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On Sunday 26 September 2004 8:47, Adrian Midgley wrote:
On Sunday 26 September 2004 17:38, Neil Williams wrote:By your measure,No... The point is that having won the race[1] to make a better development cloud, pulled ahead in the race to make better software first with the operating system, then with the network and some server applications, and now in a few areas with the general purpose applications[2] it is now highly desirable that preinstalled copies go around.
amen
The installation routines have become good, SuSE installs more friendly than Windows, Debian installs better with less fuss[3] than Windows, but this is in a big sense off the point - reinstalls are what users do,
yes, but lets not lose sight of something. unless you are a mass producing clone box shifter like dell, where you can do one install then ghost all the others in ten minutes each, a mepis/knoppix install COMPLETE WITH 1,000 INSTALLED APPS is quicker than a windowsxp only install on any given hardware. time is money.
installs should be done by loading a zillion standard copies of the OS plus base applications (or in Hill house Hammond's Marseilles supplier's case a couple of hundred special to purpose program suites on the standard image) onto hard drives in the manufacturer's factory, which are then built into PC boxes, and then do a bit of stuff when first switched on. So, how hard it is it to generate preinstalled hard drives for a standard PC device? (Asus Terminators are £299 incl a blank 20Gbyte HDD... what price loaded to go?)
the problem is defining a standard pc device, cheap pc;s are notorious for having whatever hardware was cheap at build time. ok linux is much more resilient to this than windows, but it needs considering, what is the selected pc device spec
and how does one make those marketable by a channel, which might be in shops or in a supplier of office automation to professionals...?
that;s the really tough nut to crack.
So... lets see some standard kit that doesn't have a Windows tax and a standard load (cut it _down_ and then down some more, and then rely on apt-get to impress) ready to go from a stack of cardboard boxes and with a phone number for support.
possibly looking at something like EPIA then, not much use for games but then neither is linux..... -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.