Community Wireless Client

[Jim Carter]

On Thu, 16 May 2002, Jamie Lovick wrote:
> I was thinking of a Linux or *BSD based small distro or boot CD be made
> to act as a wireless client.
>
> The idea is that the CD will have everything you need to connect to a
> community wireless network, including the latest stable wireless
> drivers, typical network card drivers, basic firewalling and routing,
> and the like.

I see more use in a prepackaged drop-in collection, with config scripts as
you describe.  The reason is that people use the comm link to *do*
something, and so logically the distro with the application software comes
upstream.  (Paraphrasing SuSE, 2500 packages on 7 CDs, most of which...)

But for the less technical user, for whom buying and installing Opera for
Linux might be a challenge, you might think of making a distro with apps
angled toward your nontechnical users who might otherwise be surfing the
net (wirelessly) with Windoze and getting virused out. Usage is the dog and
technology is the tail; the tail shouldn't wag the dog. (Shameless plug:
the Opera people would *love* to have you put an ad-supported copy of their
browser in your distro, with a preconfigured link to their online store, to
get rid of the ads.)

Making a distro is a lot of work and takes a continuing commitment to keep
everything up to date, and to supply security patches. Plus writing user
documentation for everything. I'm pretty impressed with SuSE's config tool,
and you might consider putting together a module for it (and/or whatever
proprietary thing the other distros use) to go with the proposed set of
drop-in packages.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90095-1555
Email: jimc at math.ucla.edu    http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)