These are my thoughts on the .LRN learning management system as of version 1.0.1.

The system is not straightforward to install. It inherits all the complexities of the underlying OpenACS web application server. The installation instructions themselves are fairly clear and accurate, but just a bit long and complicated. This is probably due to the long list of packages that .LRN depends on.

My first impressions of the system out of the box is that it's not very pretty. The standard theme is just a little bare and uninteresting. Compare with the PostNuke standard themes which, besides being numerous, look quite rich.

It only takes a few minutes to browse around the default empty site and get a feel for the user interface and the capabilities. What eluded me at first, though, was: where was the administration configuration? And by administration, I don't mean the administration of the courses, the users, and files. I mean the grand poobah of admins: the one that installs the .LRN packages, that changes the name of the web site, the theme. It turns out that some--not all--of those features can be found if you point your browser at http://yoursite.com/index.adp, which brings up a page different from http://yoursite.com/. This is not a documented feature for some reason. From this page, you can find API documentation, install packages, etc.

For my purposes of creating a community of self-administering self-learners, .LRN is too rigid and lacking in features. Once .LRN 2.0 comes out in the coming weeks, I might take another look at it. In the meantime, Yahoo! Groups will just have to do.