28 Jan
2006
28 Jan
'06
16:09
Am Sat, 28. January 2006 16:01 schrieb Maged Hussein: > Hi list, > > I'm currently thinking of a way to make OpenSUSE available to much more > audience (specially windows users). > My target is to attract more users and developers to Linux platform (making > it easy for them to make the switch). > Upon testing many distros, I found that SUSE has the most windows like > experience to Windows users PLUS a very intuitive admin interface for linux > power users. > > The easiest way is to distribute it within a Computer magazine that all PC > users can access. > > I thought of three approached to accompish this tasks (given that I have > only one CD to include): > > 1- One CD with just necessary packages to start with (SLICK does a good job > in this) > [This way will bring many hassles to windows user [installation with > windows- hardware not detected - modems support,...etc] > > 2- Make a live CD for OpenSUSE > [I found only a DVD version of it + I Found that you can use it as a READ > ONLY [not like debizn based Live CDs]] You may know that from time to time most every Linux publication offers live cd's as install cd's. So did German Linux Magazin, e.g. 2/06 OpenSchool Server (based on NOvell Enterprise Server9) and Linux Magazin Special Edition, 01/2006, Novell Enterprise Server 9. So often this is done py a publisher not by the distributions itself. And I would bet that they will do so for openSESE 10.1. > 3- Make a vmware image of OpenSUSE with packages relevant to audience. > [This approach will eliminate HW support, modem support [vmware can use > NATing to hadle this], installation support] > There is some packages that essential to Windows user but I don't know what > is the obligation if I included them within the vmware image namely: > - RealPlayer > - Acrobat Reader > - Flash > - Java > - All dependednt parts on them. > Of course one can update from yast repositories once installed but Internet > Connectivity will not be available to some users. - Using VMWare will bring a lot more problems you might expect. It is _very_ tricky to offer VMWare images for all kinds of Hardware combinations which could be found out there in the wild. From a technical point of view I would rate this as a unresolvable problem. - Last but most, I would assume that using VMWare images will bring a bunch of legal problems according to the use of VMWare. (If not I would expect that there should still be a lot of those 'official' images.) > > I am looking for your help to make the right path. Hhm, may be there is another solution which might be discussed: FreeNX / NoMachine Account(s) Like http://cosmopod.com/ it might be an idea to offer FreeNX Accounts on an openSUSE machine (mostly for Windows Users who don't want or fear an installation or live system). So you 'only' need to have a FreeNX Client for Windows for this. I haven't seen any distribution yet which offers this service. I said 'Only' (quoted for beeing a bit ironicall) because it will need a real big iron server for this but on the long run it might be cheaper than producing Live CD's again and again for every new openSUSE Version. But contrary to cosmopod.com it should only offer temporary accounts no long time accounts. This because limitating the number of accounts to handle and to lower the needed hardware recources. Bye, Thomas