SystemSnapshotsOverview

Summary

The ability to save and restore system and specific user's setting is an important feature in modern operating systems. For Ubuntu next release, we can provide an enhanced way of doing so, tighting integration with the Launchpad, and even creating possible service revenue sources through the service.

Rationale

As Ubuntu is becoming increasingly popular among many new users and new comers to the Linux world, we need a coherent and straight forward way to enable the new user on the system, to create, save and restore a SystemSnapshot. When created, holds enough information to restore a user's machine / account setup to a usable state by a mouse click. This can be tightly integrated a Launchpad users/groups accounts, later, to be shared by groups of users, be it in the same workplace or spread all over the world.

Use cases

  • Jane has created herself a fancy looking theme, window border , icon and background combination. She loves it so much, she would like to share it with Claire, and have it stored somewhere safe, so when she installs a new machine she would be able to reapply those changed in one click, instead of spending another 2 hours on finding the right decorations, artwork and theme that suits her fancy.
  • Sivan is an aspiring Ubuntu developer. He uses his desktop to do package and code development activities. Those activities require a specific set of tools and packages to be priory installed on the system. Sivan, throughout the time since he began developing for Ubuntu, has collected a nice set of Emacs and VI rc files, together with some bash and python snippets he wrote which enable him to be productive and ease his work greatly. Sivan would like a way to define which elements are important to him in this current working environment, store then safely somewhere, so next time the desktop looses the hard drive, or he installs a new machine - he would not have to spend the time and go through the trouble while setting his first machine, to have a good development environment ready again.
  • James is a system administrator for a software development company. He is responsible for about 50 workstations company wide. Just like Sivan, James's users experience hard drive badness and other damaging events. On the other hand, James wished he could somehow save the time that a new employee spends setting up his new system, installing all the necessary programs for his work, etc. James dreams that he could, upon finishing installing a new employee machine, to point him at some URL on the web, and let the new employee choose the setup snapshot which suits his work needs, be it development, marketing, administration or finance.

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec

SystemSnapshotsOverview (last edited 2008-08-06 16:25:55 by localhost)