[indiana-discuss] Space considerations for the Live CD

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 07:04:17AM -0800, Ken Mays wrote:
> My RFE: I'd like to request in this pipeline thread:
> 1. Nevada Build 80+ would be more educational for academia. ZFS fixes and multicore concerns.
> 
> 2. Space: 7-Zip and LZMA compression.
> 
> Q. Why Live CD and not Live-DVD?
> A. Internationally, a few years ago most end-users didn't have the latest laptops/notebooks with DVD drives. Also, some students can't afford a laptop/notebook versus an old desktop computer maybe obtained through academia computer liquidations. A more realistic reason is that some users have old pre-Y2003 desktop computers with 256-512MB of memory and CD drives that work just fine. DVD drives were still at a premium just 2-3 few years ago and CD-record for DVD usage and standardization across UNIX OSes was another concern.
> The other reason is network bandwidth and download concerns froman international perspective. Some software engineers and system admins are still using 33K-56K dial up modems at their homes (affordability issue or lack of DSL in their area).
> 
> Remember this comment: "At least 256 MB of RAM ...requires at least 4 GB of disk space." 
> 
> Also of note: Getting an 8.5GB DVD drive was like obtaining a Ferrari, from a student perspective, just a few years ago.
> 
> The current reason I'll note is just that Indiana is getting off the ground and it is just easier starting small with a basic Live CD and getting it distributed out to engineers/users anywhere in the world over the internet, through their local FTP/HTTP mirrors, with access to a larger software repository for more software  packages. Debian has DVDs for some hardware platforms, but not everyone has time to download those DVDs or even maintain all the packages on them for QA and stability. Also, copying those DVD images to localized FTP/HTTP mirrors is a COSTLY venture for most small business ISPs.
> 
> - Ken Mays
> --
> 
> This message posted from opensolaris.org
> 
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NOTE - The Debian Project, Debian infrastructure and Debian package 
maintainers - " Debian" for short _does_ have time to maintain 
all the packages in Debian - for each of 11 architectures and 15-20 000 
packages per architecture. 

It also maintains one old stable system, one current stable system
one "testing" system and one "unstable" system archive concurrently. 
Thats about 310GB of code.

The DVDs and 20+ CDs per architecture just represent the 
15-20,00 packages distilled to CD. You don't need them if you have 
access to the 'Net. 

Installing on virtually any Debian platform is a choice 
betweeen a relatively small .iso which includes the full base 
system (typically 130 - 160MB) or a tiny .iso (typically 35MB) 
which has enough to boot a kernel and bootstrap networking to allow download 
of the rest from the 'Net.

Please don't spread misapprehensions about Debian :)

Andy