Topic: after e-smith: d-smith?

[Kai]

Hi,

We've used e-smith for several months now and are happy with it, but it seems to be impossible to actually give some money to the developers. No prices can be found anywhere. And now it seems that it will be (commercially) discontinued.

Is there any interest in a similar e-smith setup but with Debian as base? I always valued Debian as the best server distribution around compared to RedHat/SuSE.

The company I work for might think about migrating or replacing the existing e-smith tools to Debian and investing some money in it. Would there be an interest for that? How much would people be prepared to pay in case they want additional features or support?

Just checking if it's a good idea or not...

Kai

[guestHH]

Hi Kai,

All idea's are good, so no problem there.
It would be nice though if you could join the volunteers list, and discuss your idea's on contribs.org together with the other developers once we're up and running.

That way we all benefit from efforts made.

Maybe you have a 'plan' we can publish?

Thanks,
guestHH

[Kai]

RequestedDeletion,

Nothing at the moment, that could be called a "plan". I will join the volunteers list as soon as I've sorted my thoughts.

My brainstorming ideas about it at the moment would be:
- use a knoppix/morphix minimal base for the first painless installation
- either try to port the e-smith configuration system or use and extend webmin/coas/whatever

Debian has the advantage (in my eyes) of being a much better server distribution than RedHat/Fedora, but there are less certified administrators for it (which might change with UserLinux). Another advantage is that if you build on it you will get the security fixes as fast as Debian does.

The main advantage of e-smith ("easy install, many features and everything just works") must not be lost in the future.

Just an idea without much planning at the moment.

Kai

[Amanda]

Just a thought.
Does that mean I could finally run it on my Sun Hardware?
Deb also supports lots of other hardware platforms as well.

[Kai]

Depends, I guess. The problem would probably be the install (the easiest install option "knoppix" only works on x86 if I remember correctly). After it's installed, it shouldn't make much of a difference.

[Karl W. Mueller]

Well, a debian-based "d-smith" would be the best Their paket-management is better than anything else.  

I wouldnt prefer a Knoppix-solution. Knoppix was developed as a live-cd system. Later they put the hd-installer on it because a lot of peaple didnt just only want "to play around" but tried to install it on their harddisks. - AFAIK nobody ever asked for a "e-smith live-cd".

If someone would like to create his own distro the "Knoppix-way", I would suggest morphix. They have a base-system available, wich can easily get developed to a "full distro"

IMHO a port of the ESSG/SME to pure Debian would make a sense. Update-services would be very easy and some kind of "blades"could be revived.


Karl!