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Daryll Strauss wrote:
What if we break the distribution in to more CD's each with fewer packages more tightly organized around usage. For a made up example: CD1 & CD2 - Base OS (practically everyone uses) CD3 - Core Server packages CD4 - Core Dekstop packages CD5 - Additional Server packages CD6 - Additional Desktop packages CD7 - Really bizarre packages (anything else we include for some reason)
Eh, I think that means I'd always have to download at least 6 CDs, because chances are gnome, httpd, and xemacs will be on different discs, so it seems (selfishly) like no gain.
What I generally do is install the absolutely minimal fedora I can, and then install the rest after the machine has booted. This is good because it gets me past the part I might actually have to fuck around with (partitioning, debugging boot loader problems) right away, and then most importantly, *gets me a network* while things are installing, so I'm not sitting there bored out of my mind while it grinds away: Anaconda doesn't let me ssh out to check my mail.
Also it means I don't end up installing 80% of the packages twice (the version on the CD, and then the upgrade from yum.)
I know that the installer currently does that two-stage thing where firstboot (or whatever) asks you to install additional packages after the machine is on the net with a desktop. I'd like to see stage 1 get a lot smaller, and almost everything go into stage 2.
I threw this out to get people thinking about alternatives and this idea seems to require minimal recoding. Real repositories and categories will help those of us with broadband, but I don't think it deals with the media install issues at all.
One person suggested moving to DVDs. The doesn't work because a LOT of people don't have DVD burners yet. Heck one old codger I know doesn't have a DVD reader.
I like minimizing the install and doing as much as possible after the fact, but again that same old codger doesn't have broadband, so he really needs CDs.
How many disks you need to install depends on how well the groups are categorized. If you want the minimal install and do the rest over the net, then you're surely going to be downloading fewer discs. Hopefully the "minimal" install corresponds to the base OS case listed above, so it's the fewest number of discs. Even if you do download all 6+ partially full disks, who cares? It's the same amount of data as 4 packed ones. You just need to burn a bit more media or do a local network/disk install.
Getting the CD boundaries right is the tricky part. No setup is going to work for everyone, and it is going to suck if you need one package from that extra disk, but there's no way to avoid that problem, and with a reasonable breakdown it seems to help many users.
- |Daryll
Daryll Strauss wrote:
I like minimizing the install and doing as much as possible after the fact, but again that same old codger doesn't have broadband, so he really needs CDs.
Even if I were installing from CDs, I'd still prefer to be doing a lot more post-boot than happens now. The pseudo-ads in Anaconda are pretty, but I'd rather be looking at porn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H checking my mail...
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:12:32 -0800, Jamie Zawinski jwz@jwz.org wrote:
Even if I were installing from CDs, I'd still prefer to be doing a lot more post-boot than happens now. The pseudo-ads in Anaconda are pretty, but I'd rather be looking at porn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H checking my mail...
Don't know if you've heard about emacs, but I believe it lets you delete whole words with Meta-Backspace.
On Feb 28, 2005, Jamie Zawinski jwz@jwz.org wrote:
What I generally do is install the absolutely minimal fedora I can, and then install the rest after the machine has booted. This is good because it gets me past the part I might actually have to fuck around with (partitioning, debugging boot loader problems) right away, and then most importantly, *gets me a network* while things are installing, so I'm not sitting there bored out of my mind while it grinds away: Anaconda doesn't let me ssh out to check my mail.
Erhm...
Ctrl-Alt-F2
Also it means I don't end up installing 80% of the packages twice (the version on the CD, and then the upgrade from yum.)
This is actually a very good point.
We could argue towards shipping updated CDs as well, and get the installer to use them. Like rolling releases. I suggested that before, and Seth says it might not even be too hard to get yum to peek into the ISOs to get the rpms, but it would take some eeky work.
As for post-install installation, I've been thinking of rpm's new (?) feature Requires(missingok): (did it actually make to the latest rpm release?): it could be used to represent package groups, such that, instead of having package collections the way they are now, mostly static, we could instead have meta-packages that determined the standard composition of a package group, but still in such a way that you could remove some of the components afterwards without leaving your system with artificially-broken deps.
I know that the installer currently does that two-stage thing where firstboot (or whatever) asks you to install additional packages after the machine is on the net with a desktop. I'd like to see stage 1 get a lot smaller, and almost everything go into stage 2.
If you could do all that with kickstart as well, I'm sold. Rolling the same set of packages onto dozens of boxes isn't exactly pleasant otherwise. It sure would be a plus if the first-stage install didn't actually take longer, but rather it just passed info on to firstboot (which currently doesn't run in kickstart installs) such that it can complete the install without interaction, while the box might already be (somewhat) usable. Whether the installation of additional packages should be done in background or not, with or without a round of package updates and reboot afterwards, would be configured in kickstart.
devel@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org
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Alexandre Oliva -
Daryll Strauss -
Jamie Zawinski -
Konstantin Ryabitsev