NonBroadbandUsers

Summary

Rationale

Use cases

  • Alice does not have broadband at home, but she has broadband at work. Using a nifty front-end to apt-zip, she is able to collect the packages she needs at work on her USB key for installation when she returns home.
  • Joe, who doesn't have broadband at home, uses apt for windows or webapt at his windows machine at work to download a program including all its dependencies which are not installed by default on Ubuntu in one compressed file, so he can install it easily at home.
  • Bob uses Ubuntu on his laptop, and rarely connects to any network. He finds the network detection phase of the boot process very slow, and would like to disable it.
  • Using a DVD containing all of Universe, Chris is able to install vastly more packages than are available on the installation CD without any connection to the internet.
  • Mary, who doesn't have broadband at home, has to configure dialup. Right now, she's stuffed. On a new installation, it may be necessary to install something to enable internet access before the internet access is available.

Scope

Design

Implementation

The use cases 1+2 to download a package (with dependencies) from a different machine (e.g. at work/university) is addressed by the latest synaptic in dapper. It can generate a download script (currently using wget, but trivial to change) that can be used on the fast connected machine and will download the packages that are required on the home-machine. Then the directory with the downloaded packages is carried home and imported with synaptic. It will take care for checking versions and md5 sums.

This implementation still requires action from the user - to produce the download script on the non-connected machine and take it to the connected machine - that is not required in the case of Windows (just download the .exe and take it to the non-connected machine). I think it would be nice if synaptic could export scripts that assume a default Ubuntu installation, then you would not have to bring a script from the non-connected machine to the connected machine before-hand, although you might download some files that you don't really need. - SeanHammond

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

  • I recently installed Breezy on a laptop for my parents. Although the AC'97 modem support was in the standard installed kernel, the sl-modem-daemon package was not, and was not in the standard package set, so significant -fu was required to get it working.
  • Even when the dialup was working, my parents were confused when dialling the internet because there was no progress or success dialog.

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec

NonBroadbandUsers (last edited 2009-06-18 09:12:09 by adsl-ull-114-70)