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Re: A Small Organisation Server as a Debian Pure Blend



On Wed, 2020-11-18 at 16:18 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> Quoting John Lines (2020-11-18 13:35:42)
> > On Tue, 2020-11-17 at 02:07 +0000, Wookey wrote:
> > > On 2020-11-16 19:20 +0000, John Lines wrote:
> > > > I have written at 
> > > > https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2020/11/07/the-ambridge-garden-club/ 
> > > > about a such a group, as I am interested to know if others
> > > > feel 
> > > > this is also a problem, and a one worth trying to solve.
> 
> I see this problem too, and am working on addressing it.  But slowly.
> 
> My aim is to purely integrate tools officially in Debian (which is
> what 
> I defined as "Debian Pure Blend", btw).  So to me, the first step is
> to 
> make sure all parts are packaged officially in Debian, and is well 
> maintained and in healthy shape upstream as well...
> 

One of my reasons for an example Small Organisation Server with a goal
of being able to be administered and used by non-technical people is to
show the real world need for things to be packaged officially in Debian
(or similar - I have not used Fedora for some time, or other
distributions). The packaging process should act as the arbiter for the
issues which are not relevant to upstreams, such as who gets to 'own'
port 80, or whatever.

I know it is possible for a non-technical person to, for example, set
up and run a video conference, invite attendees etc - as I see this
going on round me all the time, but if the way to do it starts

 git clone ...

they are not going to do it.

Lots of software is being made available as Docker containers, but I
feel this is OK for demonstration, or someone who only wants to do one
thing, but, again taking my Ambrige Garden Club as an example, ideally
they should not need a different username and password for each service
(or get habituated into using their Facebook or Google credentials for
any web site which asks for them)

> 
> > > 
> 
> I distinguish between 4 categories of video conferencing services:
> 
>  a) frontend-only
>  b) frontend + lighweight backend
>  c) frontend + heavyweight backend
>  d) cloud-only or in other ways non-free
> 
> BigBueButton and Jitsi are both in category c).
> 
> My interest is category b) because - unlike c) or d) - can most 
> realistically be hosted on small hardware with reduced
> administration, 
> and - unlike a) - can serve rooms of more than 6-8 participants.
> 
> Among category b) solutions, I am aware of these in active
> development:
> 
>  * jangouts, using janus backend
>  * multiparty-meeting, using mediasoup backend
> 
> I maintain the janus package and am happy to collaborate on getting
> more 
> (both related and competing) components packaged.

I run a small jitsi server on AWS, and it would be good to have an
official package, though the resource requirements are too heavy for my
example Small Organisation Server at the moment

I will look at Janus, one of the concepts of the overall Small
Organisation Server is to document why particular components were used
- which initially is likely to be because they are the one I know best.



> 
> I am also interested in information about tools that I might have 
> missed.  Here's what I am aware of already: 
> https://source.redpill.dk/media-stream-hosting/tree/DEVELOP.md
> 
> 
Thank you - that is a very useful list. 


> If your interest is in integrating something *now* to have it
> quickest 
> possible usable, then I recommend that you collaborate closely with 
> [FreedomBox] to not fork it but improve it to be flexible enought to
> fit 
> also your needs.
> 
> [FreedomBox]: https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox

I have forked the freedombox repository, but with the intention of
feeding changes back in, and am now running my forked version
(basically the bits which assume it is running behind NAT on a dynamic
IP address) at https://ambridge-garden-club.org.uk/plinth/


> 
> 
> 


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