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Re: dvd space issues



Hi,

On Mittwoch, 3. November 2010, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> I think we should evaluate the cost and benefits of doing this, and
> make a decision based on that knowledge.  

Right. I thought the benefits were obvious, just like you probably did, when 
you changed the profile question yesterday, to display the expert options by 
default. _That_ is a change everybody will notice and will put cognitive 
strain on everybody, as there are now more options...

I havent seen the evalutation for that.

And if the evaluation of this is happening right now, I wonder why we dont do 
the same for the DVD split: just do it and then see how it works out.

> What problems and advantages 
> for the users, administrators, distributors and developers do you see
> for the current approach and a splitted approach.  Perhaps something
> for a wiki page to gather the arguments for and against?

combined approach:
- useful for people installing both amd64+i386 edu machines
- less packages on the DVD, thus different installs for DVD+CD for everyone
- CD space issues, thus we install a kernel by default, which can only deal 
with a single core and 1GiB RAM maximum.

splitted DVDs
- less useful for people installing amd64, which according to 
popcon.skolelinux.org are 5% of our users
- more packages on the DVD, probably the same installation whether DVD or CD 
based
- 686 kernel on the DVD, supporting multiple CPU cores and more then 1 GiB RAM
- amd64 DVD still exists, it's just an extra download for those few who need 
it. 5% of our users suffer a bit, for 95% having real benefits.

To me it is+was obvious that the benefits outweight the costs.

Plus: AMD64 is a great architecture, but I fear that in real world school 
scenarios i386 is most often installed instead+exclusivly, because it makes 
using certain very common nonfree tools much easier: adobe flash, googleearth 
and icaclient are all only available for i386. So every school I know just 
ignores amd64 and uses i386. Having a fully contained i386 DVD would be the 
most useful for those.


cheers,
	Holger

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