Avahi is not ready for prime-time. It’s a big fat pain the butt. For example, when I add or change a network interface on a multihomed box, avahi-autoipd generates an error message. The interface works anyway, which leads me to suspect there is Yet Another New Mysterious Way To Manage NICs. Like we need another one.

Users should be able to turn these things off in the services control panel, but on Kubuntu you still have to edit /etc/default/avahi to keep the dommed thing from starting at boot. And sometimes it starts up anyway; I assume some other process needs it. On a small, static network I don’t want Avahi, so it should be possible to easily disable it. It should be easy anyway, as user control is a fundamental Linux principle.

All this shiny new stuff is awesome, eventually, but it’s very frustrating when it doesn’t work right and there is incomplete documentation. Now we have all these automated subsystems that are supposed to make our lives easier- udev, avahi, HAL, hotplug- but they actually make hardware management more complicated and difficult, because troubleshooting is more complicated and difficult, and making any manual changes is hell itself because of the learning curve. Please let’s have some better docs and better user interfaces before throwing this stuff out into the world.

What would be very cool for business users is to be able to send a message in the most appropriate way possible. People should be able to concentrate on the message, not the medium.

So two things.

1. Don’t forget the old-fashioned printed letter or memo. A word processing template (or LaTeX?) might be attached to this system with auto-filled addressing.

2. Be able to specify a preference in how you’d like to be communicated with. Just because I’ve got my Jabber client going doesn’t mean that’s my preference. I might be running back and forth between offices that day — give me a call instead.

p.s. A real solution would take into account who the conversation start is. “If you’re a salesman, don’t bug me. Send me your stuff via snail mail. Preferably with free samples.”

I’d pariticularly like it if this magic ad-hoc networking would work between Ubuntu laptops and Windows ones! I’m already imagining a little applet in the Kicker, with a dropdown that lists all the laptops, pda’s, and cell phones nearby.

in the future we will all have a small computers in our pockets, which will replace cellphones, normal computers, cameras, our brain :-p and everything else, (when we will be at home the small computer will be auto-connected to a big wireless screen and keyboard), so there will be no sync problems, and you should be ready for the future (-: .

In fact this could be generalisation effort:

Have a default setup — Stage A

Now We wish to reach Stage B with some stated objectives, Enterprise setup, Multimedia Setup, School Setup, Library Setup, etc etc

Run a one-click pre-designed custom designed Policy/Package and you are at — Stage B

This will tremendously ease deployments for the average System Admins who do’nt have time enough to read through HOWTOs.

Additionaly, as a separate community project we could come up with customised LiveCDs for specific apps:

1. I want a proxy server. My office uses a MS Proxy server or bvetter still does’nt have one. I use a customised readily available LiveCD, Bootup answer a few questions and proxy is ready.

2. My office has an outgoing mail server. My present server has an issue and queue is growing and growing. As an emergency, I simply boot up the readily available and customised LiveCD as a standby mailserver, and let the mails proceed, while I sit and resolve my issue.

etc
etc

anand

I have a ralink wifi card and it just won’t work with any gui-tool I’ve tried.

But the ideas sound great and I can’t wait to see Edgy+1 in action =)

mikk0

Unless there’s a dead-simple, tightly integrated solution for making a secure wifi connection using a modern encryption standard like WPA, why bother with other mobility features? Mobile Ubuntu is next to useless without this in this day and age.