Santiago Garcia Mantinan wrote:
> We have a problem with the first cd as we don't even have any xserver there,
> so I'm trying to go through that and as I don't have much experience with
> deiban-cd code myself, I'll try to comment here things that look weird to me
> or that I think should be changed.
>
> The target should be to have really the packages we and our users want on
> the first cd, for example, Joey Hess wanted the desktop task to be
> available, but this task depends on both x-window-system-core, kde and
> gnome. Testing on a newly base installed bachine, tells me that installing
> desktop task needs to download 353 MB, and we know that our netinst cds
> (debian installer + base) is already 110 MB in size, adding them would mean
> 465 megs, leaving almost 200 megs free for other stuff, not bad at all, but
> are this real numbers for our dear debian-cd? I don't think so.
>
> The thing is that on the netinst cds we just have the base stuff, but on
> full cds we have all the standard system, and also we add recommends and
> suggests, and also that we have a forcd1 task that adds stuff to cd1 and
> doesn't add the packages needed for the desktop task.
>
> I have done some tests and we can have on our first cd both
> x-window-system-core, kde-core and gnome-core as well as all the stuff we
> add in forcd1 task, this is using normal options, adding recommends and
> suggests. Note that I added -core versions of kde and gnome, and not the
> full kde and gnome, which wouldn't fit. I don't know however if this would
> give good contents for this cd.
I don't know if kde-core and gnome-core are sufficient to get a working
kde and gnome environment. I doubt it, especially for KDE, but if they
are I can make tasksel install them, and pull in the full kde and gnome
only if it's available. KDE and GNOME people, please let us know.
> Trying to add full kde and gnome (not the -core stuff) resulted on not
> fitting on the first cd, not even if I choose just kde or gnome and not
> both. This is however adding recommends and suggests.
Have you or anyone else been able to check if the full kde and gnome
fit w/o recommends and suggests included? If apt wants 353 mb for the
desktop task as you say, then it seems it should fit on a CD with some
room to spare for other things. But:
> I've done some different tests, this are some numbers I got from them:
>
> Normal build (with recommends and suggests):
> Standard system already takes 481498058 bytes on the first CD.
Maybe part of the problem is that the standard system takes 459 MB on
the CD. I've had problems in this area with preparing debian-edu CDs as
well; once the standard system is included, there is just not much space
left on the CD for interesting stuff.
I didn't think standard was supposed to be so big. In a clean chroot, if
I do a tasksel -irsn (install important, required, standard only), it
downloads 52 mb. There are less than 100 mb used for the base system on
a netinst CD. So what are the other 300+ mb that is included in "standard"?
> Trying to add x-window-system-core...
> $cd_size = 524856070, $size = 25958248
> Trying to add gnome-core...
> $cd_size = 550814318, $size = 81092036
> Trying to add kde-core...
> $cd_size = 631906354, $size = 10605184
>
> Modified build (without recommends and suggests):
> Standard system already takes 424595680 bytes on the first CD.
> Trying to add x-window-system-core...
> $cd_size = 500982974, $size = 25958248
> Trying to add gnome-core...
> $cd_size = 526941222, $size = 34316326
> Trying to add kde-core...
> $cd_size = 561257548, $size = 44965402
>
> As you can see, removing recommends and suggests get's us 36 megs of space
> on the first cd. The increment in size on adding kde-core to the modified
> build with respect to the normal build, is caused because in a normal build
> gnome's suggests and recommends pull a lot of thing on which kde depends,
> like qt.
Why do we include recommends and suggests on the CD? It doesn't seem
like the best use of limited space.
> Other numbers taken from a freshly installed base from sarge:
>
> installing x-window-system-core gnome and kde (task desktop) downloads 353 MB
> installing x-window-system-core will download 43 MB
> installing x-window-system-core + gnome will download 197 MB
> installing x-window-system-core + kde will download 215 MB
Well, that kind of raises the question: Maybe it's time to put just one
of KDE or GNOME on the first CD. How would we make such a decision though?
I'm not interested in large flamewars.
> Well, that is the data I've got, maybe it is not too usefull, I know this,
> but it is all I could get in this last days (not too much free time lately
> and less time in the future).
>
> I'd like you to express your opinion on how we should build, what we should
> have on forcd1 task, if we should build with or without recommends and
> suggests (this doesn't mean that recommended and sugested packages aren't
> put on the cds, just that we don't try to pull them in with the package that
> suggests them, so they are added later), ...
What do we want our CDs to be, and how are they intended to be used for
sarge? In the past, the first CD is all that has been widely sold/given
away, and it has included enough to get a useful desktop system and do a
few other tasks on the CD without networking. I see some sentiment that
CDs are increasingly too small to do that, and we have DVDs, so maybe
it's not worth Debian's time to do it[1]. Maybe our CDs are just a way
to get an entire Debian release by mail, but how many people do that,
let alone feeding 13 or more CDs into apt to actually use them all?
Maybe our CDs are just a way to get onto the network and install the
rest of Debian -- the sarge netinst CDs sidestep the size issues and
have been quite popular at doing this, and we could release with no full
CDs at all, or with them very de-emphasised as they are now. I'm not
asking retorically what we want sarge CDs to be for; I really don't
know.
If the purpose of the first binary CD is still partly to be a useful
offline system, then the best packages to try to put on it is a desktop
system. Or a bundle of some really rocking games. Other stuff is too
special purpose, or really needs the system to be online. OTOH, live CDs
are popular now, maybe a live CD that can also install debian with d-i
would be more useful.
I mentioned debian-edu earlier, and one thing I'm sure of is that custom
debian distributions are important right now, and even if we don't have
the agreement, vision, or drive to do something useful with CD #1, the
CDDs do, and debian-cd could stand to make life easier for CDD creators.
Having an easy way to get a CD with the core of Debian and no more so
the CDD packages can be added on top of that without needing to worry
too much about space would be a BIG help in this area.
--
see shy jo
[1] I know that Several Debian-derived distros do fit or are in the process
of fitting a useful sarge desktop onto a standard CD.
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