At 06:44 AM 4/29/2000 +0100, Phil Shrimpton wrote:

>You could take this one step further (depending on licensing), and include
>the 'cut down' versions of the main distros on the 'certificated kits of
>IB', e.g. SuSE IB, RedHat IB etc. I think this will be better than an 'IB
>Linux' distro.

If you *were* going to include a version of Linux on the kit, why not go
with the most free and flexible? Check out the new version (frozen,
currently) of Debian, the debconf system is looking nice and should make
setting up Interbase really nifty.

Supporting Debian also means that some of the easiest to install
distributions of Linux for those not so technically inclined can run it as
well: Corel Linux and Storm Linux. Storm Linux has an open source graphical
system administration tool with pluggable modules - just begging for
something like IBConsole.

The life span of a database-oriented distro of Linux would have to be
short-lived, as the functionality will be rolled into one of the major
distros in a short enough period of time.

>Most Windows 'users' are not developers or Administrators, most Linux users
>are.

If that's true, hopefully it won't be for very long.