Bug#570995: installation-report: need for a simpler hd-media creation
Package: installation-report
Severity: wishlist
Hello,
The current process for creating an Debian installer USB stick is the
following:
1. get boot.img.gz;
2. zcat it to the USB stick,
3. optional:
3.1. try to boot that,
3.2. fail,
3.3. read the installation manual;
4. get a proper CD image;
5. mount the USB stick;
6. put the CD image to the stick;
7. umount.
As a point of comparison, here is the corresponding process for creating
a Debian installer CD:
1. get the CD image;
2. burn it to the blank CD.
So, right now, creating a CD is simple and intuitive – for someone that
knows what an ISO image is –, and creating an USB stick is not. An
beginner that already knows practical computing basics would be able to
create a CD, not a USB stick. Even an already advanced user would have
problems for creating an USB stick, as it is not obvious that he has to
refer to the documentation for such a task.
I suggest to create complete default USB stick images, bundling the CD
image in them. That would allow a new, simpler and intuitive creation
process for users:
1. get hd-media.img.gz;
2. zcat it to the USB stick.
For people using alien systems, there would also be an interrest in
non-compressed images, writeable with tools such as Win32DiskImager [1].
References:
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Win32DiskImager
Regards,
--
Tanguy Ortolo
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.4
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (60, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32.2-xxxx-std-ipv6-32 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
installation-report depends on no packages.
Versions of packages installation-report recommends:
ii pciutils 1:3.0.0-6 Linux PCI Utilities
ii reportbug 3.48 reports bugs in the Debian distrib
installation-report suggests no packages.
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