From: wdc@MIT.EDU Subject: Minutes: Linux and Athena Support Brainstorm: 18 November 2008 Date: December 9, 2008 5:04:17 PM EST To: linux-ponder@mit.edu I've created the "linux-ponder" mailman list to make it easier for us to remember who is a participant in the Linux and Athena Support conversation going forward. Everyone should feel free to send to the list as we continue to ponder Linux. As promised, albeit not as soon as expected, here are notes from our Linux and Athena brainstorming session of 18 November 2008: What does it mean to support Linux? What are needs of customers, and opportunities to serve? What has value for IS&T? For the MIT Community? Is the customer need for basic hand holding, or for advanced, even wizard-level activities? What customers are we trying to support? Our intended audience? Cluster/Private; Faculty/Staff/Student; Teaching/Research What are all the use cases, including Athena? Determining the use cases is very difficult. Is there a generic solution applicable across all/some users? Aspects: Awareness by customers of Availability of various kinds of support. What does Athena mean? Software Distribution - Athena Clusters - Personal systems. The Faces of Athena Remember that Linux and Athena have been separate worlds of support within IS&T Choosing "Linux" implies many choices. Choosing "Athena" implied choosing just what is in Athena. What basic services should we offer to support working at MIT? There are a few key 3rd party applications. How will users get them? What about a standard VM? What about a portable personal VM? Integrate Linux into MIT vs. Support Linux <-- What are the minimums? What is support? Expectation setting is important. Is it "the exact sequence of steps to reproduce a working state"? Is it "Someone to call"? When we say something is "Supported" someone must retest the feature on every update. VMWare could be a baseline. How might such a baseline affect Computing in the Clusters? Core pieces of integration: - Network Connectivity - Kerberos - Certificates - Printing - Instant Messaging - Web Browser - Security and Software Update - VPN - Backup - AFS - 3rd Party Software - key institutionally acquired products - Email - Calendaring - Computing Clusters Key Distributions: - Redhat / CentOS / Fedora - Debian / Ubuntu - SuSe: SLES/SLED/OpenSuSE - Gentoo - "bsd" Special thanks to Deb Bowser who sent me her notes as well. -Bill ---- Important: IS&T IT staff will *NEVER* ask you for your password, nor will MIT send you email requesting your password information. Please continue to ignore any email messages that claim to require you to provide such information. ---- William Cattey Linux Platform Coordinator MIT Information Services & Technology N42-040M, 617-253-0140, wdc@mit.edu http://web.mit.edu/wdc/www/
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