F-13-Beta Live images are > 700Mib

[Colin Walters]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 7:16 AM, James Laska <jlaska at redhat.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> The Live images created for F-13-Beta-TC1 desktop are over 700 Mib.
> This means they no longer fit on a CD image.  I've read several posts
> noting the intent to have larger desktop live images to offer more
> software on the image.  I'm just looking to confirm that this is an
> intended behavior so we can update our test case [1].
>
> Is this due to the DesktopLiveImageTarget [2] feature that I see in the
> upcoming release notes [3]?

Ok so we have to come to some sort of clear final decision here, and
I'd appreciate input from stakeholders.  Let me outline the options as
they stand at this very moment, with some commentary on engineering
time that could be spent to fix issues with each one.

o Have two images
  - Advantages:
    * If you have a USB key, the experience is improved since it
includes OpenOffice.
  - Disadvantages:
    * Website is more confusing
    * Space/QA concerns
  - Engineering time could be spent on:
    * Website?

o Go back to 700MB image
  - Advantages:
    * Was previous status quo, is well understood
    * Honestly, it's a question in my mind for how many people it's
too onerous to download OpenOffice after they install if they actually
use it
  - Disadvantages:
    * Not quite the full experience, and has the drawback of the
removal of bits like NFS
  - Engineering time could be spent on:
    * Adding some code to install @gnome-desktop @office afterwards
via e.g. PackageKit UI
    * Adding "stub" .desktop files to image which install OpenOffice on demand

o Only use ~1G image
  - Advantages:
    * No website confusion
    * It's pretty complete, includes OpenOffice and NFS for example
  - Disadvantages:
    * We haven't shipped a 1G image before and the risks are not well quantified
    * If someone wants a CD, then they'd be fairly confused why the
desktop looks really different and ships a different web browser, etc.