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Re: [LUG] Farseer enterprises

 

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:21:52 +0000
Simon Waters <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Grant Sewell wrote:
|
| My experience of Linspire has tainted my views on it as a viable
| Linux option, I'm affraid.
|
| If the person installing Linux onto these machines is familiar
| with Linux, and Debian in particular, then I am sure that
| Linspire would make a perfectly good choice *after* it had been
| locked down somewhat.

The "locked down somewhat" has me worried, is it as open as people
suggest?

Linspire, by default, has only one user account - root.  Basically, it would seem 
that Linspire has taken the idea that since the majority of Windows users run either 
as Administrator or they give themselves all Administrator's privileges, so let's 
make it the default option in Linspire too.

Far be it for me to be judgemental but, I was under the impression that 
inexperienced people could do damage completely unsuspectingly.  Why give someone 
the ability to completely trash a system (including any Windows installations that 
may be present on the harddrives) when there is a high likelihood that they don't 
know what they're doing?

| This "Click n Run" thing sounds like a
| very nice touch, until you realise that you're paying a
| subscription fee in order to download mainly software that is
| GPLed anyway.

Charging for GPL'ed software is fine, if the service is good, the
FSF charge for nicely packaged binaries I believe.

I don't have a problem with charging for software at all.  I just find it a little 
crazy that Linspire took this approach rather than the more tried-and-tested 
Sell+Support approach.  As I said in the beginning, my experiences with it tainted 
my views.  When I gave it a go I specifically chose the "advanced installation" 
method so I could choose my destination partitions... and then the installer 
completely ignored my explicit instructions and decided to trash my other distro's 
/var partition instead.  Very kind of it.  Yes, that is a bitter taste in my mouth.

| and getting their users to pay a subscription for using
| Linspire's servers as their apt repository.

Have you pondered how the current Debian repositories are funded?
Sure copying files is cheap in this era, copying 100's GB a month
however....

Nope.  Never wondered about that - it's quite evident really.  That's why donations 
are a very important part of our community.  Although it's not really a fair 
comparison to make, but no-one expects charities to survive with no charitable 
donations being made.

If Debian becomes more successful I think it would be appropriate
(necessary) to migrate to peer to peer style distribution
technologies. "Debian over freenet" or similar.

Interesting idea.  They already provide .torrent files to lessen the load.

Grant
-- 
Artificial intelligence is no match for nuratal stidutipy.

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