Gather round kids. Uncle AJ wants to tell you the story of my most significant contribution to #FreeSoftware, #opensource #GNU and #Linux and there is a lesson to this story so stick around.
So way back in 2001 I started working for a startup company called DireqLearn, later OpenLab, as it's "tech guru". Later on my title became chief software architect, which was a joke because that was Bill Gates's new title at Microsoft.
And this company built thin client computer labs.
1/?
Thin client was a great technology here, it meant old donated computers could be refurbished well because they didn't need the mechanical parts that failed first on computers.
You just needed one powerful machine to drive them all.
To make the #LTSP setup a little easier, we would use drive mirroring to set up servers for each school.
The first year or so, I just did things that way, making improvements here and there.
2/?
But then I realized that, if we're building a custom Linux setup anyway, with lots of educational and classroom stuff added, why not just build a distribution? We're almost all the way there anyway and then we won't have the issues associated with disk mirroring.
And so OpenLab GNU/Linux was born. It was a niche distribution but it was received fairly well. #FSF certified as fully free. All good so far.
Version 2 was a flop, 3 was better -oh but version 4...
3/?
I was working on version 4 in 2005. The same year Ubuntu released its first version. #Knoppix had made live CDs a major thing. So now #Ubuntu had a live CD version for trying it. And a second, seperate, disk for installing it. Back then they still used the venerable text based #Debian installer.
Obviously OpenLab 4 would need a live CD.
But...one day I had a bright idea(tm).
4/?
So why were we making people configure all that stuff by hand on permanent installs?
Why not start up the live CD, get all that autoconfig done, then just have an installer that replicates the current, running environment onto your hard drive?
An installable live CD I called it. And later in 2005 OpenLab 4 released - with exactly that design.
And boy did it work well. It was our biggest release ever.
5/?
Sure we were still primarily an educational niche distribution, but loads of people chose OpenLab for their own desktops. Nevermind just hand me down labs for the poorest schools in Africa: some of the most elite private schools also used it. We could boast to our NGO partners that they were giving poor kids the same setup elite schools used!
And it installed in about 3 minutes. Back then anything under 45 was unheard off!
6/?
Installable live Media was the best way to ship GNU/Linux. The easiest, fastest way to get it running.
The proof? Every major distribution in the world today uses installable live Media.
And now for the lesson. In the exact same week OpenLab 4 first released, PCLinuxOS had their first release. It was an installable live CD. I had no idea they existed, and vice versa, for over a year
7/?
See, I wasn't some genius who had seen what nobody else could. I just took the next logical step based on the state of the art at the time.
And so did they, completely independently, and probably some other people I don't know about did it too!
So my greatest contribution (in terms of impact) to #FOSS was also theirs.
Innovation is almost always just the next logical step: and there's always plenty of people who will take that step
For those wanting to know a bit more about openlab itself, thanks to the internet archive, here is a review of that big 4.0 release:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051105024042/https://www.linux.org/dist/reviews/openlab4.html
Metalpoet 