[CS-FSLUG] Transitions

[Josiah Ritchie]

listmail at rotundus.com scripted ::

>Quoting Josiah Ritchie <jritchie at bible.edu>:
>
>> >of volunteers come in and say, "Oh! You need to install the
>Brandex> >distro! Every other kind of Linux is rubbish." (Or, they'd
>want me to> >use FreeBSD, or whatever.) My reply was invariably,
>"Fine. You bring> >in a distro, complete with OpenOffice, E-mail, web
>browser, and so> >on, so that I can stick in a CD and let it install
>itself, and we'll> >use it." (I wasn't kidding, either. Installing
>Windows 95, applying> >the assorted patches and upgrades, then
>installing Mozilla and> >OpenOffice, is an incredibly tedious
>procedure, and we never could> >get utilities like Ghost to automate
>the procedure reliably.) Not one> >ever came back with a CD. 
>
>> different things and replicating an install like you mentioned is
>> nearly impossible for any OS. The reason we don't have linux on the
>
>Actually, such can be done for linux with not too much effort using
>kickstart in Redhat/Mandrake or Autoyast in SuSE.  When doing a
>Redhat installation (the latest I've played with there is 9.0), for
>example, after installation a kickstart configuration file with the
>details of the installation you just did is saved into root's home
>directory.  There are also facilities provided to run
>postinstallation scripts to handle stuff like adding in security
>patches.  This is something that I have thrown together before at
>work.
>
>There is a similar open-source install deployment method that will
>work for Windows 2000/XP (and perhaps others), although I can't quite
>recall the name.

How does it respond when you run that same install on a Dell Notebook
with a P4, a Gateway from the late 80's, and a Compaq that came out of
some former government agency. My question, more precisely, can I use
that same install on various types of hardware. We don't often get
more than three of the same type of computer donated at a time.

JSR/