Hi Vojtech,
I don't have an answer for your questions, so I have copied the
Release Engineering team who can give you the answers you need. I love
this spin idea, and am happy to help in whatever way I can.
Thanks,
BC
On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 11:59 AM Vojtech Polasek <vpolasek(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hello Ben,
my name is Vojta and I am a blind software engineer working for RH in
Brno, Czech Republic. I am working in platform security, but this is not
that important for this mail.
Me and several other friends from RH are working on a special Linux
distribution for blind and visually impaired users. This distribution is
currently based on Fedora. We would like to make a spin from it. But I
have a special question, see below.
I know that if I apply for a spin, the lab infrastructure can create ISO
live images from kickstarts. That is nice. But...
While demonstrating our distro to potential users, we chose a bit
different way than others. Instead of live images shipped on USB drives,
we chose to create a full installation of the system and place it on the
USB drive. This has several benefits compared to live images:
- changes made by users are persistent and not limited to 4 Gb
- it is possible to partition the USB drive and create an additional
partition formatted as Exfat for transfering data between Linux and
non-Linux world
- users can come to whatever computer and boot the system with their
personal configuration, data, software...
- users can have almost the same experience as if the system was
installed on their primary hard drive
It can have its drawbacks but we used this approach already two times
while presenting our "spin" on special workshops and we think it worked
very well.
I am not against live images and if we create a Fedora spin, we will
definitely offer them as well. But I believe the described alternative
approach has its benefits-
The whole process is described here:
https://github.com/vojtapolasek/Fegora
Currently we use a VM to perform an automated kickstart installation and
then we transfer the raw image on an USB drive.
My question now is: could the infrastructure used for production of
Fedora spins be used to create not only live images but also our custom
raw disk images? If not, could we at least use those resources to store
such images?
Feel free to ask if you need further clarifications etc.
Best regards,
Vojta
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis