netswitch-users

Re: [Netswitch-users] future direction of netswitch

[Michael de B. <mad...@ig...>]

Thanks for your comments Yuri.  I'm replying to the mailing list so that
this conversation can be archived on the sourceforge site.  I'll change
the mailinglist setting so that reply's go to the list by default. 

If we get a high-traffic mailinglist we can think about changing it.

> > From: Michael de Beer <mad...@ig...>
> > 
> > Please comment on what I think are the three steps in this script's life:
> > 

> From: Yuri Bank <yu...@ig...>

> 1. Yes, I think this is VERY usefull. Even for non-laptop users this 
> could be usefull. You never know why/when you would need to change your 
> network settings, and want to be able to go back to your old settings at 
> a latter time. For example: This weekend I went to a lan party in San 
> Francisco. I had to change my network settings several times, and it 
> would have made life easier if I could of typed home.pl to go back to my 
> home network settings.
> 
>  Anyone who has a laptop with linux installed (PROBABLY) work at some 
> network as a admin or something and switch from home to work locations, 
> there by changing their network settings a lot.

I agree that people must do this a lot. I wonder if they have already
found an easy way to do this.  I also wonder if they have other tasks
they always do when they move from home to work, like starting/stopping
of network services, etc...

Yuri, would you research mailinglists/discussion forums/irc channels that
linux laptop users hang out at?  Then we can craft a questionnaire to post
there. 

>  Features that I think would make this program popular would be perhaps a 
> message/option that asks you at boot-up what network settings you would 
> like to use. I dont no if this would even be posible, but it would be a 
> usefull feature if it was, and was not to much troule. 

I don't think this would be too hard to do.

> Finding out how each 
> distribution is configured and then telling netswitch to run according to 
> distro. would be good to so a multi-distro test would be good.

Great.

Michael de Beer  :  Programming Consultant, River Rafter  :  mad...@ig...

[Netswitch-users] future direction of netswitch

[Michael de B. <mad...@ig...>]

Please comment on what I think are the three steps in this script's life:

1.  Figure out if netswitch is potentially quite useful and worth making more
    solid.

    Perhaps ask around in linux laptop forums and mailinglists how people
    currently handle the issue of changing the network settings, for 
    example of going from a DSL static IP at home to a DHCP network 
    at work, to a PPP connection while on the road.

    Does netswitch have the potential to fill a role for these laptop users?
    If no, abandon project.  If yes, what features would netswitch need to
    really work well for these users?

2.  Setup a multi-distribution test-bed.

    Probably use a cheap linux laptop and install 3-6 boot partitions on it,
    each one a different distribution.  First, make netswitch work on 
    multiple platforms. 

    Possibly just have several good beta-tester/developers who each have
    a different linux (other unix?) distribution.

3.  Add features that users wanted, encourage people to sign up for this 
    mailinglist. 

Michael de Beer  :  Programming Consultant, River Rafter  :  mad...@ig...