Fedora Core 2 Distribution Size

[Jim Cornette]

Jeremy Katz wrote:

>On Fri, 2004-01-02 at 13:56, Jon Atkinson wrote:
>  
>
>>It would be nice, when Fedora has matured a little (FC3/4?) to see a 
>>higher level of support and promotion of the FTP install feature. I know 
>>anaconda does support FTP installs, but there is very little in the way 
>>of (obvious) documentation of this feature, and from what I've heard and 
>>personal experience it is a little flaky. I am an ex-Debian user and I 
>>liked the way I could burn a 50mb ISO and run the installer then fetch 
>>packages from a local mirror. I know not everyone has DSL access, but a 
>>large and growing number of people do, and I think it may soon be time 
>>to rethink the ISO distribution model.
>>    
>>
>
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I've done the floppy install (series of 4 floppies) of Debian before.  I 
liked the network install, though Debian didn't meet my particular 
needs. I also downloaded and burned a whole series of CDROMs and it only 
used the first CD. (A big waste, but a learning experience).  I think 
that their other concept of selecting desired programs that then create 
your customized installations is a good approach, if dependencies could 
be met through the selector.

It might serve Fedora to have such a capability, though it sounds like 
it would be a nightmare to implement successfully.

As far as Fedora's maturity level. I used RH since verson 5.2 (4.2 for 
some unix learning, but 5.2 for regular usage). I think that Fedora is 
the best level that I've ever seen it reach. It'll never mature, it is 
always growing, thus the 3 CDs needed for the later installations.

>As of Fedora Core 1, the FTP install should be just as nice as every
>other install method as you can do graphical FTP installs (assuming a
>certain minimal amount of RAM so that we can pull the entire second
>stage down or using the rescue cd image to start your install).  As Jef
>said, there's not much in the way of docs of anything, but I don't see
>how you can get more prominent mention than having it listed on the
>install type screen with everything else :)  
>
>  
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Instead of the installation option being kind of hidden, it would be 
nice to see it available as a choice when the first disc booted up. 
Alternatively, a credit card  model with just ftp / http installation 
starting might be a good idea. I heard mention of a boot.iso, so it must 
already exist and is or can be offered within the regular directory that 
contains the usual 6 discs. ( rpms, srpms)

>If you've had specific problems, *please* report them in bugzilla.  I am
>not at all a mind reader and I can't fix things unless they're
>reported.  
>
>As far as future stuff, I think that HTTP is actually far more relevant
>than HTTP, but since the installer code is virtually identical for the
>two, that's irrelevant.  I'd like to get to where we can have a simple
>mirror list available and you can get sort of a "choose your mirror"
>sort of things for where to do your install from, but I'm not sure
>that's going to happen in the timeframe for FC2.  Especially as the time
>is dwindling for making large installer changes (I tend to try to stop
>those by the first test release so that sane testing can be achieved)
>  
>

This sounds like a worthwhile enhancement. I'd most likely use these 
planned enhancements.

As far as the distribution size. I was looking forward to a 4 gig DVD 
offering. I like the smaller sized programs and find them useful. I also 
like the more megabyte hungry programs that are currently offered.

Thanks for the hard work set forth so far. I get bored with trying to 
learn how to program apps, but hope to eventually buckle down and start 
contributing fixes and such later.

>Cheers,
>
>Jeremy
>  
>
Jim

-- 
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