Linspire CEO Considers CNR for Ubuntu

bored2k writes "Kevin Carmony, President and CEO of Linspire, Inc., is using the Ubuntu Forums to ask for input and explain why he thinks a popular and heavily focused on usability distribution like Ubuntu needs Linspire's $20 per-year CNR service. From what he says, both him and Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical/Ubuntu's founder) like the idea. Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"

Comments

"nice" "summary"

[Onan]

And would it have killed you to throw in some mention of what the hell a "CNR" is?

why can't it be both?

[Xtifr]

> "Would CNR honestly help Ubuntu grow, or is it just a scheme to cash in on it's success?"

Why can't it be both? Sheesh, you guys are so narrow minded! :)

I have zero personal interest in this, even though I like Ubuntu, but I can imagine many people who might find it useful.

One thing that I would be interested to see is if they can make CNR work (for its target audience) without Linspire's terrible always-run-as-root misfeature.

*all* an average user would need

[dpilot]

I have mixed feelings about something like CNR, and perhaps it's because I don't fully understand it.

My impression is that it's like one-click shopping for sofware. Find software on a web browser, push a button, it gets installed, and you get billed. I guess that's ok, for someone who feels a little scared to type "emerge doom3". But that's not what I'd really like to get out of something like CNR.

First off, I like the idea of a subscription service. In these days of security issues, it's downright stupid to adopt a sales-without-service model for computers. Any computer which will be connected to a network needs some form of regular service plan. My mom's system runs "emerge sync" weekly, "glsa-check" nightly, and emails the results to me. Even if glsa-check is only tied into the portage database, and thus only does something new weekly, at least the nightly emails will nag me into taking care of it. When there's a security issue, I ssh in and fix it. When I visit, I bring her system fully up to date. That's a "policy."

I'd like to see some sort of update/security policy out of a service like CNR. In particular, something like emerge is very good about upgrading packages and identifying config files that may require updating. But it doesn't update them, it just tells you that it needs to be done. IMHO, THIS is where the real effort needs to be in a subscription service, in tweaking configuration files after update, yet not breaking the system.