I want more CDs in the distribution

[Karel Zak]

On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 12:04 -0800, Daryll Strauss wrote:
> Here's a counter idea for people to chew on. I'd like to see more CDs
> in the distribution, I'd just like them all to be less full.
>
> DISADVANTAGES:
>    More files to download - I don't think this is an issue
>    More CDs required for the full distribution - Media costs are small
> and you can put it all on one DVD if you really care. This probaby is
> an issue for publishers.
>    More disk swapping to install everything - That's a real drawback,
> but since you have to swap disks anyway I'm not sure it's a big deal.
>    More work categorizing end user usage and arguing over which
> packages are in which category. - yes :)
>    Users need to figure out which disks to download.

You forgot important things:

- We need more package maintainers for this extra work
- and more time for development
- and more time for testing

I think Debian has experience with huge number of packages. The cost of
this work is huge too.

I think one possible solution is release the Extras branch less often
than the Core branch. It means do something like minor releases of the
core branch and the major release (that will include new Extras
release).

FC5.0  
  - Core+Extras
FC5.1  
  - Core (with new features, but still compatible with actual Extras)
FC5.2
  - Core (with new features, but still compatible with actual Extras)
FC6.0  
  - Core+Extras
...

	Karel

-- 
Karel Zak <kzak at redhat.com>