[tech] Deep Thought

[Andrew Adamson]

There are three options available to UniSFA for deepthought. I have 
detailed some of the pros and cons of each below. I must first point out 
that this is all me talking, not wheel/committee/god/cthulu/etc.

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1. UniSFA installs Windows on deepthought and have their own admin control 
over it
- Yay full control and non-uccans how to use it
- Yay you can install itoons and netflicks on it
- UCC needs somebody (a unisfan) to be responsible for it. This is 
because the internet connection is through UCC and the finger gets pointed 
at UCC when the machine gets botnetted. UCC can't afford to have their 
internet turned off or filtered. (This is what I was asking for on the 
UniSFA facebook group).
- The machine will probably be moved to our insecure network. You will 
still get internet, but it will be more heavily firewalled, and possibly 
packet filtered too.
- There will (should?) be an administrator login, and the normal unisfa 
login will be unprivileged. So you're still dependent on one or a few 
people to maintain it. I'm sorry but giving every man and his dog admin 
access is a sure path to failure. We don't even do this in UCC where most 
people are "good with computers".
- It will be difficult for UCC to help when this machine breaks. As Luke 
pointed out in his email, "The responsibility to support a system has to 
come with the right to control its configuration." This as much due to 
passwords as due to windows - it's not easy to support windows remotely 
without the appropriate tools and setup (which we don't have on a 
non-ucc system).

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2. UniSFA gives UCC a windows 7 licence and UCC installs the UCC standard 
operating environment (SOE) on it with a guest UniSFA user.
- Yay windows, and non-uccans know how to use it
- Yay somebody can install itoons and netflicks on it
- deepthought practically becomes just like a UCC clubroom machine
- you will have to poke a UCC winadmin or wheel member (of which there 
are many) to install stuff. Wheel is pretty much perpetual and the machine 
won't stop being maintained when somebody leaves uni.
- The machine is less likely to get maintained on a regular basis 
than a linux install because it's difficult to do it quickly and remotely. 
As I've previously stated, I will not personally support windows on 
deepthought - I didn't say that somebody else wouldn't.
- This is probably your best option from a long term reliability and 
maintainability point of view, as there are is a group of people who 
automatically have the ability to maintain it

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3. Deepthought is left with some form of linux on it - pretty much the 
same as currently, but not necessarily debian
- Yay free software
- Yay easiest to maintain by uccans. It should also be easy to maintain by 
CS students
- Yay reliable (I know unisfa doesn't think so, but I'll explain that 
later).
- Ubuntu and linuxmint can actually run itunes and netflix (I'm intigued - 
netflix hasn't been released in australia yet anyway)
- Will still play all the media and whatnot that you want it to (don't 
judge everything by Debian)
- Debian sucks as a desktop OS because it tries to be too open source. 
This is why things like firefox were a bitch to install - debian has its 
own, fully open variant called iceweasel. It's also a pain with codecs for 
movies and music. Linux mint would be a better option.

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Reliability:
Deepthought has some of the best uptimes of ANY COMPUTER MANAGED BY UCC. 
Most of the problems on deepthought have been external hardware issues 
unrelated to the operating system, or plain old malicious users (when I 
got to it the other day somebody had deliberately removed and purged both 
X and gdm).

What putting windows on deepthought *won't* solve:
- It won't stop stupid users who break things deliberately or out of 
ignorance
- It won't help when you have yanked the disk drive out of an old machine 
and put it in a new machine with completely different hardware and bios 
settings
- It won't help the barcode reader work when it hasn't been plugged in at 
all
- It won't help the barcode reader work when it has been plugged into the 
mouse port
- It won't help the network work after the network cable got left across 
the doorway and got shredded
- It won't help it if the power is not plugged in

All of the above things are the "issues" I've dealt with on deepthought in 
my time maintaining it, which is why I'm a little peeved that the finger 
seems to be being pointed at me and the software it is running.

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Hardware: 
Until the most recent iteration of deepthought it was run on ucc donated 
hardware. Both the current and the last box were capable of playing 
whatever movies you want (even with the existing OS) - you pretty much 
need a $35 graphics card with the right outputs for what you want. I think 
I mentioned this on the facebook group several months ago when it was 
being discussed there and it got ignored.

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Hope that helps you make a decision.


Andrew Adamson
bob at ucc.asn.au

|"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
| ---Peter's Laws                                                        |