f8 desktop livecd

Jeremy Katz katzj at redhat.com
Tue Aug 7 18:07:38 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 14:00 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> I mean, just take a look at the delta between the F6 and F7 live CD:
> Notable differences
[some snipping]
>  - FC6 live CD included more, uh, apps with a desktop focus that
>    were not in the F7 live CD (due to lack of disc space)
>    - Beagle, F-Spot, Inkscape, VPN tools (vpnc, openvpn)

FWIW, the vast majority of your list here wasn't due to space.  Beagle
was because we disabled beagle _in general_ for the desktop[1].  f-spot
just isn't the default photo app -- if it should be, let's swap it and
gthumb in comps.  VPN tools was just an omission as I thought I had
fixed it but apparently I suck ;-)

Inkscape is really the only one that was driven off purely from a space
perspective.

[snip]
> So we tell everyone to use "Fedora Desktop" instead. What's missing here
> is the upgrade story and our current story is "use anaconda to upgrade"
> which I think is pretty lame. We're asking people to go to d.fp.org
> (which already sucks) and make them download an ISO.

A lot of the work for improving this is based on one of the fedora-devel
threads is underway.  Basically, an app you can run to download the
packages and set everything up to reboot you into the installer to do
the actual upgrade.  Need to do a little bit more experimentation to
prove things out, but it's looking somewhat promising.  (Note to self:
need to do the feature write-up for it).  Once we've had it working for
a release or so, wiring in a "hey, there's a new version available"
thing pop up is definitely doable. 

[more snipping]
> I have a lot of thoughts about technical details and what set of
> packages should (and shouldn't) go on the Fedora Desktop Live CD. For
> example, I mean, a desktop system clearly don't need junk like
> system-config-keyboard or system-config-language since we don't care
> about the console. 

Actually, for these, the bigger problem is that some of our tools (like
the installer) depends on them being there as we decided to actually
make things modular and reuse components.  Damned when we do, damned
when we don't.  Can probably do something to make those requirements
fall back to just "figuring things out" when they're not there and not
doing the questions.  At the same time, all of system-config-* is < 15
megs.  And once you take out the stuff not on the livecd (bind, network
can go once NetworkManager can configure dial-up, kickstart,
soundcard, ..) we're talking about 3 megs.  So maybe not a big win
although if someone wants to work on the anaconda patch, I'd be glad to
review it and get it committed.  

Jeremy

[1] Note, beagle has other annoying characteristics when being used with
the liveCD in that it starts indexing the world chewing up memory for
its indices which then have to be redone all the time.  Also, lots of CD
seeking...




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