[Ambassadors] EMEA Media, All desktop spins on one disc, All full install DVDs on one disc
Christoph Wickert
christoph.wickert at googlemail.com
Wed Oct 13 19:13:45 UTC 2010
Am Mittwoch, den 13.10.2010, 17:17 +0200 schrieb Jukka Palander:
> Hi, My comments in between.
>
> On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 16:32 +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch, den 13.10.2010, 14:54 +0200 schrieb Jukka Palander:
> > > On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 12:17 +0200, Sascha Thomas Spreitzer wrote:
> > > > Dear freedorians,
> > > >
> > > > we were researching the technical possibility of putting more then one
> > > > live cd on one disc.
> > >
> > > clip, clip...
> > >
> > > OK. I understand that we are still keeping old live CDs and Installation
> > > DVDs in place. Anyhow my thoughts are that:
> > >
> > > 1) dual layer discs are expensive
> >
> > Not for us in production. One dual layer DVD can replace different CDs,
> > thus we save money.
>
> Not for the production, but people tend to copy Fedora for their friends
> (I do hope) so it is not good for them and therefore it is not good for
> spreading Fedora out! We are reducing our "market" if we make a
> distribution which is hard to copy "on the spot". ->Most of the people
> do not have dual layer discs at home!
Again, this is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about
media for events. If people want to download and burn something for
their friends, they are free to decide what to download and to burn.
They wont just download a big image 'by accident' if they don't want it.
> > > 2) dual layer discs are much more unreliable
> >
> > I hear that for the first time.
>
> They are some about twice as much unreliable than normal single layered
> discs due the double capacity! Easy! Also they get affected much easily
> by the "bad" reader. (ie. disc drive when burning was horizontally
> installed and reproducing drive is in vertical position).
You have any prove for your claim?
> > > 3) dual layer discs does not work on every DVD-reader (especially old
> > > computers)
> >
> > If someone really has a DVD drive that cannot do dual layer, it is
> > likely that his machine will not run Fedora anyway. We already have high
> > hardware requirements. I'm not saying they are good, I just say that I
> > doubt we are excluding more people from using Fedora.
>
> High hardware requirements?
>
> Why on earth we say in the F13 installation disc back-cover the
> following:
>
> "Minimum Requirements:
> 400MHz Pentium II or better with 384 MB RAM"
>
> This does not sound "high spec" to me!
Indeed, but this is not the reality and only applies for the install
DVD. The live media require much more RAM as you need to load the image
into the memory.
Most our users use way better devices. According to smolt, only 0,9% of
our users have systems with less than 512 Mhz CPU. This means that at an
event there is maybe 1 out of 100 people who cannot use the media we
offer. You really think this is worth all the drawbacks?
> > > 4) dual layer discs are slower to read
> >
> > According to the media company, but nobody has seen numbers.
>
> They "just must be" because the splitted laser ray and processing. How
> much slower - I do not know.
We are talking about big ISO images here, so seeking should not be
crucial.
> > > 1) Do we (Fedora) get "bad-will" from it when people feel that;
> > > -it is so big to download
> > > -it is not working on my computer after (a long) download
> > > -disk is damaged too easily etc.
> >
> > Who says they are more susceptible?
>
> I do say so because I work with the people and I hear comments from
> them.
As others already pointed out this may apply to self burned discs but
not to pressed media.
> > > -it is so huge package (others are much smaller)
> >
> > We are not talking about media for download here, we are talking about
> > physical media. If the files are available for download too, they are
> > just an additional offer but not a replacement for other images.
>
> Yap. I did point this out in the beginning of the first mail. Anyhow
> "people out there" may not understand this and they may start demanding
> the complete package (without knowing if it is working on their computer
> or not).
If people do not know what will work they are in trouble anyway. How
would they know if they are to download 32 or 64 bits?
> > > 2) How does this affect to Freemedia project?
> >
> > Not at all. We are not talking about free media here, these media are
> > for marketing purposes only. They are distributed by ambassadors on
> > events, but not through the free media program.
>
> How do we avoid "people out there" asking for this kind of disc?
> If it exists they start to question "why I cannot have one"?
By simply not offering them. Remember, free media is a volunteer afford
and nobody can expect a volunteer to do as he likes. Some of our free
media contributors do dual layer discs, so where is the problem?
> > > I do not know. My quick opinion is that maybe we should make what the
> > > demand is
> >
> > What is the demand? It's hard to predict that before an event. One
> > problem we are facing ATM is that we have media left all over Europe,
> > but one only has Gnome while somebody else has KDE.
> >
> > Same goes for i386 vs. x86_64. The audience on events differs a lot,
> > e.g. in Fosdem people asked for 64bit live media all the time (which we
> > did not produce), on CLT everybody wanted 32bit.
>
> Demand is (for me) that what people asks me to hand out.
Right, and you cannot know that in advance. With a one size fits all
image it will be much easier for us on events.
> > > and at least for me it is to be able to hand out an
> > > installation DVD which is working for both i686 and 64bit (because
> > > people do not know which one they are using) but only have Gnome.
> > >
> > > Does this kind of compilation fit into the one normal single layer DVD?
> >
> > If we only do one desktop, say GNOME, it's definitely possible to get
> > everything on one single layer DVD. If not, we will have to leave out
> > some packages that are now on the install DVD. So in the end we might
> > end up with something that is like the GNOME spin and has no advantage
> > over the current images.
>
> Solution was proposed by Scott. Leave development tools out from the
> desktop edition. And instead make office tools more complete.
Scott is talking about a single image not a collection. He only can save
so much space because is is just doing *one* version, but then you have
no choice. You have to install exactly this version and cannot chose
wether to do GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE or Moblin. You will be forced to
install *everything*.
> > > Requests for other desktops (KDE and XCFE) are quite small, but this is
> > > my opinion only based on the queries I have received.
> >
> > Indeed, but this is a corner case where we could save a lot of money
> > with the multi desktop live DVD because the small batches (Xfce, LXDE,
> > Moblin) are expensive to produce.
>
> You are right. Saving money is good thing but it must not be done if we
> see people (in general) seeing that "we are worsening things".
>
> I am only saying we shouldn't do this, I am only saying that "think
> first - do after". -just what we are doing now! :-)
I think the advantages outweigh the potential drawback by far. Summing
it up:
For the live media:
* We don't have care about 32 or 64 bit any longer
* We don't have to care for desktops any longer
* = It will make evens much easier.
For the install media:
* Install media will not work ATM due to limitations of anaconda.
* By keeping 32 and 64 bits on separate single layer DVD, we still
provide something for non-dual layer capable devices.
The only drawback I see: We are not offering CDs any longer, only DVD
media. I don't consider this a blocker though.
Regards,
Christoph
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