On Tuesday 14 June 2005 22:56, Satya wrote:

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 10:09:28PM +0530, Rony Bill wrote:

...

All suggestions are most welcome. :)

Let's say you have a business where you go around installing this hassle-free new computer system for people,

which people. All are not equal.

How do they get updates? These systems must be kept updated, at least once in 2 weeks, to do any good.

Not necessarily. U as the knowledgeable vendor decides when your client needs an update. IMO critical systems (public access) need security updates maybe monthly or less depending on importance AND on what the competition is offering.such systems will have good bandwidth and remote updates from your repository will do a good job.

Most linux desktops actually need an update once a quarter. Good customer relations require at least a quarterly visit by your service engineer. So unless it's something critical, that is the update cycle.

The usual way to do it is to point the system at an online package repository. Bandwidth and download limits in India cause this to be a big pain in the wallet -- no ordinary user is going to do it and many technical users will not want to.

Not if you want to maintain good CR. Doing the above pitches you against RH / Novell and makes your CR critically dependent on dialup / cable / DSL.

So, any solutions? A local package mirror is one, but you still have the last-mile link being a bottleneck. Update CDs that they can subscribe to, that Rony can have delivered once a month or so?

Ideal a quarterly update will cost about Rs.50/- per cd. *4=200 p.a. Great PR and the customer actually receives something in hand for the money he dishes out. Compare that with what M$ provides.

rgds jtd