[Samba] Re: distribute/deploy software to clients

[Michael Lueck]

Basically what you are looking for is called "Electronic Software Distribution" (ESD) and is far too rarely used in the industry.

Honestly MSI stinks. My Opus 1 product back in 1995 is much like what MSI is today. Currently I am working on Opus 4, plus have used some vendor tools as well.

The name of the game is to get the right files in the right places, the right registry entries in the right places, and BINGO! the software works. That's it! Unfortunately most people are blind to 
this simplistic view of computing, and end up building things like MSI which make the task far more complicated than it needs to be... and then use their bad attempts at a solution as justification 
for even worse ideas like Cytrix / WinFrame ideas putting all of their eggs in one basket... "gee, I I only need to keep one really big computer working then it will be easier!" but they forget that 
when that one system goes down, everyone is down, and they still have no automated way to get that one computer back again configured exactly the way it was before Murphy happened along. The 
additional duct tape like GoBack is applied... oh don't get me started!

Anyway, high level overview of ESD...

ftp://ftp.lueckdatasystems.com/pub/presentations/iccm2002tfm.pdf

I'm slightly passionate about this topic! ;-)

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems

Remove the upper case letters NOSPAM to contact me directly.