How this bug can come out of its dead-end? Any suggestions?!

[John Reiser]

On 05/08/2010 06:31 AM, drago01 wrote:
> The installation DVD is for installing the system that's it.

That's only part of it.  There's around 4GB of data, and more than a few
persons would like to use via PackageKit after the initial install, too.
I frequently install just the "Internet Desktop", then add other packages
days or weeks later.

> Installing software from it afterwards is pointless anyway as updates
> might cause dep conflicts and or provide newer/fixed versions anyway.

Updated media are produced by others.  For instance, Fedora Unity produced
an updated DVD of Fedora 12 as of March 3:  http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins
Using pungi I generate an updated DVD in about half an hour (after
updating my cache of the .rpm.)

In many many second- and third-world places outside of larger cities,
high-speed internet is only a dream.  In the US there are several million
persons whose fastest internet connection is a 53 Kbit/second dialup
modem, and tens of millions with only 1.5 Mbit/second DSL.  A physical
DVD via postal mail (or borrowed from a neighbor) is much faster,
particularly when something doesn't work correctly the first time.


Practical progress: Looking at the bug
   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435625 (installation
   media support in PackageKit)
it seems to me that much of the angst involves split media (mounting
multiple CDs.)  Why not implement major partial progress by requiring
that a single platter [only] be mounted before invoking PackageKit?
Then a DVD or the correct CD (typically one of five or six) succeeds,
otherwise you get told which platter to mount before trying again
(perhaps accumulating .rpms in a temporary on-disk repo, etc.)
This is not a slick-and-shiny-100% solution, but it can work.

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