Re: How should we evaluate user applications?
[Olivier Vitrat]
> hi,
> maybe I'm missing something here, but is there a reason why we can't
> add a second DVD to Debian Edu Squeeze ?
There are several reasons, both practical and theoretical, why
demanding admins installing from DVD to use several images is a bad
idea. This seem to be a question that come up every now and then when
the ISOs fill up, I guess we should put its answer somewhere on the
wiki. :/ Do not have time to provide all the reasons, so here is a
quick rundown of the ones I remember.
Adding a second DVD will not reduce the congintive strain and
confusion caused by installing several applications doing the same
thing in the default installation. This problem should be solved
first, instead of spending time getting a two-DVD installation
working. And I would rather go for single-architecture DVDs (we
currently have i386/amd64 DVD) instead of expecting admins to change
DVDs halfway throught the installation.
Requiring serveral disk almost double the distribution cost of the
physical media.
Requiring several disks doubles the chance of ending up with only half
the required disks when needing to install Debian Edu.
In Lenny, debian-installer could not handle several disks used during
installation. Suspect this is solved in Squeeze, but did not test.
Getting the installation to be efficient regarding human time required
to switch DVDs will be very hard, as we need to ensure that every
package needed in the first half of the installation is on the first
DVD, and the other half is on the second DVD. We do not want the
admin having to switch DVDs several times during installation.
Happy hacking,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen
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