A list of features who will be available in next Insy

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

In the install part it will propose a "Personal computer" along with
the "Workstation" and "Server": this will be oriented towards people
using Linux at home for their own pleasure.  Installation will also
allow to configure PPP.

One of the main goals in this version was to allow the user to ask for
help with under five minutes work that is why (besides the PPP config)
we made easy to configure sendmail and fetchmail and this in typical
situations for people using Linux at home.  In addition I manage for
mail being automatically sent when the PPP interface is brought up.
Because there are people who have expensive links I try to make
connections as short as possible and allow to use a proxy (wwwoffle)
who IMHO is better suited thean Squid for dial-up users.  In additioon
I manage for it being activated when PPP starts.  I will also include
a last chance PPP configurator.

A user learning Linux will need to read doc and that is why I will be
adding support for HP's winprinters and (for PDF docs) including
Acrobat reader due to its better quality respective to xpdf.

Inexperienced people will need to configure their box so I include the
newest Linuxconf available, he will also need a realatively easy
editor in case something goes wrong so I ship LPE, make sure it is
available even in the most desperate situations and make sure VI never
jumps on the user.  :-)

Inexperienced people make mistakes so I tried to make the box more
forgiving with features like X not crashing in case the font server is
not installed or ensuring the user knows how to reboot

In this world there is a thing called Windows and we have to account
for it.  I make easy to mount windows shares, printing to SMB printers
has been improved respective to RedHat, we ship Wine and allow access
to and from Windows through VNC.  We also include netatalk.

X is crucial to make Linux user friendly so we ship XFree 3.3.4 for
its widest range of available cards.  People with small boxes will get
a reasonable user interface through XFCE and we have made some
cosmetic changes to the other interfaces in order to provide something
better out oif the box.

Out of the box the user gets a preconfigured autofs in order to remve
the core of mounting and unmounting removable media.

A personal computer must be useful for real life so we allow things
like managing the bank account or wine cellar, use the modem as an
answering machine or copy CDs.

A personal computer should allow the user to have fun with it so we
include a range of tools for artistic expression be it graphics or
music.  Finally a personal computer will be used for games and I amm
adding a few MMX-based ones.  I have discovered a trick allowing
dramatic improvements in graphic performance who would be very useful
for these games however it is not sure I will able to implement it in
this release.

Plan would be to follow next release with a new one a few weeks later
and this one would have the graphic improvements, and few additional
features.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org