - all for $20 less than the $299 1025C. Both models are excellent for use with ubermix.
Acer Aspire One D270 and Gateway LT40
Both of these models from the Acer corporation are excellent choices for ubermix. Acer has been aggressively pursuing the education market, and also appears to be listening to their customers, as these models demonstrate. Gone are the build quality issues from the Acer of old, replaced with much-improved durability and a surprisingly thin and light chassis. And Acer somehow manages to keep the price under that of most of its competitors.
All of that said, there are some issues to take note of with the Acer-built models. The touchpad rocker-button on these models is a bit stiff and has a very short throw, making it occasionally feel unresponsive. The 6-cell battery size on both of these models is on the small end of the spectrum at 4400mAh, which means you can expect roughly 6 hours of realistic battery life. The D270, however, has some upscale specs, like a quicker-than-the-competition GMA3650 GPU and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. And at $249 for the LT40 and $289 for the D270, these are some of the most aggressively priced units on the market.
HP Mini 1104
For HP fans out there, the Mini 1104 is the successor to last year's Mini 1103. The new model features a more refined design, with the trackpad buttons pushed all the way to the edge of the case, and rounded corners near the screen hinges which will hopefully fend off the broken plastic hinge cover problems on the 1103. It also features a student-friendly spill-proof keyboard, accelerometer protection for the hard drive, and a TPM module. That's all great, however for these additional features you get to pay $50 more than the competition, per unit (pricing starts at $349). If you're a die-hard HP shop, these are certainly worth looking into, but the extra $50 really adds up when purchasing in quantity. For every 5 HP units, you could have 6 (or more) of the competitor's models.
HP dm1z/3115M Mini Laptop
If you're looking for a little more horsepower from your devices, AMD Fusion-based mini laptops make quite an impression. These devices feature advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) capable of decoding 1080P HD video, as well as providing some impressive 3D performance. Screen sizes are bigger (11.6"-12") with higher resolution (1366x768) on these models, and keyboards are full-sized. That said, battery life isn't typically as good as Intel Atom-based netbooks, so don't expect to get more than 5 hours or so out of them between charges. And these are more expensive, typically starting at around $400.
Conclusion
I hope you find these reviews helpful as you look to make decisions about which hardware you might use for future ubermix installs. It's always great to have lots of options when selecting hardware, and the ubermix makes this easy as it runs well on just about anything, including full-sized laptops and desktops. Be sure to add your favorite devices to the comments and let us all know what you think.
A number of people have been looking at remotely monitoring and/or controlling ubermix devices with software like iTalc, Apple Remote Desktop, RealVNC Viewer, etc. To help out in such situations, I've created a couple of useful indicators that offer helpful information on each device, which should make using these tools even easier.
indicator-hostname is an indicator that appears in the top panel and displays the device's current hostname, as well as it's IP address when you click on it, like so:
This is particularly useful in an environment using tools like iTalc, where determining the hostname is the fastest path to connecting to a machine. The IP address is also convenient, as it provides necessary information for a remote tech support person.
indicator-username is an indicator that appears in the top panel and displays the current user name, as well as the device's hostname and it's IP address when you click on it, like so:
This is particularly useful in a shared-device, multi-user environment that uses any one of number of monitoring tools, as the hostname won't likely be enough to determine who is actually using the device. This, of course, requires creating multiple accounts on the devices or enabling some form of remote authentication, which probably isn't worth the trouble when compared to doing an Auto-Reset
I hope you find these useful! To install them, simply go to http://ubermix.org/files.html on your ubermix machine, download the package you want to use, and double-click on the package.
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indicator-hostname is an indicator that appears in the top panel and displays the device's current hostname, as well as it's IP address when you click on it, like so:
This is particularly useful in an environment using tools like iTalc, where determining the hostname is the fastest path to connecting to a machine. The IP address is also convenient, as it provides necessary information for a remote tech support person.
indicator-username is an indicator that appears in the top panel and displays the current user name, as well as the device's hostname and it's IP address when you click on it, like so:
This is particularly useful in a shared-device, multi-user environment that uses any one of number of monitoring tools, as the hostname won't likely be enough to determine who is actually using the device. This, of course, requires creating multiple accounts on the devices or enabling some form of remote authentication, which probably isn't worth the trouble when compared to doing an Auto-Reset
I hope you find these useful! To install them, simply go to http://ubermix.org/files.html on your ubermix machine, download the package you want to use, and double-click on the package.
