tutor/docs/intro.rst

.. _intro:

Concepts
========

What is Open edX?
-----------------

`Open edX <http://open.edx.org/>`_ is a thriving open source project, backed by a great community, for running an online learning platform at scale. Open edX comes with an LMS (Learning Management System) where students access course contents, a CMS (Content Management System) that course staff uses to design courses, and a few other components to provide more services to students, course staff and platform administrators.

Should I use Open edX?
----------------------

Open edX competitors include `Moodle <https://moodle.org/>`__, `Instructure's Canvas <https://www.instructure.com/>`__, `Blackboard's Open LMS <https://www.blackboard.com>`__, as well as a slew of hosted, closed source alternatives. Open edX is the only online learning system that satisfies all following properties:

* Open source software to avoid vendor lock-in
* Scales well in all directions (number of users and courses)
* Multiple extension points for comprehensive customization
* Modern, intuitive user interface to keep students engaged

Open edX is a safe bet: it is backed by edX.org, a US-based non-profit that is committed to open source and which runs Open edX to service its millions of learners. With Open edX you can be sure that the features you need will be available. If it's good enough for Harvard, the MIT or the French government, then it will probably also work for you.

Should I self-host Open edX or rely on a hosting provider?
----------------------------------------------------------

Third-party Open edX providers can provide you with custom, closed-source features that they developed internally. However, their pricing is usually per-seat: that makes it difficult to predict how much running Open edX will actually cost you if you don't know in advance how many students will connect to your platform. And once you start scaling up and adding many students, running the platform will become very expensive.

On the other hand, running Open edX on your own servers will help you keep your costs under control. Because you own your servers and data, you will always be able to migrate your platform, either to a different cloud provider or an Open edX service provider. This is the true power of open source.

Should I use Tutor?
-------------------

Running software on premises is cheaper only if your management costs don't go through the roof. You do not want to hire a full-time devops team just for managing your online learning platform. This is why we created Tutor: to make it easy to run a state-of-the-art online learning platform without breaking the bank. Historically, it's always been difficult to install Open edX with the native installation scripts. For instance, there are no official instructions for upgrading an existing Open edX platform: the `recommended approach <https://docs.bitnami.com/azure/apps/edx/administration/upgrade/>`__ is to backup all data, trash the server and create a new one. As a consequence, people tend not to upgrade their platform and keep running on deprecated releases. Tutor makes it possible even to non-technical users to launch, manage and upgrade Open edX at any scale. Should you choose at some point that Tutor is not the right solution for you, you always have an escape route: because Tutor is open source software, you can easily dump your data and switch to a different installation method. But we are confident you will not do that 😉

To learn more about Tutor, watch this 7-minute lightning talk that was made at the 2019 Open edX conference in San Diego, CA (with `slides <https://regisb.github.io/openedx2019/>`_):

.. youtube:: Oqc7c-3qFc4

How does Tutor work, technically speaking?
------------------------------------------

Tutor simplifies the deployment of Open edX by:

1. Separating the configuration logic from the deployment platforms.
2. Running application processes in cleanly separated `docker containers <https://www.docker.com/resources/what-container>`_.
3. Providing user-friendly, reliable commands for common administration tasks, including upgrades and monitoring.
4. Using a simple :ref:`plugin system <plugins>` that makes it easy to extend and customize Open edX.

.. image:: https://overhang.io/static/img/openedx-plus-docker-is-tutor.png
  :alt: Open edX + Docker = Tutor
  :width: 500px
  :align: center

Because Docker containers are becoming an industry-wide standard, that means that with Tutor it becomes possible to run Open edX anywhere: for now, Tutor supports deploying on a local server, with `docker-compose <https://docs.docker.com/compose/overview/>`_, and in a large cluster, with `Kubernetes <http://kubernetes.io/>`_. But in the future, Tutor may support other deployment platforms.

Where can I try Open edX and Tutor?
-----------------------------------

A demo Open edX platform is available at https://demo.openedx.overhang.io. This platform was deployed using Tutor and the `Indigo theme <https://github.com/overhangio/indigo>`__. Feel free to play around with the following credentials:

* Admin user: username=admin email=admin@overhang.io password=admin
* Student user: username=student email=student@overhang.io password=student

The Android mobile application for this website can be downloaded at this url: http://demo.openedx.overhang.io/static/mobile/app.apk

Urls:

* LMS: https://demo.openedx.overhang.io
* Analytics (from the `Figures plugin <https://pypi.org/project/tutor-figures/>`__): https://demo.openedx.overhang.io/figures
* Studio (CMS): https://studio.demo.openedx.overhang.io

The platform is reset every day at midnight, `UTC time <https://time.is/UTC>`__, so feel free to try and break things as much as you want.

How does Tutor work?
--------------------

You can experiment with Tutor very quickly: start by `installing <install>`_ Tutor. Then run::
  
    tutor config save --interactive

This command does two things:

1. Generate a ``config.yml`` configuration file: this file contains core :ref:`configuration parameters <configuration>` for your Open edX platforms, such as passwords and feature flags.
2. Generate an ``env/`` folder, which we call the Tutor "environment", and which contains all the files that are necessary to run an Open edX platform: these are mostly Open edX configuration files.

All these files are stored in a single folder, called the Tutor project root. On Linux, this folder is in ``~/.local/share/tutor``. On Mac OS it is ``~/Library/Application Support/tutor``.

The values from ``config.yml`` are used to generate the environment files in ``env/``. As a consequence, **every time the values from** ``config.yml`` **are modified, the environment must be regenerated**. This can be done with::
    
    tutor config save
    
Another consequence is that **any manual change made to a file in** ``env/`` **will be overwritten by** ``tutor config save`` **commands**. Consider yourself warned!

I'm ready, where do I start?
----------------------------

Right :ref:`here <gettingstarted>`!