[RULE] Proposal/Vision: The Rule Desktop

[Ingo Lantschner]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 23:34:14 +0100, M. Fioretti <m.fioretti at inwind.it> 
wrote:


> VUM has built on RULE a desktop for schools speaking French and
> Lingala. Richard Kweskin (Richard, are you still around?) did
> something similar in Greece (another alphabet!!). I've been asked if
> RULE could be used for hospital and lab inventory workstations.
>
> My opinion is that RULE proper should be the foundation to build all
> such projects, and provide by itself some kind of english desktop for
> students/one man businesses (Ingo, is this what you called
> "Rule-desktop" made from vumBOX?). Starting from there, VUM, and all
> other groups could build their semiautomatic "ISO customization
> process"
For this moment, the vum:BOX (Slinky 0.3.97b-vumbox) is: A semiautomatic 
enhancment of RULE. For the future, I would like to see it to get an 
fullyautomatic enhancement with comprehensive and well done documentation. 
If you want to know, what I mean with "well done documentation", have a 
look at the shorewall-project from Tom Eastep.

> To make this happen we need to make more documentation available, make
> website contributions easier (both pages and packages) and make the
> whole slinky/iso creation process more modular, so the base is more
> solid and customization is easier.
yes, yes, yes!


> The lack of the first two things, docs and website,  ... If VUM can help 
> RULE merging back all what they did, it would be wonderful, and then we 
> might start building the next version.

Ok  I think we can do that - at least we want to do it - so we will find a 
way. Most easy would be to regulary send updated versions for the 
vum:BOX-Handbook in PDF- or HTML-Format to the RULE-Website, including a 
possibility for feedback (Most simple an email-alias to ingo at vum.at). This 
should cover the above mentioned target of "well done documentation". Also 
the vum:BOX-ISO should be there for download.

Regarding the other point, the fully-automated installation of a stable 
and userfriedly office-machine, I would like to script many of the 
enhancements we do now by hand. F.e. OpenOffice 1.1, AbiWord2, 
Spellchecking, mc, MToolsFM, Opera, newest Mozilla, Acrobatreader, 
Customizing the menu and tool files of iceWM (so that these apps show up 
in the startmenu).... *)
Well this is something we *may* can do when we have a stable base using 
fedora (I would not like to do that on RH9 which is going to be outdated 
soon). In this point we could need some help (we do not have the 
scripting-profis here and now, people will develop but this needs some 
backing from experienced experts) Also I think that this is not specific 
to Congo or VUM - there is a *huge* need out there, for a stable and lean 
Desktop. RedHat 9 out of the box was not stable at all, and of course not 
lean. This is the reason why I proposed to change the name from vum:BOX to 
RULE-Desktop: To enlarge the userbase and to enlarge the helpers-base 
(which is in fact more or less the same).

Hope it is more clear now and sorry for my sometimes not so clear 
sentences - its not easy for me to descripe such soft-themes in English.

Regards, Ingo.


*) Hardwarebase for the RULE-Desktop: P1/2 200MHz, 64 MB RAM, 2 GB HD


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