Re: Debian and Redhat - are most linux users missing the point?
On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Ed Cogburn wrote:
>
> Without advertising, how are we supposed to get to these
> prospective customers before RH does?
I am probably about 3 weeks away from starting to work on a custom distro
based on Debian for use in the company I work for. There will be three
basic default setups ... workstation, web server, general server.
My design goals are:
Interoperability with Solaris.
Designed for easy remote administration.
Self-upgrading (thinking of apt from a cron job against our package repo).
I would like to have such applications as Perforce, Corel Word Perfect,
the Netscape servers, etc. bundled as .deb packages and ready to install
once the licenses are bought. If demo versions of applications are
available, these could be provided on a CDROM sort of like the Sun
Solutions CDROm concept.
My initial target would be our own internal systems. Then we would provide
it for our customers that we currently have relationships with while
providing support for it and finally opening it up to the general public
with support and maintenance.
The number of choices would be greatly whittled down from the Debian
distro. I might offer a choice of Exim, Sendmail, and Sendmail Pro. Tcl/tk
and Java would be standard. Netscape Communicator would be the standard
browser and mail client with pine and maybe Ishmail as alternative MUA's.
The default system UID/GID assignments would be changed to reflect Solaris
for ease of NIS and autofs. This means that some packages will need to be
taken apart, modified, and put back together again.
The first step will be to make sure that the boot-floppies package really
makes boot floppies. Then I have to verify that I can edit the default
package listings and create my custom base install and default package
selections. Then will be modification of the packages themselves to
reflect my desired ownerships.
I intend to closely follow Debian's filesystem layout and just about all
of the rest of Debian's packageing standards with the important exception
of ownerships of things where a specific UID or GID is specified. The
actual NAMES of the owners will most likely not change but they might were
a conflict arises with standard Solaris assignments.
As for the commercial package, these would of course depend on agreements
with the vendors of those packages but if they are going to be for
internal use and if we purchase the proper licenses first, I really do not
see a problem. I will cross the second bridge when it gets closer to
distributing the real thing to outside parties. There is a lot of work to
do before getting to that point.
This will NOT be designed as a super-simple install that any idiot can do
sort of distro, it will be designed for installation by a skilled IT
professional. Anyone interested can mail me and I will get you my work
address so we can keep in touch but again, I am at least 3 weeks away from
even working on it much because of a current high priority project.
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