Feedback wanted: Fedora Formulas

[Ian Malone]

On 9 January 2013 04:10, Brendan Jones <brendan.jones.it at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/08/2013 09:15 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>>
>> Greetings.
>>
>> I've whipped up the early ideas of a way to replace (most) spins with
>> something that is more generic and useful. I have signed up for a
>> fudcon session to brainstorm on this idea and see if it can be beaten
>> into a plan/schedule/feature, or if it's not going to work for whatever
>> reason.
>>
>> I have a very brainstormy/draft wiki page outlining the idea at:
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_formulas
>>
>> The short version:
>>
>> Setup a infrastructure/framework around a collection of ansible
>> playbooks to allow our users to simply download a formula for what they
>> want to do and have a curated setup made for them using Fedora
>> packages.
>>

> Coming from the Fedora Audio spin here's a few things that we would like to
> achieve that we can (mostly) from a kickstart:
>
>  - add default groups for the liveuser and logged in user
>  - add extra kernel boot parameters (threadirqs)
>  - custom desktop themes, favourites, and desktop settings (turning off
> desktop effects for example)
>  - default autostart apps
>
> The main problem we have with kickstarts at the moment is that there is no
> way (according to current packaging guidelines) to alter files owned by
> other packages. In the future we might like to choose different pulseaudio
> modules to load, ALSA config based on hardware etc. I don't see how this
> solution could do this if it were RPM based. If is based as some kind of
> overlay that alters files owned by other packages post install then there
> needs to be an obvious indication that this has occurred. I'd expect that
> whoever writes such a "formula" would have to get sign off from the owner of
> the package whose files it modifies.
>

Thanks, I was planning to reply from the Fedora Jam/Audio spin point
of view. Looking at Kevin's page this might actually be a way to do
some of the configuration work we were trying to do with the spin:

"Advantages / selling points
"Better than groups of packages, because you can change config files,
set things to start on boot, etc.
"Allows for interactive querying the user for what they want "

Down-sides, there'd no longer be a live-cd/dvd as a 'demo' system. You
could only try out the formula on an installed system. It looks though
like people are already suggesting overlaying a formula somehow to
create traditional live images (presumably still with the advantages
of being able to tweak configuration).

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk