boot.iso vs netinst.iso vs efiboot.img

[Chris Murphy]

On Jan 26, 2013, at 12:06 PM, John Reiser <jreiser at bitwagon.com> wrote:

> It's a matter of cost, which varies.  My out-of-pocket expense
> of burning "4x" DVD+RW (@ $0.24) has been about the same as using USB stick (@ $12.)
> I've had USB sticks wear out (bit errors, and not from too many writes)
> after some years, just as I have had DVD+RW fail after fewer than 100 rewrites.
> Sometimes wall-clock latency matters a lot to me; then top-quality "16x" DVD+R
> (@ $0.25) is best.

Besides USB being on all computers that run Fedora, and computers with optical drives shrinking; even 16x DVD is slower than molasses on a Minnesota Tuesday in the dead of winter. If time is money, and the choice is a matter of cost, then DVD is expensive.


> I have no problems producing USB sticks that are UEFI bootable [and they do work],
> because I read the documentation, which includes "man livecd-iso-to-disk",
> where the "--efi" parameter is explained.

I'm not talking about you, or me. The context from the outset was the Installation Guide, and regular users.

The Installation Guide does not mention man livecd-iso-to-disk, or any of its switches. And it would be *inappropriate*, to say the least, if the Installation Guide did refer the user to a man page.

> I do get persistent user data when I use the appropriate incantation.

Incantation is not in the Installation Guide.

> I get a re-format when I ask for it via --format.

That incantation is not in the Installation Guide.


> 
>>> The only hassles are when I switch between i386 and x86_64, or between
>>> UEFI and non-UEFI systems, both of which work better for me with a re-format.
> 
> <<snip>>
>> So I'm still left wondering why dd is last.
> 
> It's a wiki.  Put your $0.02 there, too.

OK thanks for scraping the bottom of the barrel.

boot.iso vs Fedora-18-x86_64-netinst.iso, presumably you prefer Fedora-18-x86_64-netinst.iso?

efiboot.img doesn't actually create bootable media, so presumably you prefer Fedora-18-x86_64-netinst.iso for that too?

And "Not available" for both UEFI install and minimal USB media, presumably you agree is incorrect, and should have Fedora-18-x86_64-DVD.iso and Fedora-18-x86_64-netinst.iso respectively.

Chris Murphy