Re: Official CDROM
On Wed, Jun 10, 1998 at 03:19:00PM +0200, joost@pc47.mpn.cp.philips.com wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Andreas Jellinghaus wrote:
>
> > a) 5 cd set : source, misc, and 3 binary cds.
> > misc + binary will be enought for every architecture, so
> > distributors can sell cd sets of 2 cds (or 3 with source).
> > b) 4 cd set : highly integrated.
> > it will not be possible to split the m68k or alpha part of,
> > but this will save us one cdrom.
>
> I tend to favor the "highly integrated multi cd" solution. Reasons:
I tend to prefer the 5 cd set exaclty for reasons you gave here :)
> - Most of the overhead for cd vendors goes into things like order
> registration, postage and packing. The cost of a couple of silver discs
> is quite negligable. You can put up to 6 cd's in a single jewelbox.
So why don't put 5 disk that are better organized? After all 5 is
only 4 + 1.
> - The amount of debian-{alpha,mk68,sparc,mips,arm,what-next}-only cd sets
> that vendors expect to ship will probably not be high at this moment.
> This might cause them to not ship the other architectures or put a much
> higher price tag on those cd sets. Even if the alternative sets are
> made by the ftp.cdrom.coms, Infomagics and whoever else forwards
> their stuff into the retail channels, the cd sets still have to make it
> to the individual "main street" pc- and bookshop's shelfs.
With the 5 cd set they can choose. And smaller redistributors that simply
burn gold cds (as I do in italy, just 20 to 40 cds) can choose to exclude
a couple of them the from the distribution.
> - Clearly showing support for many architectures is good Debian exposure.
And having 1 cd for every arch is much better (someone can think that
other archs are not well done if you mix things on multiple cd).
> - If I had a cd with Debian on it for an architecture that I don't
> have at home, but of which I knew that there is such a machine at work
> or school or whereever I can get to it, I will attempt to convince the
> owner/administrator to try Debian.
True. I will buy the 5cd set.
> <MODE start-rant-away-into-the-blue>
>
> Instead of the two-cd's-without-source, I'd rather see a special
> lightweight _single_ Debian cd for i386 that carries:
>
> - Ten different alternative kernels to boot off, suiting various hardware
> needs. This would be a big improvement over the current situation,
> where people complain that RedHat/Slackware's floppy does boot and
> Debian's does not.
>
> - Only small parts of the main distribution and full source of the
> included binaries. The devel stuff needed to rebuild all those sources
> should be included in the binary part of course. Kernel source should
> also be included.
>
> - A decent on-line documentation tree that can be read with a webbrowser
> on a Windoze computer before actually attempting to install Debian.
>
> - A tiny live-filesystem on the cd, think of no more than 50 to 100
> megabytes.
>
> - Has to be just enough to have a "skinny standard" linux running, to
> show your friends (or yourself) that it runs on your pc before going
> ahead and take repartitioning any harddisks.
> A small step before the big leap.
>
> - Uses ramdisks to mount / and eg. /home on or alternatively:
> * Can use parts of a dos filesystem to put umsdos filesystems on.
> A dos filesystem can also hold a swapfile.
> * Can also be installed entirely to a umsdos filesystem on your
> dos filesystem.
> The latter options would make it possible to try it a couple of times,
> keeping basic network setup and other required configuration like
> modules and passwords stored.
>
> - Provides an excellent base system for installation! It has mc, emacs,
> vi, ae, gcc, lynx, useful network clients and, depending on the size
> that's available, a small webserver. Everybody can find his/her
> favorite "essentials" on it.
>
> - Is also the ultimate rescue disk.
>
> A cd like this, with approximately 250 meg binaries, 250 meg sources, 40
> meg documentation, 10 meg kernels and a 100 meg live filesystem would
> make an excellent "cover cd" for computer magazines.
>
> Any takers? I'd love to work with some people on a little project to have
> this working for 2.1.
Mmmhh. I am woking on that. What I dream is a bootable/livefs cdrom
that lets you play a little bit with linux and then guides you
through the installation process from the hd (re)partinioning to
the X11 configuration.
Anyone knows about a FAT32 defrag program that runs under linux?
Anyone ever tried to compile FIPS under linux? Ideas?
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