On Fri, 2007-01-05 at 09:51 -0700, Phil Meyer wrote: > >>> What I've always wanted - and have been too lazy to work on myself - is > >>> a method where any number of systems could be easily configured to > >>> track the changes in any other system with a publish/subscribe scheme. > This practice is best handled in a 'diskless' or 'thin client' scenerio > today. There really is no need for 'fat' clients, and has not been for > many years. I agree for a certain type of close-coupled set of machines, but the scenario I am suggesting would apply to the server for these clients too. So if one office had a carefully tuned setup, any other office could duplicate it easily. > Your point is valid, but experience is a hard teacher, and that teacher > demands much more time per 'fat' client than for 'diskless' or 'thin' > clients. Yes, but that is mostly related to needing unnecessary low-level choices to be made for each one. If fat-client maintenance was automated the difference would come down to a hard drive failure every five years - a reasonable tradeoff for being able to function independently for many systems. > Imagine your firm, and your parents and friends using an off the shelf > device to surf the net and write the occasional document and read their > email. That's about all 90 percent of current computer users do. They > dont need a 'fat' computer to do that. You can get that by booting a live CD at some expense in runtime speed. What I'm looking for is that same convenience without the disadvantages of having to create custom builds and updates to the CD image. I think this could happen with a system that effectively turned any working system into a distribution master. > In any case, what you are suggesting is very much like what is done for > 'diskless' clients. But I don't want to depend on any other system at runtime. I just want the time and knowledge consuming low-level decisions made in one place to be easily propagated to anyone who wants to take advantage of them. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
