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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!news.pbi.net!samba.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!cpw.a2i!cpw From: Carl Weidling <cpw@rahul.net> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: A modest proposal for encouraging the development of free turnkey OSes Followup-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy Date: 23 Dec 1996 01:07:00 GMT Organization: a2i network Lines: 87 Message-ID: <59klvk$qk6@samba.rahul.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: waltz.rahul.net NNTP-Posting-User: cpw Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:76929 comp.os.linux.development.system:37570 comp.os.linux.misc:148680 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32993 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:5022 There was a thread in Comp.linux.os.development.system in which someone commented that linux was for savvy users and I responded that it didn't have to be. That's all been batted around before of course but it got me thinking and I'd like to sort of run an idea up the flagpole for folks to salute/throw-stones-at/ignore/modify etc. Maybe the idea has been put forth already, if so my apologies. Hundreds of years ago the British Government offered a prize for anyone who could invent a chronometer (I believe Isaac Newton had a hand in setting up the specifications). Someone eventually won the prize and it was a boon to navigation. Early in this century a prize was offered to the first person to build an airplane that could fly a mile. The winner was a man named Glenn Curtis I believe, who built such a plane but it was impractical because he couldn't steer it. More recently, someone name Kramer (spelling?) offered a prize for a human powered aircraft that could fly a mile, but, learning from past mistakes, the craft had to fly a figure eight and get a certain distance above the ground, and such a plane was finally built. I wonder if anyone, or any group of people, could be persuaded to offer a prize for an implementation of linux that could be used 'by the masses'. (I'll refer to it as a linux system but it could apply equally well to one of the free BSD unices or HURD or whatever, as long as it's in the spirit of free sofware with sources available). This is only talk of course, and talk is cheap, but maybe somebody out there who has money really is looking for a way to spend it and hasn't found anything to his or her liking yet despite all of the people without money who are earnestly offering suggestions. If it were done right, not only might such a prize and contest lead to a good system, but it would help promote the free software systems. The drama of a contest, the suspense as various entries were evaluated, and anyone with a computer could acquire the proposed systems and try them out for next to nothing. The question is, who has the kind of money necessary and would be willing to part with it? I also think that the presentation and PR part would have to be done right, that might be even more problematic. I can imagine some self-appointed PR expert coming along and botching it all up, but life is full of risks. Assuming there was interest, and money, the question would be how to define the target that contestants should strive for. My own take on a dream fantasy system for the unsophisticated would go something like this. The user acquires a Compact Disc of the system lets say, pops it in a computer at home and runs a setup program off the disc. This setup checks out what's already on the hard drives, notices, for example, that there's an OS/2 partition and a DOS partition, and how much disk space is available. It offers to repartition the disk to create a linux partition or to install linux on top of the dos file system on an existing partition. It also checks the hardware, asks questions of the user about what kind of graphics card is in there if it can't figure it out, and so on. Perhaps this program can even examine the existing binaries of device drivers to figure out what's on the system. (I said this is a fantasy). In an ideal world, manufacturers of video cards, sound cards, disc drives, etc, who routinely provide diskettes with drivers for their hardware on DOS, would also routinely provide them for linux, but that's another story. Installation is only the first part of course. The system would be turnkey all the way, but it would allow a user who was ready for it to get to the underlyling power. There's a system admin tool for IBM's AIX called SAM. It can be invoked with a GUI or CLI. in GUI mode, one can select one's way down through a set of menus, and when finally ready to specify an action, SAM can be made to display the command line equivalent of what it is about to do. Thus a person can learn to use the system. I'd want to have something like that in an ideal system. The system should also be self-maintaining, no ugly problems with suddenly running out of disk space because of huge logs the user never knew were being written out. I used the example of logfiles in the previously alluded to thread, referring specifically to syslog and someone sent me private email saying that RedHat already had a provision to keep that from happening, but there are other things I'm sure, and I'm in no position to provide a complete list of gotcha's to look out for. Coming up with a definitive list would be part of the effort of specifying what was needed to win the prize. Finally, there are the applications. People by computers to use word processors, play games, store and retrieve data, etc. Linux has some of this, but not enough. However, the easier to install and use and the less intimidating linux is, (AND THE MORE PEOPLE REALIZE IT'S NOT HARD), the easier it will be to come up with those applications. Followups to comp.os.linux.advocacy -Comments? -- Cleave yourself to logodedaly and you cleave yourself from clarity.