GNU/Linux system sales/support

[Dan]

Ok.  Where are the technical writers?  I'll chip in $25 for a professionally written inquiry to Fry's headquarters about opening a retail storefront in the North East. 

Fry's Electronics
600 East Brokaw
San Jose, CA 95112 USA

BTW: What advantages does NH have to offer to a big box inventory laden warehouse?

[J’raxis 270145]

As for the store:  How much do we need to pool to open a Fry's?

As for the project Dale and I are working on, we want to have our own store, so we're not obligated to follow a franchise's policies and rules on things like, say, maintaining customer records, doing background checks on employees, and so on. (Dunkin' Donuts, for example, is forcing all their franchisees to participate in the "no work" database pilot program that the DHS is trying to mandate all employers use). Personally I tend to think of owning a franchise as still working for someone else.

[ArcRiley]

LinuxBIOS is capable, via InitRD, of having a login prompt on the screen within 3 seconds of the hard disk spinning up.  All that takes is some boot process tuning.  The difference of turning a computer on and waiting up to a minute before you reach the login prompt and turning it on and having a brief splash screen followed by a login screen in under 15 seconds total is one edge we'll have over Dell.

Where the hell did Fry's come into this?  We're talking about starting a GNU/Linux storefront, not trying to lure another bigbox in to service us.  I'd expect more porcupines to be thinking as shrewd entrepreneurs rather than wistful consumers.

There's no warehouse required.  The prices may not be as good for lower quantity but there are distributor warehouses in Manchester near the airport.  Given the lower overhead of not having to maintain a warehouse it evens out.

[J’raxis 270145]

LinuxBIOS is capable, via InitRD, of having a login prompt on the screen within 3 seconds of the hard disk spinning up.  All that takes is some boot process tuning.  The difference of turning a computer on and waiting up to a minute before you reach the login prompt and turning it on and having a brief splash screen followed by a login screen in under 15 seconds total is one edge we'll have over Dell.

I remember reading about a trick where all services are started in parallel instead of in sequence, since most people really don't care to see the "Starting gpm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [ OK ]" messages to begin with. Is this one of the things they employ here?

[ArcRiley]

I remember reading about a trick where all services are started in parallel instead of in sequence, since most people really don't care to see the "Starting gpm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [ OK ]" messages to begin with. Is this one of the things they employ here?

Yes, but using your example of gpm - why would the average user who'll never see a text vty need the service which allows them to use their mouse on it?

Pairing down the number of boot-time services is critical in this.  Very few are actually needed to get the system into a usable state.

Also why does the average user need these big, server-level syslog and cron daemons when smaller all-in-one daemons, designed for embedded GNU/Linux systems, will do the same job?

[dalebert]

As for the store:  How much do we need to pool to open a Fry's?

Is it a franchise? I suspect it's just corporate controlled.