[Sussex] Linux for simplicity

[Steve Williams]

Adam,

My suggestion is:

Install something like SuSE 8.1 with the minimum packages to support
Netscape and OOo. Netscape for web browsing, e-mail and news, OOo for office
stuff, cups support for printing, and you can install the minimum packages
for other customer requirements. On reasonable hardware the install time and
hardware detection should be fairly trouble free and not too time consuming.
Then use something like Norton Ghost 2003 to do the disk imaging.

No doubt others will have entirely different opinions.

Steve Williams.


-----Original Message-----
From: sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk]On Behalf Of Adam Smith
Sent: 06 February 2003 22:12
To: sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: [Sussex] Linux for simplicity


As some of you may know, when I'm not at college, I'm
repairing/upgrading/troubleshooting computers.  It's mainly the latter these
days, and a large chunk of my customers are elderly and have zero computer
knowledge whatsoever.  All a lot of them want is a simple way to
send/receive email, word process and browse the internet.....

For a while I've been thinking about somehow implementing linux with a
minimalist Window manager and just 3 menu options (Email, Web, Office).  In
an ideal world I could spend hours compiling Gentoo from source and
configuring the hardware but that's just not practical (I don't charge by
the hour - hehe).  I've been racking my brains trying to come up with a
simple way to get linux onto the machine and configured to work with their
hardware in a short enough space of time to make it worthwhile.  I'd welcome
any suggestions on this.

My second idea was to sell brand new linux systems a-la Evesham.  I
regularly sell a pretty basic system with parts from eBuyer as a cheap
upgrade option, without an OS.  It would be simple enough to do an linux
install/config then keep an image to copy over to each new machine using the
same hardware.  We're only talking one machine a week here but every little
helps.

The aim of this is to give customers exactly what they want, a simple to
use, stable system that does what they want - no more, no less at minimal
cost (i.e. free).  Windows cannot offer this, linux can, it's just a
question of implementation.

The question is - am I mad or could this really work?  Any input welcome.

Adam Smith
adamjsmith at clara.co.uk