A business idea, very much like the PC shops that build custom boxes, maintenance, sold peripherals, software, provide network consultation to homes and small business, but with a focus on the Cloudbook paradigm.
Units would be one or all of these cheap "Cloudbook" Linux SSD laptops. The business would do research and install lots of useful FOSS on units tailored to various buyer profiles:
The (Security Super-Hardened) Basic Web Browser Box -Maybe booted from custom Knoppix CD
Digital Audio Workstation
Multimedia Station
Programmers box ( child version and college version )
Duplicated Units for Small Business, emphasis on Google apps, and install custom graphics related to that Small Business ( or Non-profit).
3 comments:
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a very bad idea indeed, I would rate this idea in the neighborhood of 9+ . We have this friend in Alaska that was thinking of doing something similar, we should get our heads together on this, especially now that the universal $200 machine is finally available (from the UK.)
I'm not feeling CD boot. Didn't I read something about flash cards with a read-only section? Instead of a narrow child/college split in the programmer's box, split them into (A) web/game/interactive-media-authoring box (focused on simple rapid development tools like python, javascript and blender) and (B) developer's box (with more tools focused specifically on software development.)
When I get a new computer, I download and install essentially the same applications regardless of platform (although Ubuntu has a few of these pre-installed and no software I have to remove :-)
At the moment my list is: python, pygame, GIMP, inkscape, blender, firefox, OpenOffice.org.
(I also install proprietary versions of flash and sometimes Java, but mainly for kids and female relatives to play web games.) I sometimes install Zope/Plone, or Apache/PHP/MySQL for work.
I am very frustrated by platforms that don't ship with a text editor compatible with the Windows Notepad/DOS Edit paradigms. (Ubuntu's gedit is an excellent example, vi and emacs no.)
The next step would be to gather more information about what FOSS packages people consider "must haves" and see how well they cluster into usage types. This information could be intrinsically useful, but it would be especially useful for designing complete end-user platforms (targetted distros for new computers, installation and live boot media.)
Distros like Red Hat used to give package options for "do you want to use this computer as a server?" and that sort of thing, but there were too many categories, mostly irrelevant to people outside IT and development, and it added a mandatory step to the installation process. The incremental installation of Ubuntu is much better, but even better than that would be to have the distro (or even the hardware) come with everything you need in a single step.
Response to "I'm not feeling CD boot".
Taking your "useful download suites" idea to the social networking level:
A social website that has one thing: Users submitted install scripts. They get ranked on most downloaded, and of course ranked within subcategories ranging from digital audio workstations to IT security to children's games.
Even for very solo type that only wanted their own install script, there it will be under their username.
Companies could even post theirs. My first tip would make Python only, and provide some
elementary little DOS/Unix program that will create the install script in a standardized form.
Evil scriptology would be socially governed, maybe by reputation networking: So-and-so big-shot is not likely going to endorse (favorite) an evil script.
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