Re: desktop media size

[Steven Chamberlain <steven@pyro.eu.org>]

Hi,

On Fri, 5 Sep 2014 16:58:32 -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> [...] we can make a gnome DVD which is also suitable size
> for a small USB key (4 gb), and there is not any point in having a
> single CD that doesn't fit all of gnome.

Unless it can be shown that enough of GNOME fits on CD-1, I agree it
would be not very useful unless you had a set of multiple CDs.  Users
sometimes didn't realise this until after they already downloaded and
tried to install from CD-1.  So it would make sense to offer GNOME only
as a DVD to avoid that confusion.  IMHO I guess that suits 80%+ of use
cases.

But I still hope there will be CD-ROM images, to satisfy alternative use
cases such as:
  * a smaller image for those constrained by bandwith, or
  * for ancient machines having a CD, but not DVD-ROM drive, or
  * having only a CD *writer*, not a DVD-RW drive or media at hand;
and from that disc, be able to install graphically (for maximum language
support), offline, a full desktop that is Internet-ready.

> While if the default desktop
> is xfce, we might be able to cram it all into one CD (does it still fit?).

I tried to get some figures on kfreebsd-amd64 (where XFCE is still the
default for now) using the tools from debian-cd.git, hacked to generate
a jessie CD-1 packagelist without a full mirror available.  If these
results are correct, it looks rather promising:
  * required stuff for CD1, no full desktop: 819 packages / 357 MiB
  * LXDE: 926 packages / 413 MiB
  * MATE: 954 packages / 468 MiB
  * XFCE: 946 packages / 433 MiB

Since LXDE is so small, and MATE and XFCE share many components, I think
it is even viable (at least on kfreebsd) to fit all three onto one CD!
(1049 packages / 507 MiB)

Since MATE images don't exist yet, perhaps an LXDE+MATE+XFCE CD-ROM
would be sufficient, and saves having to produce yet another image type?
On kfreebsd we may not care to have CD-1, 2, 3 etc. any more if we had
such a disc (but still having a DVD-1 for the default desktop, of course).

So, please could we create an LXDE+MATE+XFCE CD-ROM as part of the
cdimage.d.o weekly builds?  Do I need to provide patches / any more
information first?

Thanks,
Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org