begin quoting Todd Walton as of Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 07:05:15PM -0500: > I just started a job where I will be responsible for taking new PCs, > installing Windows XP on them, and then installing the unique list of > required apps for the user the PC will be going to. Each available > app has a Word document associated with it that details what steps to > take to install it. "Click install." "You should see a window that > says... , click Next." "Include the spell checker, but don't include > ODBC." "First install this dependency, the associated Word document > is on the network drive. Come back when you're done." And on and on. > > ???
Oh, like compiling Linux applications! > Why the heck can't the computer be scripted to do this for me? Why? > Because Windows apps are binary, and don't invite interaction from > anything but pretty pictures on the screen. That's a deliberate design *feature*. They work hard to make it that way. I've build up a system where "installation" consisted of dropping a .jar file into a directory somewhere, and then running it to perform the initial setup. This was considered "old school", and we had to have someone write a GUI installation program to do much the same thing. Naturally, the GUI installation program was M$ specific, even though the program was not. (And my self-installing procedure was removed, as it was "redundant".) > If I were on a 21st > century operating system, like Linux, I could write a shell script or > an ebuild or the like and I would mark checkboxes indicating just > which apps I wanted and I'd hit Go. If you're using a GUI, why not just drag the application to the disk somewhere? > That's why I still love Linux. I like UNIX. I like Linux because it's a reasonbly supported *cheap* UNIX. But I want more than Linux gives me... I want an install system that doesn't run scripts supplied by the software being installed, but reads a dead data file. I want an install system that doesn't require root access to run, even if it requires setuid root programs to run on my behalf to get things right. I want an install system that gives me the option of using stow. I want an install system that can create a user for every application package I install, say, in the 50,000 to 60,000 range. (If I get more than 10,000 applications, I need to be able to adjust this, o'course.) I want an install system that that lets me specify statically linked or dynamically linked executables. I want the time and motivation to build the sort of install system that I'd like. -- _ |\_ Wah wah wah. Yeah, I'm whining. So what? \| You got a problem with that? Hm? Hm? Hm? -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
