Fedora 18 Beta to slip by two weeks, Beta release date is now Nov 27

[Peter Jones]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 05:33:05PM +0100, Matej Cepl wrote:
> On 2012-11-09, 14:30 GMT, David Cantrell wrote:
> > Just to cite similar complaints I see from time to time...  It 
> > irritates me that people think it's a problem that in 2012 they can't 
> > install in a VM that is allocated with 256M of RAM.  Allocate 
> > a reasonable amount, start over.  Your host system for multiple VMs in 
> > 2012 should not have 1G of memory.
> 
> Does it really irritate you? Those are strong words ... anyway.
> 
> I will risk your irritation, anger, maybe even rage (after all, their 
> impact is limited over IRC) and let me ask:
> 
> a) Why installer requires 2-4 times more memory than any other program 
> running on my computer (and the software you use on it could be a good 
> example of SOHO server)?

The installer's memory footprint is largely bound by the size of the
package set. So, for example, a yum "upgrade" will take more ram -
because there are effectively twice as many packages involved.

There may be ways to reduce how much of that needs to be kept in ram
at a time, but those are things for yum/rpmlib - they're not anaconda
changes.

> b) What awesome and breathtaking functionality I've got in anaconda 
> since EL-5 that I have to pay for it with this increase of hardware 
> requirements? (and let me remind you again about those 500 VMs)

Most of the "increase of hardware requirements" has been related to the
package set, rather than by anaconda getting significantly bigger. There
are some cases where we've grown the install images, and despite your
implication they tend to be directly related to additional
functionality. As a matter of fact, recently we've worked hard to make
the install image and working set of the installer *smaller*.

As for what functionality you've gotten since, say, the last time we had
a major UI change, here's a small sample just off the top of my head:

- BIOS-RAID boot
- encrypted boot
- uefi support on x86
- iscsi boot support
- multipath support
- using NetworkManager
  - wireless networking support
- ssh support in the installer
- "kickstart generation" mode
- jlk's new improved non-graphical mode
- 3TB disk support

There's a full(er) list of what our team has been doing here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features

> I don't think these question are in any way inappropriate or too 
> offensive, are they?

Actually, yeah, when you question our competence and the utility of what
we're doing, that is a bit offensive.

-- 
        Peter