Re: [cobalt-users] open raq distro

["William J.A. Brillinger" <billy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:02 PM 07/01/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, William J.A. Brillinger wrote:
> > Isn't this what Qbalt is?
> >
> > It will be a debain based RaQ Implementation.
> >
> > (I know - it still looks like vapor ware - sorry Ryan! no offence, I'm
> > waiting patiently)
>
> In my opinion, the community should probably organize around a couple of
> different projects:

Several options is certainly better than no options but one agreed upon, 
and workable option which our resident gurus also participate in would 
ultimately be easiest to support. One of the things Cobalt had going for it 
was it's users were all on the same page so to speak. Too many options and 
none survive.

> 1. Updating/Extending the Cobalt "BIOS" for the Raq and Qubes. There have
> to be some emebdded sadist out there that would love to do this! ;)

This would be very useful indeed.

> 2. Continue to patch/extend/fix the Cobalt Code base, instead of scrapping
> it. A community of people (NuOnce, RaqShack etc..) that have a lot of
> experience and time invested in this would be great candidates to assist
> in the project.

IMO the cobalt code base (Cobalt Linux) is very old. A way to update this 
to current via some upgrade path would be more ideal - otherwise we will 
soon be in the land of the RaQ2 - mostly a boat anchor because of a lack of 
security patches for an old OS.

> 3. OS Restore CD updates / releases. There is a great need to release OS
> Restore CD's w/ the all of the latest and greatest patches on them, and if
> the community continues to develop, patch, fix and update on the existing
> Cobalt codebase, this would be a worthwhile project...

Indeed - but a restore certainly provides a good opportunity to upgrade to 
a more current underlying OS if it were point an click simple to do.

> 4. The Cobalt UI (Aka OpenQuote / OpenRaq550) running on top of a RedHat
> or Fedora distribution. Let's face it.. the Cobalt administration
> interface, while it has its flaws, is by far the easiest of the "Control
> Panels" out there for our client's to use...

No question in my mind about it! The Cobalt UI cannot be beat. It is so 
user friendly yet quite powerful.

The biggest disappointment to me with the OpenRaQ was the lack of the OS 
component.

> 5. A completely NEW distribution (Qbalt etc..) is probably my least
> favorite idea, but there are many flaws in Cobalt's distribution that
> could be fixed. It would be great if you could take the best of Debian and
> the ease of the Cobalt UI and merge them into a single unified
> distribution, but since Cobalt's stuff was originally based on RedHat I
> think you would have much better luck with Fedora.

Sometimes starting from scratch makes more sense. As long as the concept of 
the clean GUI is kept in tact, I am happy.

> Just some thoughts for discussion.

That's My $.02
- Bill


---------------------------------
William J.A. Brillinger
Precision Design Co.

E-Mail:   mailto:billy@xxxxxxxxxx
Web site: http://www.pdcweb.net