Where Is The Plug-and-Play Linux Office System?

cdlu writes "Where oh where is the plug-and-play Linux business computer? Robin Miller asks the question and makes the case for starting a business to sell a self-updating networked Linux system for small business. Any takers?" (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Comments

Re:Is this going to be a case of

[Anonymous Coward]

of course it is, this is slashcrap, the home of MS bashing.

Obligatory Hardcore Hacker Comment

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

No-one needs plug and play!
All we need is

# mount -auto uid 0x0546 /mnt/djuh /dev/rtv7 | grep /etc/fstab "df5b" | less -i | umount /dev/null /mnt/floppy | rm -i -v /*

What could be simpler! :E

Re:Read the Article

[nine-times]

I get that, but I still don't really understand what he's pushing for. I mean-- what, above having HP/IBM/Dell or some other hardware vendor selling Linux desktops?

You can have scheduled updates on many Linux distros without much difficulty-- if you want that. If you buy Linux from Redhat/Novell or someone, what's being sold is support. Plus, you have support from your hardware vendor.

As far as being "plug and play" or "zero configuration", it's pretty much there for the desktop clients, right? I mean, if you have Redhat or SuSE or something installed, what's so complicated about that?

On the server level, well... when are you even going to not-need someone to help set that up? Is this what he's asking for? Because, I'll tell you, I don't think there's a shortage of Linux consultants who will help you out with that.

Or is it an all-in-one solution? One large corporate company that sells the hardware, software, setup, and support? I'm sure there are smaller consultants who will help you with that, but if you want a big corporate-type body, I'd take a look at IBM or Apple (not linux, but similar). From these companies, that sort of service won't be cheap, but I'm pretty sure they'll do it.

So what is it that he's really asking for?

You guys are all missing the point.

[Mustang Matt]

I haven't read the article yet (-1 Karma) but I have read most of the comments below (-2 Karma) and I think everyone is missing the point.

The idea is to give the consumer choice. If the customer wants to be notified of updates, notify them. If the customer wants the updates automagically installed, install them. If the customer wants no notification and will manually install updates, let them do that.

Windows installer is not beautiful but it works well for the average user. You can pop a CD in and the autorun installer pops up and most users and capable of hitting next several times and then finish with icons in their menus.

I haven't yet seen this process in any form of linux. Granted I really only use debian and knoppix. Have any distros really perfected this process?

Ubuntu

[Edie O'Teditor]

it's polish

Sounds more African to me.