Noob optimized live System - a specs' sheet

Post here if you are a new Porteus member and you're looking for some help.
datruche
Black ninja
Black ninja
Posts: 95
Joined: 20 Sep 2015, 21:02
Distribution: Arch, Porteus-Nemesis 3.5
Location: London > . < Paris

Noob optimized live System - a specs' sheet

Post#1 by datruche » 25 Dec 2015, 18:34

Hey, may you have a sweet digestion ~:-]

Thought I'd begin sharing the specifications sheat I'm doin for a noob optimized live system, possibly with Porteus. With those of you guys that have some interest in this, so you can take, critic and share. It's a work in progress and this post will be updated to reflect further progress, and feedback.

Warning: This thread does contain English mistakes and coloured vocabulary. You should not read it this can hurt your feelings.

As I did it before, a note on doing a live OS for other people. May seem easy, about the same than building one for yourself. Well in my experience it's not (unless they're your twins). E.g. the audience may not want it, understand what it is or what (s)he can do with "that stick". Last winter I previously built a serie of live systems for three different kind of people. Audiences went from young internet techie to the employees at a reception centre for homeless people.

So let's start with the specifications sheat for a live system. Please add your input How would you make Porteus as good or a better solution than an easy-to-use cloud OS for these points?

A - Who

1. Define your Audience

2. Environment
* Hardware
* Human
* Usage (present and wanted)

3. Goal
Like for any project having defined the main goals is a major key to get the live system made, and further improved. "Main" means keep a low details level.

4. Available time and budget

B - What (needs)
Audience's main needs
* Usages and specific formats
* Accessibility
* Language(s)
* Specific hardware, eg. accessories
* Users and ACL
* Security, now and after

Support and Maintenance
* Security updates
* Distant access

C - How

That's were we gather, build, test and compare solutions that address the needs listed above, inside your time and budget.

Device

Software

OS

To be updated.
Last edited by datruche on 13 Jan 2016, 01:41, edited 1 time in total.

datruche
Black ninja
Black ninja
Posts: 95
Joined: 20 Sep 2015, 21:02
Distribution: Arch, Porteus-Nemesis 3.5
Location: London > . < Paris

Re: Noob optimized live System - a specs' sheat

Post#2 by datruche » 26 Dec 2015, 15:34

Please contribute to making the good Noob Optimized Live System

Your Spec sheat can differs or look like this one which is for my mum.

A - Who

1. Audience
Main: non-techy woman in her 50 or more. She struggles to print a PDF or join pics to an email... and has no pretentions on e.g. "learning Linux". She's been using open source before (Libreoffice, Firefox, GNU/Linux distro) but returned to a system called "Windowz" (?) thanks to her family/collegues/computer-resailer/TV blablah. Speaks French.

Secondary: Her collegues and moderators/assistants at the computer club. Collegues are Microsoft and other proprietary software lovers. That's all they use, and some of them like to force anyone to follow them into their brain-washed views on personal computing.

2. Environment
* Hardware: Recent laptop - old USB printer - Wireless connection through a standard ADSL box.
* Human: Personal computing club.
* Usage: Gmail, photos (and camera's videos), official PDFs, personal accounting, web researches, some printing.
Would love to use: audio/video podcasts, Audio/video chat with her (grand) children

3. Goal
Main goals are hers e.g.:
  • Knows she has a plan B system that she proved to herself she can use to get her digital stuff done. E.g. if her Windozw 8.1 gets down. Or when she won't succeed in printing that *$#§ PDF. Or when she's fed up with these continuous warnings, commercial, tracking or worrying messages, and decides she'd like to have a session off these.
  • Shut the mouth off these bi.. collegues that keep telling her there's nothing outside of Microsoft Office, Windows, Adobe Flash and so on
And:
  • Help her; for you like/luv or need her has a pretty usable tool :D
4. Available time and budget
10 hours for the Beta. 10 more for final version.
Budget's tiny.

B - What (needs)

Audience's main needs

Usages and specific formats
  • Web
    - browsing, webmail and so on
    - streaming vids and audio with forward/rewind
  • Office
    - light Text and Spreadsheat processing, MSOffice & ODF compatible
    - PDF of which our dear administrations ones made for Adobe Reader
    - Printing
  • Files browsing
    - Documents, images... everything
    - Images slideshow
  • Audio and Videos
    - .mp3, H264 .MOV & .mp4, .mkv, .avi, H265?
    - Downloaded files are available from any Windows computer
Accessibility and Language
  • Desktop, Apps and files are bfa (brain fuck accessible) !
  • And are localized in French
Specific hardware
  • architecture: i686 for a wider hardware (and proprietary software) compatibility
  • Network: Wi-Fi (wpa, wpa2, wpa-psk & wps) and wired
  • Print support, at least for her old Brother printer; capacity to support more printers would be a plus.
  • Mobile: For anything that is files related, Ms Noobie uses her computer, not her smartphone so no need for OTG here.
* Users and ACL
  • Accounts
    - 2 users accounts. So Ms Noobie's can let a Guest try her live system, knowing they just can't access nor change anything on hers
Support and Maintenance
  • Reasonably secure at the filesystem level
    - "Kiosk": insensitive to any "unwanted" change by dear Ms Noobie, her friends or moderators at the (proprietary softw.) computing club
  • Security updates
    - She knows there's no critical flaws on her little live system
  • Distant access
    - Live System can be securely accessed through an ADSL box with default firewall settings
To be updated.

datruche
Black ninja
Black ninja
Posts: 95
Joined: 20 Sep 2015, 21:02
Distribution: Arch, Porteus-Nemesis 3.5
Location: London > . < Paris

Re: Noob optimized live System - a specs' sheat

Post#3 by datruche » 26 Dec 2015, 16:09

C - How

That's were we gather, build, test and compare solutions that address the needs listed above, inside your time and budget.

Device
* A small and elegant, solid USB 2.0 pen drive.

Software
Web:
- browsing webmail and so on ──> Mozilla Firefox (or Palemoon) with appropriate add-ons, settings and... themes :)
- streaming vids and audio with forward/rewind ──> full html5 support + needs crappy Flash for eg. online media's content (in my xperience still mandatory)?
Office
- light Text and Spreadsheat processing, MSOffice & ODF compatible ──> Cloud app (icon), Abiword/Gnumeric, or Libreoffice with simplified UI?
- PDF of which our dear administrations ones made for Adobe Reader ──> epdfview works well in my Xperience
- Printing ──> see Hardware
Files
- Documents, images... everything ──> Thunar's good for Documents; better if had multimedia improvments
- Images slideshow ──> GpicView configured as default app via xdg.mime seems good to me.
Audio and Videos
- .mp3, H264 .MOV & .mp4, .mkv, .avi, H265? ──> VLC
- Downloaded files are available from any (Windozw) computer ──> OS on partition #2 with a linux FS + vfat primary partition.

Accessibility and Language

- Desktop, Apps and files are bfa (brain fuck accessible) ! ──> XFCE by the Porteus team looks good. ChromiumOS's simplier
- And are localized in French ──> via Porteus Setting center (modules) + Mozilla's xpi

Specific hardware

- architecture: i686 for a wider hardware (and proprietary software) compatibility
- Network: Wi-Fi (wpa, wpa2, wpa-psk & wps) and wired ──> all default in Porteus 3.1 or CloudReady's ChromiumOS
- Print support, at least for her old Brother printer; capacity to support more printers would be a plus. ──> e.g. `printing.xzm` module; I believe it would need aBrother driver and further configuration (?)

* Users and ACL

Accounts
- 2 users accounts ──> make 'Guest' the person account, create a guest user with a different GID and unmodifiable $HOME/* (can use his own key or email if needed). What's unclear to me is how to protect the main account while keeping some customization features. AFISK ChromiumOS has all this neatly covered.

OS
Right now I've tested some (of which AntiX and Handy Linux to say the best). Porteus that I've been testing (the Non Kiosk version for 3 months only), LinuTop OS (that would add $90 but remove otherwise needed personal support and maintenance), and and CloudReady (which is really cool but has limited office and printing compatibility.

Post Reply