Hello Phil,
* On 16 June 2011 20:06, Phil Nelson <p...@pcnelson.net> wrote:
> [...] The Appliance can run Linux, the primary platform for Coda [...]
>
> 7) Anything that might make this more useful to you that is not mentioned
> here?
I would see this as a nice opportunity to give things like Dapty (a
Linux software
environment distributed via Coda; www.aetey.se) a (virtual) kick start
on non-Linux
operating systems.
Sorta like a modern QEMU-Puppy :-)
> 2) How important is the desktop on the appliance? Is the assumption
> that all it would be used for is just the coda utilities (clog, codacon,
> and so forth) or would a fully functional Linux VM be the better way
> to go with Gnome and all that it offers? (A full Gnome installation
> would cause a much larger VM image similar to the test appliance listed
> above.)
Xorg should be included. Probably also a light window manager like IceWM
and a good terminal emulator in case the console is acting/looking too
weird in the VM.
Gnome seems to be overkill to me, but that might just be personal preference.
For the console, please do include 'screen'.
> 5) How important is having storage space available for the "user" in
> the appliance. The proof of concept appliance has 300Megs of user storage
> available. Is this too much or not enough?
The user should save documents(?) to either their coda realm or the host system.
That leaves the question about the venus cache which I can only comment on,
that at the moment with Dapty I use around 500MB of 2GB assigned maximum.
The reasonable solution, as Paulo Casanova has already mentioned, seems to
be to assign a virtual drive and allow the user to tweak the size themselves for
the long run.
> 6) Would people find it useful to have a choice of a small, no gnome
> appliance with limited user space (the goal is to have 500Megs or smaller
> total appliance) and a large, full gnome installation with 4G (or more)
> virtual disk available for user use? (e.g. virtual disk of 8G as compared
> to 4G in the current appliance.)
Definitely! I would, however, favor a medium size.
So the ideal constellations in my view would be:
Small: console-only; used as a coda-windows-bridge (for a single user
only?). 512 MB maximum (fits small thumb drive and CD)
Medium: + xorg + light wm/desktop; usable also as a "thick client"
with a reasonable venus cache. Maximum 1GB or
2 GB (about half of a cheap thumb drive to allow for
document storage)?
(And maybe also:
Large: + Gnome/other heavy DE. 6-8GB total size seems reasonable in a
"save it on the Desktop if you want to" scenario.)
Regards,
Georg
