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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.)
I have had a problem where a system will continue to pester you about updates, and there is no, I don't what that update option. aka SP2 in xp
"self-updating windows systems = evil" versus "self-updating linux systems = good"?
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Wasn't there a huge stink about WinXP and its AutoUpdate feature, now this guy wants to base his marketing around that idea w/linux...
Given how many times an update has broken an app or caused a conflict I cant say I would welcome an auto updating autonomous Linux system. As with any modern OS an admin must review what an update does and test it out prior to rolling it out to the unwashed masses. This is true of any and all oporating systems, be they MacOS, Linux, Windows or what have you.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
But it's not just migrating from Office to Openoffice, what about accounting and business apps like Turbotax and Quickbooks that most small businesses use extensively? How is open source doing in these areas?
Why does it seem like Linux is always being held to a much higher standard than Windows? Whenever I talk to someone about how nice Linux is, they always ask it can do this or that, and when I say no it can't yet or that those features are till in beta, they laugh at Linux. But Windows can't do those things they ask about either! It confuses the hell out of me why Windows is concidered OK, and if Linux had all the features of Windows it would still be just a "toy" OS and not taken seriously. It just confuses the hell out of me.
Space for rent, inquire within
More business related software runs on the Linux platform.
Nobody wants to spend months getting everything necessary up from the "90% done" state it's in now to the "98-100% done" state necessary for such a project. There's still a lot of work involved, and no guarantee that any business would want it.
At the same time, a lot of businesses don't want a Linux plug n play desktop because they don't perceive it as being sufficiently mature.
Red Hat, SuSE et al are doing a lot to correct the first problem. Various organisations with well-publicised rollouts (think Munich) will help with the second problem. But I don't think there will ever be a year of "Linux on the Desktop" - simply because it will take more than a year to get there.
... and they come pretty close, with the best installer in the market, and a very easy-to-use setup. Why is it that the snooty Linux gurus always pooh-pooh Linspire anyway?
I think MEPIS Linux is like that.
I think Apple made what you're looking for. Seriously, I've been able to do everything I would do on a linux system with no problem on my mac.
Obviously this article was too interesting/pertinent for linux.com, which continues to be the most boring Linux site on the internet.
(NewsForge and Slashdot *and* Linux.com are both part of OSTG.)
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
The author isn't talking about auto updating software or and OS, he's talking about prebuilt Server/Clients for small offices. --> So really, who is hotter? Alley or Alleys sister?
I run Debian, with a nice little script that keeps everything automatically updated for me. It's been working great for months. I rarely reboot, OOo and KDE are kept up to date for me, as well as all the things in the background which I rarely worry about.
With the many variants on Debian, I'm sure this guy's idea has already seen light.
A plug-and-play Linux computer is a logical step, technically, from Knoppix et al. Economically, it may be in a prime situation for a well priced subscription model.
The barrier to entry of the humble plug and play corporate desktop actually seems to be a consequence of the lack of commercialization of Linux to date. Though the economic incentive exists to break into the enterprise marketplace, it has not trickled down to the small business.
With time, I am sure that a start-up will capitalize on this in a grand way. The technology is there, as evinced by the variety and capabilities of the many distributions. A simplified distribution, reflecting an appropriate commercial incentive, may soon be in a position to go a long way.
Because self-updating works so well for Windows... Does it matter what Windows do? And besides not getting used, I haven't heard of problems with windows update.
I think that will have to be an important argument when speaking of security. Linux isn't 100% reliable, just as no system are. Therefore it's recomended that you keep your system up-to-date, but not many common users actually do that, that would probably pose quite an risk if Linux grew to higher market shares, and an autoupdate system will be neccescary.
What are questions you're getting that Windows 'can't do either' ?
Pretty much any time someone's asked me something about Linux's capabilities, it's generally because they already *do* that particular task in Windows and wonder about compatibility, similarity, etc.
I've not come across people that just make up random words, then ridicule Linux because it doesn't measure up when Windows doesn't measure up either.
creation science book
..and something that most of us have been doing for years, whether the customers know it or not.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have stock systems that I go with, both hardware and software wise. I get a customer order, I already know which systems I'm going to use ( hell, I have ghost images of the damn things ). It's just a matter of what extra software packages they'll need.
There's another aspect of this, and one that people can't quite grasp: Customers want to feel special. I don't care how much they belly ache about wanting it fast and cheap and good ( heh ), they want to feel like they are your most important customer. On the opposite side, most IT contractors are cock-chokers, and will spend as little time on the customer as possible. You see the potential problems arising from this situation?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
To most people, "The Internet" is like a black box. They connect to it, and all they care about is that it works. They don't worry about routers and nodes and traffic-balancing and all the sweat that goes into keeping the infrastructure running. A small office computer system should be the same way. It should ... arrive, pre-tested, in boxes and get plugged in ... by a local, low-level network wiring contractor. As soon as everything is hooked up, people in the office should be able to sit down and go to work.
Actually the author is right on the nose. Small companies should like the option of having a working network installed in their offices, and routine upgrades and/or maintenance handled remotely.
I think that he has identified a possibly profitable niche, supplying companies too small for a staff IT person, but big enough to want consistency and support. These are the people who don't want to do-it-yourself, they just want systems that work, out of the box, without headaches.
Three Squirrels
I think the whole "locked-down office PC appliances" concept is the key...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
My company, Local Net Solutions has been working toward that goal for about a year now. The system is about ready to go. Depending on the office size and bandwidth from that office, I am looking at a local machine to be the master update server. The SOHO office will update directly from my servers.
It's ironic that somebody who is trying to address one of linux biggest problems- user friendliness -is being flamed and compared to that very same product. I'm not saying the service is good or bad. I don't know. And neither do half of you, but we're associating it with Windows- a bad comparison to begin with -anyway. What's hugely ironic is that you have to pay for a service to get an open source product that user friendliness to begin with.
And for God sakes, people, you can turn the windows auto update manager off. If that's your biggest bitch, go whore yourself somewhere else.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Most of the small business owners I speak are reluctant to migrate to Linux (or *BSD) because of the perceived lack of business oriented software. They are perfectly happy with the Linux offerings today when it comes to setting up things such as firewalls, print servers and backup mechanisms.
As a specific example, a small handful of these businesses run some very specialized sales tax tracking software. (Think stores that sell both taxable and tax-free goods.) Conceptually, the software is trivial. However, the software is so old that the minimum recommended operating system is DOS!
Let me be more clear. Sure they can run it in a DOS emulator on Linux. That's not the problem. What they want is "external support" for that particular configuration, and they don't have the time or the patience to chase down dozens of Google leads, whenever a problem comes up. They'd rather pay (and expense) for a dedicated vendor, but the market is too small to support one.
I have spoken to accountants who plan to move to OSX as soon as all of their accounting software gets ported over. I believe Peachtree has taken this step. I'm not sure about Quickbooks or some of the more specialized packages. If these companies sold Linux specific, supported, and certified editions, they would move.
They would even still move if you simply "repackaged" existing software for Linux and provided support for the Linux specific issues (and acted as a go-between for the other issues).
That said, I doubt businesses are looking for a zero-administration box. I sincerely doubt they want one that's administered remotely, unless this company was willing to assume the legal risks and obligations. If they break the box when you're trying to submit quarterly financials, will they pay the penalties?
I have to speak to this.
As an IT mangager type, I just cringe when I see someone who has installed a new screen saver and/or tool bars. I do my best to not be overbearing to my user community, but there comes a point where you have to say "Enough." I've gone through more than enough machines removing malware and spyware and then explained to the luser who abuses the machine that they're breaking things by installing un-approved apps, and next time I get out the LART.
The machine is there to help them get work done, not entertain them. It's like thier work area - we don't allow objectionable posters or dangerous items as decor, nor do we allow them to leave thier area in a dangerous clutter, so why should we allow them to do approximately the same thing to thier computer? It makes no business sense to do so. (BTW, the above analogy seems to actually sink in to a semi-intelligent luser's skull without applying deadly pressure - best clue I've found for them so far.) It's all about instilling the right culture into your organisation.
I'd love for something like the articles subject to come to fruition. It would be easier to manage, users would benefit from little to no down time as well as a consistent desktop environment, and I could approve all apps before they're installed, installed once and installed correctly. Hell, I'd allow and even deploy MP3 players, some games and even the coolest screen savers I could. I want them to have as rich an experience as possible, but I want that experience to be safe and inexpensive to use - and the article's subject seems to have a plausible chance of providing just that.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Then update comes along. New configfile format that requires an update. New configfile also requires some configuration, like say. Your Ip number.
/* Hah! */
then you either update automatically, and miss that leftover "die" in the config, or you don't and reboot the machine.
in any case, it requires intervention, or you're off in the cold.
no, Gentoo , as good as it is, isn't the automagical solution to everything. please don't tout it as if it would be, all cases like this require an administrator to do it. A Good Linux in this case would be deploy once and wouldn't require updates for a Long Time.
It would be a small and specific set of packages, and only Just That. When the update comes along, an updater-tool migrates all changed configs. And all things
The plethora of alternatives that Debian, Gentoo, Fedora and others supply invites more complexity. keeping things simple means less work on updating and less administrator effort.
I didn't do this, now did I?
Sure, it's the "Linux way" but sometimes the world is better served by one or two major versions of the same thing, rather than thirty or forty all clamoring for market share. If there were One True Distro, far more people in industry would take Linux seriously; likewise, if there were a single, well-supported, well-equipped Linux desktop system, that would go much further toward widespread adoption than aging computer shops propping themselves up by hiring 17-year-olds to install Mandrake on P3 systems.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
I don't think having systems update automatically based on a distro manager would be that smart. I do think the auto-update function would be very useful if distribution were controlled locally, say by a company's MIS department. They'd have a better handle on what hardware was out there, and could test and make sure updates won't start breaking things. It'd also work if a computer manufacturer and distributor did it, assuming owners limited what changes they made to hardware.
IMO the basic idea has merit.
Forgive me if I missed it in the article, but the addition of offsite, secure, encrypted(private) backup to the mix would make it much more attractive.
Alternatively, XUL behind Firefox browser makes it possible to shift office applications to an offsite server farm which in turn might have offsite backup or even a secondary site for disaster recovery.
Beginning with a mix of the two and slowly moving applications off site as one is able to seems a reasonable approach to building this sort of business.
Privacy is a big concern for all businesses so should be a selling point rather than a response to the question.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are companies, slowly going about the sort of business proposed on their own, rather than than trying to start big by hooking up parties for a big splash into the business.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
The article is talking about a business-model, and Free Software is only a component of that model. The idea of using free software to bootstrap a service business by leveraging the (a) low cost of implementation, the (b) support via remote access technologies, and (c) utilizing commodity hardware, sounds like a great idea, but then the author moves into less sensible territory. The author says things like "A central company should supply the hardware, software, and behind-the-scenes tech support...", and talks about franchising, etc.
I find this "central company" model flawed. Free software opens the door for small companies to compete on a level "playing field" with larger companies, on the basis of their familiarity with the software and their skills. PC hardware is already commodity.
To me, the door is wide open for thousands of small companies to compete deploying, servicing, maintaining, and administering computer networks for businesses who are too small to have a full-time IT staff (or employee). Why bring a "central company" into the mix, when all a "central company" brings into the picture is additional overhead, lack of agility, and administrative burden?
I'm biased, perhaps, as a member of a small employee-owned IT services firm. My firm is quite small, but provides exceptional service to our Customers through our extremely high skill levels, intelligent decisions made in deployments to enable "scaling" of our human resources and emergency response component, and clearly documented contractual arrangements with Customers. We recognized that "loss leader" work, such as selling physical goods, performing "break / fix" services, and playing "lowest bidder" games for RFP's from large corporations were bad business models. Instead, we've focused on businesses that lack and IT staff, and provide these Customers with a level of support far better than they could receive if they attempted to hire-in a worker themselves (and for a fraction of the annual cost of such a worker).
I think our model works very well, and our use of Free Software complements the model nicely. Instead of grovelling thru a "knowledge base" and telling the Customer "well-- that's a <insert Closed Source "manufacturer" name here> problem", we "Use The Source" and can identify causes of issues and correct them. We provide a much higher level of customization to the Customer than could be achieved with most Closed Source software applications, and our labor costs are still lower than the licensing costs for Closed Source alternatives. The Customer ends up with a solution that they are free to use for as long as they like, without getting stuck on the traditional Closed Source "upgrade treadmill" of recurring licensing fees.
The key to success in this marketplace, to me, is beng skilled, intelligent, and well managed. The "Ma 'n Pa Computer Shop", building PC's, selling hardware, and staffed by low-knowledge PC technicians, "paper MCSE's", and oft-shady sole proprietors is a dying breed, and I'm ecstatic to see it go. The "big" consulting firms are priced much too far out of the market for these smaller types of Customers. The market for small, agile, well-managed professional services firms who provide IT support, planning, and administration services to these "too small for an IT staff" firms is healthy, active, and growing. Having an intelligent business model, highly skilled staff, and spot-on management is key to succeeding in this market. Using Free Software to complement and extend your offerings only makes business sense.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Call it Offix Linux.
Suns Java desktop system is like that. I would highly recommend that the sysadmin removes all references to the install cd or any other source other than his dedicated ftp server. That server better be locked down tight.
With that said, these will work with yast (the jds is based off os suse, as well as novells offering). The solutions are out there, but they are designed for the office only, and great care should be placed in testing the patches before they are posted on the server for the users to automatically download. Hell, that could be done with a cron job and a script.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Most people don't want to change their platform or even their Windows 98 to XP. So you are marketing to them that they should switch to Linux. People respond to Joy and Pain, they will react more strongly to pain, it is human nature which helps us survive from getting hurt. So you are pushing all the Pluses of Linux and tell them how much Joy it will give them. So they asked the questions to determin how much pain is involved. So they ask if it has these features that are on windows, if they are not there or not as good as windows it is a level of pain. While I am sure they are feeling pain from using windows but it is pain they know of and learned to cope with. Now switching to the pains in Linux although in reality may be less then that of windows, is an adventure in descovering and dealing with new pains. It is much like a person who broke there arm. Now they will probably not try to set the bone back, and will stop someone else from trying, unless they intectually know there is no other option, because that would require attempting new pain. ALthough it may help eleaveate the current pain which is much higher.
Windows User: Doese Linux have a Disk Deframenter?
- Experiences pain of defragmenting due to slow disks.
+ at least know how to defragment the drive.
Linux User: No because the way that linux handles the files the drive doesn't get fragmented, so it doesn't need one. *
+ Disks dont get fragmented.
Windows User: I am sorry I need a disk defragmenter.
- Afraid of not being able to defragment a Linux system.
*Yes I know they are diskdefragmenters for Linux and a Linux file system can get fragmented.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
One thing about most main-stream Linux distros that has annoyed me a lot is that they don't seem to support dynamic DNS (which most corporate environments that I know of use). In particular, a parameter usually needs to be passed to the DHCP client to "send the hostname" (which allows the DHCP server to update the DNS records). This parameter is almost always off by default. On Redhat this is just annoying; you can turn it on fairly easily. On Ubuntu and some other Debian-based distros, this is a royal pain in the ass.
By comparison, Windows makes this very easy. Windows also doesn't insist on equating the hostname to localhost (i.e. putting hostname in the hosts file pointing to 127.0.0.1), which is very broken behaviour IMHO. Localhost = loopback = 127.0.0.1. Hostname = primary interface = some other IP. I understand the reasons why the distros do this, but there are adequate workarounds which should be used instead.
Also, didn't RedHat's RHN provide something similar, where you could have up2date query a server under your organization's control instead of RedHat's, thus providing the same feature?"
This only solves the internal distrabution problem, an admin still needs to take the time to review the patches and test for instances where there are problems. There have allways been tools for getting the updates/patches out to the desktop. However checking for problems and being able to roll back an update is a major problem.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
While I was still using Windows 2000, shortly before ServicePack3 IIRC, I went to windows update and installed the critical "you must install me now biaatch!" updates. Suddenly my system was running so unbarably slow that it was rendered unusable. After a considerable amount of research the problem was tracked down to one of the critical updates that while fixing a GDI exploit, it caused many systems to slow to a halt. This update is one of the updates which would be automatically installed by anyone with automatic updating enabled.
This is by far not an isolated occurance, and not as severe as many other problems windows system administrators see on a frequent enough basis that many of them adopt a phylosphy of not updating until absolutely necissary. However, now you can no longer claim to have never heard of windows update problems.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
It's called the "stateless" computer.
/home. Think about knoppix.
e lessLi nux.pdf
Think about read-only OS. Think about local disk access just for the
Now imagine:
1. You buy PC with a ethernet card with PXE-or-similar-technology support and a blank harddrive.
2. You drive to work with PC in car.
3. You plug PC into local network.
4. The PC boots off of ethernet, loads kernel, initrd downloads parts of the OS needed to boot system.
5. You log into PC.
Completely plug-n-play.
Check it out.
http://people.redhat.com/~hp/stateless/Stat
This technology will make Windows administration look as obsolete as a single high school dropout running around with a handfull of windows 3.0 floppies in order to build a 300+ user network.
Because self-updating works so well for Windows...
It works well for Debian...
The small business market is a vertical market that centers around applications needed for general business administration and specialized needs.
Linux needs some widely recognized accounting packages (ie Quickbooks) to attract the general market.
The web-browser is the real secret -- porting applications to Linux/Unix still locks you into a platform... and why would you do that?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
the business model he is describing is more about offering services that companies want.. thatn auto update or free software. If a business isnt big enough to have its own IT staff, they still have IT needs to be met. Most times they dont care how you meet those needs, as long as you do. The business model proposed is basically saying use a "whitebox" running a bunch of software to meet these needs.. you can reuse the same concept in a number of businesses as they all have similar needs. Tie this in with providing central administration for the installed "whiteboxes", compatability with existing systems and people wont care what its running. If they can run their business they wil be happy. The idea is to make a highly flexable system able to be "tuned" to the customers needs that is transparent to them, it just works. after all thats been the theory behind alot of OSS, it just works.
IT is Dead. The industry is Shot Join Others Who Feel Your Pain http://www.internalstrife.com/
Actually I have been thinking about an auto-update system of some sort for quite some time...
/etc/init.d/yum. This will be dependent on the set cron schedule on when to check and pull updates. This will also depend on the set "exclusions" in Fedora's yum settings.
To force myself to learn Python, I'm thinking of setting up a Python daemon that will listen for an "administrator" machine that pushes commands that a company's SysAd wants. For example, if that person has deployed Fedora machines as the main desktop for an office, the normal options for auto-updating are:
1. Start, by default
2. ssh into each machine (or run around the office) and login and "yum update" all the machines.
What I'm thinking is a daemon that listens for commands that an administrator might want to push. Not just updating, but any commands (have all machines download the main yum.conf or whatever other config). So each client listens, me as Admin types something like "command-push 'yum update'" and all clients start updating like crazy.
Stuff I've thought about regarding this:
1. As admin, I don't set them to auto-update. This way I can force them to update, only once I've tested the updates well.
2. I don't have to ssh into each machine, or run around just to update, or whatever.
3. Security issues... there are plenty. Like how to actually validate the admin that is pushing the commands from his machine.
4. It's 2:36am, I'm sleepy. So ideas are jumbled.
Anyway, the auto-update thing is already in Fedora (just 'chkconfig yum on' I think). But as Admin, I want to automate the update only once I've tested the updates, which might mean a daemon to let me push the update call.
Am I making sense?
Combine that with certificate authentication for your SSH logons and you're good to go.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Set up your own Yum repository with tested packages, and auto-update from that? Seems like the ridiculously simple solution...
Every Sunday night all systems do an emerge sync via a cron job. Monday morning I'll take my system and do an emerge -uD world world on it. If everything goes ok with the system on Monday, I'll allow the cron to run Monday night on the rest of the machines doing it to them as well.
Granted it's not the perfect solution, but I've had no issues so far in about 2 months using the systems, and those who use them have had no issues . Literally this takes me maybe 2 hours a week to maintain, and most of that time is just my computer compiling the week's updates while I'm busy doing other things, so its hard to count that as "Time" I could cron my system to run Sunday night, and just check the logs when I get in Monday, but for whatever reason I just like to be there when the first machine compiles the week's updates.
There's still a lot of things I'd love to improve, but judging by how many people keep asking when they can get that "leeenicks thingie" on their system, using the Gentoo portage system in this way seems to work pretty darn well.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
I actually got it to work the other day on one of my machines- it usually hangs on the "resolving dependecies" step, requiring a force quit. It's been months since I updated either of my Linux machines, but I keep hoping, and I got "lucky". Happy that I could actually update, I did the whole hog, and xemacs now dumps core complaining that font resources aren't available. An auto-mounted share is totally corrupted as well- trying to go to / hangs any shell waiting for /backup to actually respond. No idea what else is broken.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
>To force myself to learn Python, I'm thinking of setting up a Python daemon that will listen for an "administrator" machine that pushes commands that a company's SysAd wants.
I've been working on a thing to do updates like that as well. What I came up with is each box gets a cron entry like this:
0 * * * * curl http://a.server/secret_dir/script.sh | sh
In other words, you use CURL to download a script. Curl, with no options, will create STDOUT. Pipe STDOUT into 'sh' and voila! whatever script is on the server gets run. Put that into root's crontab and you can do whatever you want. Just be sure the script on the server is in a safe place. And use different times on different machines so the server doesn't get hammered at the top of the hour.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Seems like you'd want to .htaccess that dir and pass user/pass information to curl, as well as use https.
Perhaps some error-checking for a failed download too.
You could also create SSH keys for each machine and do the curl part with scp, and revoke specific keys if you ever saw anything screwy going on security-wise with any of your boxes.
+++OK ATH