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Re: Bits from the Debian CD team



Hi,

Just spontaneous thoughts - if you've already discussed this to death, don't 
bother to reply. [if you do: cc's appreciated.]

On Wednesday 15 October 2008 01.23:34 Steve McIntyre wrote:
>  * Full CD sets for all architectures:
>    + i386, amd64 and source will all be available for download as ISO,
>      torrent and jigdo
>    + for powerpc we will create ISOs/torrents for the first 8 CDs
>      only (with the rest as jigdo)
>    + for other architectures we'll have ISOs/torrents for the first 3
>      CDs only (rest as jigdo)

I wonder why not do just the first few CDs for all arches, and not do source 
CDs at all?  (jigdo would still be provided.)

 * source: the license should be satisfied by the DVD image and probably the 
archive + jigdo, too, and people actually working with the sources tend to 
be people who work (at least in parallel) with testing/unstable sources, 
too, so we can assume net access.

 * binary: a basic KDE/GNOME/XFCE desktop environment and standard server 
(LAMP + Python + PostgreSQL?) should be on the isos (first three?) and 
referring to DVD and/or net for the rest (and there's Jigdo, too)?  
Discussions with various people shows that they often download all the 
images they see (sometimes including source) and don't know that they can 
as easily download the software from the net.  (... I think that, in 
general, the businesscard/netinst images should be more prominently 
advertised...)  If we only could have stats for "downloaded but never used" 
images...

Yes, there are places with bad net connectivity, but I guess if they don't 
have DVD they might be convinced to use jigdo if they download at all, and 
don't buy / share CD copies from somewhere (remember: I don't propose not 
providing the CD set at all, I propose not offering the isos, but only 
jigdo.)


I've seen quite a few people complaining about the many images to download 
(they spoke of CD images) while
 * they didn't know what the businesscard/netinst images were.  (They could 
have used them)
 * they didn't realize that almost every new computer comes with a DVD 
writer (and that they had one.)

These are often novice users; unfortunately they get the impression 
that "more is better": a 30M/100M download of this Linux Debian thingy they 
want to try is certainly not as good as having 30 CDs, and they don't want 
to end up with a 'limited edition' by only downloading the small version.


cheers
- vbi

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