Saving space on the DVD

[John Reiser]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> We've grown to the point of overflowing the DVD. ...
> I wanted to post this here for discussion and maybe alternatives.

In my opinion, the easiest way to trim "the DVD" is to remove all .rpms
for Software Development.  I believe that most users who use those .rpms
can get them easily and inexpensively some other way.  I'm a software
developer, and I often omit Software Development when installing from DVD.
Then I "yum install" and download only what I use, which often is about
1/4 of what I would get by installing Software Development from a recent
Fedora DVD.  Make a separate Software Development "spin" (platter image)
if demand warrants.

During the Fedora 11 development cycle I have often composed my own DVDs
from rawhide using pungi, caching .rpms "by hand" to save download time
(both in pungi and via "yum localupdate".)  Today's sizes for my DVDs:
  i386:    2.737 GB
  x86_64:  3.365 GB
I get this by commenting out each @Language in the kickstart file.
I am most interested in testing and making Rescue mode work well.  I
dislike waiting for all those other .rpms (download, compose, burn.)

Obviously that choice is not appropriate for a Fedora general release.
But it does illustrate the cost of catering to such a diverse user base.
On a regular Fedora DVD, about 1/3 of the space is devoted to .rpms for
supporting multiple natural/national languages: font, langpack, hunspell,
thesorus, etc.

Here are the 33 largest individual .rpms in my [pruned] pungi cache:
   kB    name
------ ------------
103792 openoffice.org-core-3.1.0-9.2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 98340 openoffice.org-core-3.1.0-9.2.fc11.i586.rpm
 81984 eclipse-pde-3.4.2-9.fc11.i586.rpm
 81984 eclipse-pde-3.4.2-9.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 58028 texlive-texmf-fonts-2007-28.fc11.noarch.rpm
 56776 btanks-data-0.8.7686-9.fc11.noarch.rpm
 33900 thunderbird-3.0-2.1.beta2.fc11.i586.rpm
 33244 thunderbird-3.0-2.1.beta2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 33184 java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-19.b14.fc11.i586.rpm
 33084 kdegames-4.2.2-6.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 33024 kdegames-4.2.2-6.fc11.i586.rpm
 32144 eclipse-cdt-5.0.2-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 31364 java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-19.b14.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 29188 eclipse-cdt-5.0.2-2.fc11.i586.rpm
 28392 gnome-user-docs-2.26.1-1.fc11.noarch.rpm
 28272 frysk-0.4-8.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 28224 frysk-0.4-8.fc11.i386.rpm
 27316 java-1.5.0-gcj-javadoc-1.5.0.0-25.fc11.i386.rpm
 27316 java-1.5.0-gcj-javadoc-1.5.0.0-25.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 27072 eclipse-platform-3.4.2-9.fc11.i586.rpm
 27072 eclipse-platform-3.4.2-9.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 24104 eclipse-jdt-3.4.2-9.fc11.i586.rpm
 24104 eclipse-jdt-3.4.2-9.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 23008 glibc-common-2.9.90-16.x86_64.rpm
 23004 glibc-common-2.9.90-16.i586.rpm
 22460 kernel-debug-2.6.29.1-70.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 22276 kernel-2.6.29.1-70.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 21792 libgcj-4.4.0-0.34.x86_64.rpm
 21452 kernel-PAEdebug-2.6.29.1-70.fc11.i686.rpm
 21260 kernel-PAE-2.6.29.1-70.fc11.i686.rpm
 21160 kernel-2.6.29.1-70.fc11.i586.rpm
 20600 java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc-1.6.0.0-19.b14.fc11.x86_64.rpm
 20600 java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc-1.6.0.0-19.b14.fc11.i586.rpm

In my opinion, 58MB for texlive-texmf-fonts on a DVD for "general use"
is excessive: more than 1% of the available space, and frequently unused.
Those who use texlive should obtain it separately.  My award for the largest
bloat factor goes to the libgweather .rpm at 13MB.  This ought to be
at most 1MB by doing appropriate computation at install and/or run time.

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