(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello, all.

As some of you may know, e_mattis and I have been busy exploring the possibility of
a Puppy for the small and/or home business.

As hansol has stated recently, here
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#769844
and in the following messages, a small entrepreneur can save a lot of money using
Puppy. Furthermore, he found that setting up a Puppy for business was easier than
doing so on another major distro.

e_mattis has already published his Small Business Puppy about 16 months ago, which
is focused on Point-of-Sale. It can be obtained at:
http://data.deadaccurate.com/SBPiso.tar.gz, but also at ally's Internet Archive,
Puppy section, and at Puppus DogFellows' more selective site.

As for me, I adopted another approach and opted for assembling in a single pet a
number of business templates and resources accessible through a icon and menu on
the desktop. It can be downloaded here: http://www.datafilehost.com/d/49eed372.
It resulted from discussions on the general business thread on the French side of this
board, at:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#668395
If you know French, it's worth the effort. It's a great resource, if I may say so! You'll find
there a lot of useful URL's and projects for business, from both sides of the Atlantic,
not just in French.

Obviously, the business field is huge, and no one person can consider having all the
skills necessary to come up with a Business Puppy satisfying a majority of business
operators.

So we need help. I'll re-post a private post by Eric, which sums up nicely the type of
help that is needed to bring such a Puppy to fruition.

hey musher0,
(...) It would have to incorporate some accounting, some inventory, some time/
employee management, a POS, and possibly some advertising. Those are the main
areas I can think of at the moment. (...)
Eric

Contributions from Puppy-ists with Puppy and business experience in one of the fields
above will be welcome. We'd also like to hear from people having experience with co-
ops and / or community-business models, not just from single-operator and/or small
corporation-type businesses. Business is business, and we need all sorts of focuses
to enlighten the project at this point.

One level up from the nuts and bolts of putting an Enterprise Puppy together, ideas are
also welcome on the subjects of:
- financing (crowd-sourcing?) such a project (or not!), pros and cons, etc.
- what to watch for in dealing with / respecting GPL, BSD licences and the like,
- how to present the finished product (CD, USB, PuppyBox (?!), whatever) and
- pricing ? Or should it remain all free...
__ (A lot of work and added-value is going to go in in this project though. If free, how do
__ you motivate the contributors to a business Puppy?)
- marketing the project generally.

Also, on the computer front:
- in your experience (yes, experience, not opinion, please), is there a Puppy
version that would be best-suited for Puppy Enterprise. (This means among other
things a Puppy with drivers for not-so-old and current computers, with up-to-date wi-fi
and printing drivers.)
- thinking forward, would a Puppy Box be desirable for running a Puppy SOHO?
(Like, say, a modified ChromeBox.)

So this is a take-off for Puppy SOHO, on a wing and a prayer, for now!

Wish us luck if you can't contribute or give feed-back?!

Best to all. BFN.

musher0

Reserved for future use.

Reserved for an index, eventually.

Well, in case anyone is interested, i've started collecting all the programs/files that went into the SBP in hopes of putting together something that resembles a general retail environment. Most of the retail systems I have encountered have 3 main bodies - the frontend, inventory, and back office.

Front end is mainly the point-of-sale operations and is closely fused with the inventory

The inventory system is just that - a means of accounting for the items /services being sold

The back office is where all the "paperwork" and such is being done. reports on sales, cash flow, inventory levels, etc. etc. The details involved in the back office particularly is an area which more information is needed.

As this project is an attempt to help the Small/Home business arena, I am sure there are avenues other than just retail that need to be explored. Ideas, suggestions, and assistance is appreciated!

thanks!

Eric

Hi musher0,

I can't give you experience, just some observations.
Working for a big automobile manufacturer in India, I have seen some small scale manufacturing units.
Their computers mainly have programs such as -

1) Tally ( For accounting and book keeping),
2) Autocad (Mainly for 2D drawings)
3) Catia (For 3D cad data)
4) PDF readers (Some drawings come in pdf format)
5) Outlook (For Emails)
6) Printers
7) scanners
8 ) Fax
9) Good hassle free network connector.
10) Nice browser.

And not everyone uses newer hardware.

Hope this helps.

Excepting for the mainline 64bit distros and PhatSlacko, most every PUP still do not understand how to incorporate full-SAMBA in a single distro, even though newest V4 SAMBA has reduced its ISO footprint to 11MB. 01Micko makes one of the best I've ever seen (yours for the asking), For any business (or home office) solution, this is NOT an option, it is a necessity.

Also, one of the biggest problems that still exist in Puppyland is the notion that ISO size impacts system behavior, even though many understand the myth. Use, business-needs, ease-of-use, and system requirements are THE most important issues for any system. If a SOHO is built, make it a SOHO! Focus on benefit (and performance, if need) ... forget the size angle as this IS NOT IMPORTANT. Consider it to be best of breed for its purpose(s).

I just saw a demo of a consultant showing Business on a Tablet. He never, once, said anything about SIZE. But, did focus exclusively on benefit...benefit...benefit.

Hope this is helpful as you plan the directional offering(s)

gcmartin wrote:For any business solution, this is NOT an option, it is a necessity.

This comment surprises me. I would think that the last thing a business wants is for their employees to be setting up shared folders on their own machines. This is exactly how privileged data gets accidentally exposed to the rest of the world.

Is it not better to run a Samba server on the business network, through which employees can share data using Samba client tools?

This is correct. I agree. But, you also KNOW that the SAMBA client allows offloading data, too AND that the SAMBA client is built into EVERY PUP. So, I'm a bit surprised you made that statement.

I was considering the Puppy focus of a internal PC providing the kinds of thing necessary to run a small business office where the Puppy machine can be either central or working together with other LAN elements where it is integrated.

The ability of the local administrator to manipulate his SOHO for his needs must include good and easy connectivity for the elements of their business needs. Thus, they can make the discretionary decisions appropriate for use in the home or to run the small office.

Hope this clarifies.

Many thanks, people !

Keep your ideas coming ! You have the kind of insights that this project needs!

BFN.

musher0

Please take a glance at business category, and give your opinion to applications. That help a lot the newbies, avoiding testing what was found good ... or Bad.
There are so many with last post signed pelo. admnistrator will hate me !
There are 53 topics, Are they too many ? Perhaps Libre Office is enough ?
Calcoo pet

MoneyDance please me
As i only makes my accounts once a month, sometimes less, i use bank apps for other subjects. In Linux business means money.
When you work , he boss often don't let you know what is the value of operations. You deal with quantities.
These quantities are valued by the accounting department, or sales one, to define a sale price.
By using as currency Hours, kms (miles), kilogrammes, ... MB ! these apps can be used more than once a month at home.
For your shopping, or car overhaul.

after checking it Moneydance is more for our financial minister than for the housekeeper.