Deep freeze for linux

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Tyler Aviss wrote:

> I really do wonder who would use this...
>
> http://www.faronics.com/html/DFLinux.asp
>
> I can't really see much use for it in a proper permissions-secure environment.

IMHO there are better ways of dealing with system management like not 
giving users root access in the first place.

Developers can have root on their dev boxes of course - but the idea of 
developing on the same box you use to access the 'net (generally your 
workstation) has always struck me as counter-productive.  You want your 
access to the net to be rock solid - exactly what a dev box isn't.  With 
near univeral access to the network and virtualisation technologies there 
is no need to tie development to the box you happen to be physically near. 
Where I work now I have setup a virtual dev environment (using OpenVZ) so 
developers can have a new dev box shortly after asking for it, and they 
can work from the office, home or elsewhere over the VPN.  No problem.

Like a lot of other commercial products DeepFreezeLinux strikes me as an 
MS-Windows focused tool which has been ported to Linux.  Some might find 
it useful but it isn't for me.

A lot of the time people use Linux on the desktop the way they use 
MS-Windows.  The Linux approach is alot more flexible than that (and to 
give it some credit, MS-Win has caught up a little bit in recent years).

I can ssh in to dozens of boxes transparently[1] from my thin client. 
Thus my computing environment becomes a network rather than a computer.

Future OSes are going to move even further in this direction but what we 
can do now is pretty good.  Even carrying a laptop within a city will be a 
thing of the past one day.  As time goes on the range in which this is 
feasible will continue to grow.

Yeah I went off on a tangent a bit but all too often I feel that the 
limitation on using computers is a lack of imagination.

[1] ie, without entering a password or passphrase, thanks to ssh-agent.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine..."
 	-- RFC 1925 "The Twelve Networking Truths"
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