Since we last discussed this, Ubuntu 5.10 has been released. I downloaded it tonight and I've just discovered that there's a HUGELY important feature on their Live CD that I think we should consider: the "Live CD" not only includes the standard "live" Linux environment but also a pretty Windows autorun "welcome screen" with *installers* for OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox and GAIM for Windows!
IMHO, this is wonderful! We can hand out a _single_ CD that promotes using open source software on either Windows or Linux at the same time!
Download it and try it out! It's so pretty too. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/
Anyways, this is hands-down the best "newbie" CD I've ever found. The Ubuntu guys are really deserve a lot of accolades for this...
FWIW, the 5.04 CDs have this too, IIRC. I don't recall if the LiveCDs have a Ubuntu to HDD feature, or if that was planned for Dapper (6.04) but they are also supposed to have an "OEM mode" feature where the OS can be installed but not setup with user info until later by an end user.
I've been running 5.10 Preview on my main machine for a while and with all the updates it should be the same as 5.10 final and I think it's a pretty solid distro so far. I'm fairly certain I could sit my wife down and she could use it right away (she's used to Win XP and OS X)
Jon.
(My first post went straight to Jason, sorry!)
On 10/15/05, Jason Clinton me@jasonclinton.com wrote:
Windows versions of Open Source on Ubuntu
This has actually been a feature of Ubuntu for some time. I have been using and burning CDs for people with this feature in mind. Try it on windows and if your comfortable, try Linux as well.
On 10/23/05, Dale Beams drbeams@hotmail.com wrote:
I don't think that's quite the right approach. The whole point of the live cd is that they can try out the whole enchilada and see if their hardware is supported by the distro, how the included apps work, etc. The Windows versions provide a fallback position, for those not ready to jump in and install Linux... and a 'bridge': A lot of people have more than one computer in their lives, say home and work, or his-n-hers laptops (and a desktop PC for the kids?). Being able to install Open Office on the wife's laptop and my work PC off the same CD as the live demo is just too cool.
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Dale Beams -
Jason Clinton -
Jon Pruente -
Monty J. Harder