Weekly Edition
Return to the Front pageSponsored link
Serve your customers, not your servers, with VERIO Linux VPS. Full-access test-drive here.
| Weekly edition | Kernel | Security | Distributions | Search |
| Archives | Calendar | Subscribe | Write for LWN | LWN.net FAQ |
How would you shrink Fedora?
The leading candidate, at the moment, would appear to be Java support, especially Eclipse. The Java packages are huge; getting rid of them would solve the space problems easily. They are also relatively easy to remove because they were not shipped in prior versions of Fedora. The distribution's users, one assumes, will complain less about losing something they didn't have in the first place.
People are complaining, however. Many developers feel that, if Linux is to have a hope of long-term success in large enterprises, it has to offer top-quality Java support. But, if the distributors do not support free Java implementations now, work on free Java stands a good chance of dying from neglect. Few people want to see a future where Linux is, at best, a platform for proprietary Java implementations. To avoid that future, the distributors should support free Java now.
Other possibilities raised include:
- Getting rid of the games. Certainly games are not at the top
of the list for many commercial environments, but games do serve as a
gentle introduction to Linux for many people.
- Dropping either emacs or xemacs (but not both).
- Dropping exim and postfix. Except, of course, many people think that
the distribution should drop sendmail instead.
- Removing abiword and gnumeric, since, in theory, OpenOffice.org
provides the same functions.
- Removing KDE. Or removing GNOME. Neither of those look feasible, but
it's possible that XFce will go.
- Move epiphany to extras. Or firefox.
- Go to GCC4, which will cut some redundancy. It appears that this change might just happen for FC4.
Various other ideas have gone around as well, but none of them are pleasing to everybody. It appears that the Fedora Project, which has to come up with an answer to this question in the near future, is almost certain to upset somebody, at least in the short term.
For future Fedora Core releases, there are plans to make the installer smarter so that it can transparently grab packages from multiple repositories. With a bit more infrastructure work, perhaps Fedora could take a cue from Ubuntu, and drop back to a single installation CD. In the end, it really should not be necessary to download every possible package (in ISO form) just to get a base system installed. For now, however, the project seems stuck with the need to remove packages that some of its users truly want.
Update: a list of removed packages has been posted. Victims include abiword, balsa, exim, gnumeric, koffice, octave, sylpheed, xemacs, and xfce. The Java packages appear to have survived. Second update: it seems that Fedora Core 4 will also be a five-CD distribution; that's how they kept the Java packages.
(Log in to post comments)
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 2:30 UTC (Thu) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link]
I just want to clarify, none of the packages are being completely removed from the distribution, simply moved to Extras until FC5 (in all likelihood).
It also looks like FC4, unlike FC3, will ship with Extras enabled in yum so updating or installing any of your favorite moved packages should be simpler. At least from my understanding, all of this is likely to be temporary until FC5 when the installer can handle multiple repositories and (I *think*) additional CDs.
Why bother shrinking it?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 2:53 UTC (Thu) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link]
In debian, the first CD contains the most used packages, the second CDcontains the second most used packages, and so on. This seems to fix
virtually all of the criticisms raised in the attached email.
If Fedora went down this route, then a magazine could just attach the
first two CDs and halve their media costs. As for downloading, some users
will insist on getting everything, but equally a lot of users will realise
they only need the first CD to do the install. Overall I would guess
bandwidth will stay the same.
Of course, it is impossible to decide exactly what to put on the CDs -- A
hangul language kit might be unused by 99% of the users, but absolutely
necessary for any Korean users. Labelling the CDs (core, office,
entertainment, java) would avoid some but not all of that problem.
Corrin
Why bother shrinking it?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 3:17 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]
According to the second mail, they don't have the infrastructure to do "partial set" installs. Either stuff is in Core, or it's in Extras.
The price of a sane infrastructure for releases, unfortunately, appears to be that you don't ever release...</hhos>
Why bother shrinking it?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:38 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
In debian, the first CD contains the most used packages, the second CD contains the second most used packages, and so on.One further note for those who are not familiar with Debian; this is based on the popularity-contest package:
Why bother shrinking it?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 17:06 UTC (Thu) by skx (subscriber, #14652) [Link]
The results of the data collected by the popularity-contest package you mention are found online:
It's interesting reading!
Steve--
Debian System Administration
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 3:44 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]
Fedora should have only one CD, with the base system and the most commonly needed apps. It should load other apps from the network. Or it could work from the extra CDs as an option, using the network only if there's an update available, but there's no reason to force everyone to download four ISOs, and then promptly re-install 50 packages because of security updates. Even with BitTorrent, Red Hat is paying too much for bandwidth because of the way things are done now.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:48 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Fedora should have only one CD, with the base system and the most commonly needed apps. It should load other apps from the network.Yeah, it might be to Redhat's benefit if someone there installed Ubuntu just to see what it's like. They might change their mind about a few things.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 3:45 UTC (Thu) by bchapman26 (subscriber, #4565) [Link]
What about one DVD and forget about the CDs?
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:24 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]
Yeah! This is especially good for magazines: you can create DVD-9 for the same amount of $$ as four CDs (may be less) and you can put all packages plus sources on single DVD-9... End of story. As for downloads - there are small difference between 4 CDs and 5 CDs
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Mar 3, 2005 12:51 UTC (Thu) by scharkalvin (guest, #7372) [Link]
Fedora is ALREADY available on a dvd iso image. I downloaded a DVD iso for FC3 on AMD64 and burned a single dvd. No reason they couldn't leave it all intact for the dvd image.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 5:07 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
I'm astonished that this made the headlines. *Obviously* the Java stuff should go; there's practically no Free software in Java, other than what is used to write more (evidently proprietary) Java. The commercial packages always come with their own JVM and libraries anyway, because they only work with that exact version, propaganda notwithstanding. ("Write once, run hardly anywhere"?)
Similarly, *obviously* sendmail(?!) and probably exim should go, leaving postfix. Likewise, emacs, leaving xemacs. Likewise, most of the games, perhaps leaving solitaire. The old "games help people who are afraid of computers" argument lost all meaning long ago. Likewise, much of both Gnome *and* KDE, and Xfce. (Should Perl and all its baggage go? Don't tempt me!) Keep epiphany, abiword, and gnumeric, though; competition helps there.
Show me a list of the packages, and I'll bet I could get it down to three discs easily without anybody missing anything useful -- maybe even two. Bloat, thy name is Fedora (... and Suse, and MS, and Mac. There's more than enough blame to go around).
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 7:38 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Those are free software packages. And the "JVM" in question is probably gcj which was free last time I checked.
Anyway, as much as I dislike sendmail, dropping it would upset many long-time users of it. Besides, it won't save you that much space. And anyway, what about the competition?
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 25, 2005 0:49 UTC (Fri) by syndicate (guest, #27535) [Link]
It is my personal opinion that they should get over it and move on to a simplified and less-hackable MTA.
Apache Jakarta and related projects
Posted Feb 24, 2005 7:58 UTC (Thu) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link]
There is a lot of free Java at the Apache Software Foundation, and there are efforts under way to make sure it works with free java.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 8:04 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]
One principle could be that when there are more than one program doing the same thing with very similar feature set, leave the smaller. That way at least some "religious wars" would get a rational resolution. Eg. which is smaller, emacs or xemacs? This cannot however solve things like the emacs-vs-vi war, since someone used to emacs finds vi too hard to use, and vice versa.The biggest source of wasted space is obviously including both GNOME and KDE (and their respective versions of accessories): both are very large systems doing much the same thing. All other redundancy removal opportunities pale beside this. But this may be a emacs-vs-vi kind of thing: leaving one out would cause many users to leave Fedora.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 9:42 UTC (Thu) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]
*obviously* sendmail(?!) and probably exim should go, leaving postfix.Obvious to you, perhaps. From my perspective, you could easily lose exim and postfix, but sendmail must stay. Different people have different requirements, which is why the task of pruning things like this is so difficult. I could easily accept losing OO.o, for example -- abiword and gnumeric are better applications with more long term potential anyway. But many people would disagree with me.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 10:13 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Besides, MTAs are tiny, and changing away from them is really hard: they're just about the last packages one should consider dropping.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 17:49 UTC (Thu) by epithumia (subscriber, #23370) [Link]
They're canning Exim because it's so well documented that the documentation takes up too much space.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:53 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
I could easily accept losing OO.o, for example -- abiword and gnumeric are better applications with more long term potential anyway.I am also sorry to see abiword and gnumeric go, since both are stable and (relatively) lightweight alternatives to OO.o. My disappointment is tempered by the fact that I don't actually use Fedora Core anymore.
Perhaps OO.o should be on a disc of its own. It's huge, and either you use it or you don't.
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 25, 2005 0:54 UTC (Fri) by syndicate (guest, #27535) [Link]
<i>Obvious to you, perhaps. From my perspective, you could easily lose exim and postfix, but sendmail must stay.</i>
Pray tell, why would you still use sendmail?
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 20:00 UTC (Thu) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]
Likewise, emacs, leaving xemacsEasy now! :-)
Easy choices!
Posted Feb 24, 2005 22:34 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
Not sure how your reconcile eliminating "much of Gnome" but leaving in Epiphany.
In any case there is a browser that 99% of Fedora users are using, you know what it is and it should be included to the exclusion to the other browsers that people do not use.
Easy choices!
Posted Mar 1, 2005 15:17 UTC (Tue) by coolian (guest, #14818) [Link]
"Similarly, *obviously* sendmail(?!) and probably exim should go, leavingpostfix. Likewise, emacs, leaving xemacs. Likewise, most of the games,
perhaps leaving solitaire. The old "games help people who are afraid of
computers" argument lost all meaning long ago. Likewise, much of both
Gnome *and* KDE, and Xfce. (Should Perl and all its baggage go? Don't
tempt me!) Keep epiphany, abiword, and gnumeric, though; competition
helps there.
I use emacs, not xemacs. So do about 12 trillion people.
Games take up almost no room, so leave them, and yes, it DOES encourage
people to use...
Snore on you saying that about Gnome and KDE. Perl should stay. What are
you going to be doing with this box? Playing porn in FLuxbox?
"Show me a list of the packages, and I'll bet I could get it down to
three discs easily without anybody missing anything useful -- maybe even
two. Bloat, thy name is Fedora (... and Suse, and MS, and Mac. There's
more than enough blame to go around)."
You are boring.
Why are they living in a CD world?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 5:18 UTC (Thu) by Xman (subscriber, #10620) [Link]
CD technology is *very* old. Let magazine publishers ship a DVD with the whole distro on it if they want to save costs. Start thinking about making network installs. I don't know, to me it's scary that Fedora's is still so closely tied to a particular media.
Why are they living in a CD world?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 9:36 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]
There is a DVD version. There is also a CD version.
CDs are practically universal in a way that DVDs and high-speed internet access is not. In particular, there are too many DVD writers that write DVDs other DVD-ROMs can't read. And there are still a lot of computers out there without DVD drives (the only three applications I've found are DVD videos, magazine DVDs, and Linux distros: many computers don't need DVD drives). And there are way too many people without high-speed Net access.
And there are also concerns about disk space usage for the mirrors, and bandwidth for everyone.
Why are they living in a CD world?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:44 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
CD technology is *very* old.Or maybe you're just very young. ;-)
Reel-to-reel, now that's old. When I was a kid...
Why are they living in a CD world?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 15:19 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]
CD technology is *very* old.Maybe that is why it finally works reliably... I recall the earlier days of CD-R:s, when there was just about a 50% probability that disk burned in one model of drive was readable in another...
Abiword, Gnumeric, and all but one MTA seem like good candidates
Posted Feb 24, 2005 5:20 UTC (Thu) by Xman (subscriber, #10620) [Link]
The reality is that any user who wants the extras will install what they want from the extras. The only real issue with having something in extras than in the core would be that the user needs to know what they want. Well, I'd argue that unless the user knows what they want, they aren't going to get Abiword, Gnumeric or a different MTA anyway. That makes them easy candidates for extras.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 5:55 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Few people want to see a future where Linux is, at best, a platform for proprietary Java implementations.What other kind of Java implementation is there? Kaffe? Classpath? *snort* There's no such thing as free (libre) enterprise-quality Java. Linux/Windows/OSX/Solaris/BSD, every one of these is, at best, a platform for proprietary Java implementations. And apparently that's the way Sun wants it!
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 7:33 UTC (Thu) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]
<1995>There is no free, enterprise-quality Unix!
</1995>
Have to start somewhere, and people have to use it. 'enterprise-quality' free software (whatever that means) doesn't fall fully formed from the sky.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 9:38 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]
Red Hat wants to see this situation change, and is helping develop a Free Java stack (with no Sun code) good enough to run, say, Eclipse.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 13:05 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
What's not been explained, is why the desire not to expand to five CDs?
I'd like to see a restructuring so that there was a KDE disk and a Gnome disk - then although there would be five CDs, only someone wanting both desktops would need all five. Not sure of the package sizes, but it might also be a good idea to put all the development-related packages onto a developer disk. Folks who don't know what a compiler is would then need only three CDs.
Or - more radical - how about just one CD delivering enough functionality to run yum, plus an easy-to-use program that generates an appropriate Fedora / Fedora Extras yum.conf file for your site and/or maintains a local package cache. This should be usable pre-install as well as post-install. I rather like the idea of this being run-able on Windows as well (Windows shared folder, smbfs, local repository, no problem!) Installing a system without any net connection? Again no problem, the preinstaller should handle the creation of a locally customised set of CDs, or a full N-CD Fedora "distro" if you really want everything. Or shovelling the rpms onto a DVDR[W] or USB stick or firewire disk instead. Oh, and make the CD double as a standalone rescue CD, since there will be megabytes to spare for utilities to do things like disk repartitioning and rootkit exploit detection.
For further ideas, look at the Cygwin and MikTeX installers.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 14:04 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]
I would strongly encourage them to leave the Java stuff in, especially if it is compiled with gcj. Gcj is maturing and definitely adequate for a lot of applications. I am preparing to start a largish project, targetting gcj.
The more people are encouraged to use gcj, the sooner we will have a truly Free implementation of the Java language, and we will have 100% Free access to the Java applications out there.
And, having an included gcj-compiled Eclipse included would be very cool.
Other candidates for removal:
* Perhaps KOffice, for now. Does anyone really use it? Mind you, I think it's an important project, but the truth is, it's well behind even AbiWord/Gnumeric at this point.
* Internationalization takes an awful lot of space, and that alone could probably do it. I guess language-specific versions of Fedora are out of the question?
* Games, except leave kdegames and gnome-games
And something that really should be added:
* Scribus. I can't believe any distro that targets desktops would exclude that. I've used it for newsletters, and it rocks! Absolutely should be in everyone's desktop menu.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:04 UTC (Thu) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]
it's well behind even AbiWord/GnumericI think the "even" is a little unwarranted there, particularly wrt Gnumeric, which is by far the best open source spreadsheet available. Admittedly Abiword is a little behind OO.o, but it's orders of magnitude faster, and catching up fast in terms of features.
And something that really should be added: Scribus.
Agreed completely. That said, it's already there in Fedora Extras, but there does need to be some evangelism to encourage more places to mirror Extras. In the UK, you can get it from http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 20:29 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]
> I think the "even" is a little unwarranted there, particularly wrt Gnumeric
Correct, sorry. I use Gnumeric myself, prefer it to OOo Calc.
Heck, they maybe should have taken out OOo and left Abiword/gnumeric. Although Abiword did crash nastily on me a couple months ago, leaving my file in malformed XML that I had to fix by hand!
Looks now like the DID remove Abiword/Gnumeric, which seems like a mistake to me. Oh well.
Regarding Extras, I've never even been able to get YUM to use them correctly. Always get an error...
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 5:03 UTC (Fri) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]
What error does yum give you on extras? I use them all the time with yum b/c I have to make sure these things work a little bit. :)
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 15:40 UTC (Fri) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]
Setting up Repo: extrasCannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: extras
failure: repodata/repomd.xml from extras: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
And this is from a yum.conf that I took right out of ... uh, now I forget where! But it supposedly works for others.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 15:43 UTC (Fri) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]
Post the repository section for the extras set you have. I bet it's not right.or better yet - ask about this on fedora-extras-list.
GCC4?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 14:32 UTC (Thu) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]
Okay, I'm not up on GCC4 - how would it magically cut redundancy?
GCC4?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:07 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]
going with *just* gcc4 instead of both 3 and 4.
How would you shrink Fedora? -- drop yum
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:13 UTC (Thu) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855) [Link]
Drop yum in favor of apt, which already handles multiple sources. Problem solved.
How would you shrink Fedora? -- drop yum
Posted Feb 24, 2005 17:52 UTC (Thu) by epithumia (subscriber, #23370) [Link]
What does yum have to do with it? Sure, it supports multiple sources just fine, but that's not the issue.
How would you shrink Fedora? -- drop yum
Posted Feb 24, 2005 17:52 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]
so, umm, yum's handled multiple repositories since its first release.It's not an issue of yum supporting them or not. It's an issue of the installer supporting them.
How would you shrink Fedora? -- drop yum
Posted Feb 25, 2005 4:53 UTC (Fri) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855) [Link]
My mistake. I'm used to Debian, where the base includes apt and the first thing that happens after an install is an immediate upgrade. A network install is the norm.
Fedora could learn something from Debian
Posted Feb 24, 2005 16:31 UTC (Thu) by twiens (subscriber, #12274) [Link]
As a Debian and Ubuntu user, one of the main reasons I've not bothered to try Fedora is because it takes four CD's. To make more than one CD is just a waste of materials which I need to store just in case, but probably will never use again. Other distributions have a lot to learn from Debian and its derivatives. I've installed once and I can add, remove or upgrade packages, or upgrade the entire system without making any more disks. I can understand the frustration with the release times with Debian, but when in comes to packaging, Debian got it right.
Fedora could learn something from Debian
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:08 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]
FWIW, you can install Fedora over the network using just a small boot CD (or no CDs at all with pxeboot).
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:21 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
It really seems to me like the right thing is to get the infrastructure working for multiple sets, putting Red Hat only a decade behind Slackware on this feature. It certainly seems like Java should be its own CD, since people probably want either none of it or a lot of it, and magazines could decide whether they want to include it or not based on their reader base.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 18:36 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
When you see the fedora devel list on these topics, its painful to watch the "NO, NOT THAT!!!" response to any suggested package removal.
Epiphany? Come on, this browser has a userbase that you need a microscope to see. Easily removed. Now I bet I'll get ten response from Epiphany users (100% of the userbase) telling me "NO, NOT THAT!!!". Face it - even if you are an Epiphany user, you have to admit its *fringe* at best.
Abiword and Gnumeric? Easily removed. I say this as a person who removed OO and put these packages in its place. Still, for 99% of people, OO is where they want to be.
Come on folks! Its not like this software is being deleted from the universe...its a yum install away. There is no reason that FC4 cannot be a one CD release. If you are an adherent to some fringe piece of software, do you really care if it is on the CD release?? Why?? What does it matter?? Oh, you want to install all of your fringeware without hitting the network. I say if you don't have a network connection, to hell with you, you're out of luck.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 20:09 UTC (Thu) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]
I say if you don't have a network connection, to hell with you, you're out of luck.In Australia, if you live out of the big smoke, there is little alternative to dial up. Even installing the updates costs a lot of money :-)
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 24, 2005 21:30 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
>> In Australia, if you live out of the big smoke, there is little alternative to dial up
but thats still a network connection...
in any case i would not develop a major distro with you as a target market. 99% of fedora users most likely have a broadband connection, if not 99.99%.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 3:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
I have a 'broadband' connection that's 144k. I am paying $89/month for this line and cannot get a faster line (satellite may be a possibility, and _may_ be faster, but it's even more expensive)
by the way, I'm in the US, within easy commuting distance of downtown Los Angeles
now as it happens I'm not interested in Fedora anyway due to not liking several things RedHat has done (both technicaly and otherwise) but saying that you wouldn't produce a distro that I would have any ability to use at home just shrinks your potential userbase.
also for corporate use, many companies want a local, static installation source so that they can be very sure that the Nth machine they build is exactly like the first (no 'upgrades' slipping in on them) and as such many of them also won't be willing to do a network install
your potential userbase is getting smaller and smaller
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 6:00 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
>> but saying that you wouldn't produce a distro that I would have any ability to use at home just shrinks your potential userbase.
why would you not be able to use a one CD distro at home with a 144k connection? the average package size i suspect is under 5MB.
>> also for corporate use, many companies want a local, static installation source so that they can be very sure that the Nth machine they build is exactly like the first
speaking as someone who works at a company that must install a free OS on tens of thousands of rackmount servers, any company that is trying to do this by CD is retarded. typically installs like this are done by cloning an image, for which tools already exist and are network-based. seeing as most 1U boxes do not have CD drives, its not clear what purpose the disc serves other than as a Mountain Dew coaster.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Feb 25, 2005 15:36 UTC (Fri) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]
> I have a 'broadband' connection that's 144k. I am paying $89/month for this line and cannot get a faster line (satellite may be a possibility, and _may_ be faster, but it's even more expensive)
> by the way, I'm in the US, within easy commuting distance of downtown Los Angeles
Wow, I'm in Ecuador, paying $85/month for 128k. Didn't figure it got that bad in the States!
Nevertheless, it *is* adequate for keeping my Gentoo install up to date, and downloading ISOs when needed. Just takes a night and a day... :(
5 CDs
Posted Feb 24, 2005 20:36 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]
Ok, so they've apparently decided to go with 5 CDs, and they're *still* removing stuff? Why?
5 CDs
Posted Feb 25, 2005 22:01 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
And they are removing tiny and useful things like gv. That makes no sense.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Mar 2, 2005 3:07 UTC (Wed) by miallen (guest, #10195) [Link]
Fedora could take a cue from Ubuntu, and drop back to a single installation CD.+1
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Mar 3, 2005 13:22 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]
Gnumeric shouldn't go. There are still many instances where it will work while OO.o will fail.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Mar 4, 2005 3:33 UTC (Fri) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link]
I think its simply a matter of defining what is 'Core' and what is 'Extras'.
If you check out another popular operating system, its 'Core' is the base system, a web browser, web/ftp server, smtp client, instant messaging client, a couple of text editors, a bunch of admin tools, and a few little tidbits (couple of card games, simple image editor, etc)
Things like Office applications, development environment, alternative desktop environments, alternative applications to what comes with the Core, etc. are all extra.
Redhat have long wanted to duplicate (ie, play catch-up) with this operating system for years. This seems like something worth duplicating to improve their install methods.
How would you shrink Fedora?
Posted Mar 4, 2005 6:13 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]
Easy: just have the bare minimum needed for a network connection and apt-get or yum, and let the user install what they want. It could even be installed from 3.5" diskettes that way.I'm posting this from a machine running Ubuntu Warty, which was installed by "apt-get dist-upgrade" (over a PPP connection) from Debian Potato, which was installed from diskettes (the diskette images for these were also downloaded over a PPP connection).