[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?



"Steffen Möller" <steffen_moeller@gmx.de> writes:

> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>> Datum: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:41:15 +0200
>> Von: Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>
>> An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
>> Betreff: Re: Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?
>
>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 09:59:45PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
>> wrote:
>> > On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
>> > > On ven., 2012-08-10 at 14:01 +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
>> > > > some binary software forced me into downloading a RedHat flavour, so
>> I
>> > > > went for Fedora. I found it very easy to get an ISO. I mean - very
>> very
>> > > > very easy. My suggestion is to copy that for our now pending release
>> or
>> > > > to make it even easier - not that I would know how to do that. They
>> even
>> > > > auto-picked a good mirror for me.
>> > > > 
>> > > > http://fedoraproject.org
>> > > > 
>> > > What about the direct link on top right of http://www.debian.org ?
>> > 
>> > Whatever the reason, a lot of people seems to miss that "Download" box.
>> > I mean it.
>> 
>> Yeah, I did as well, when I last looked at it.
>
> This thread pointed me to it. The "Getting Debian" is what jumped at
> me. And I had a colleague next to me whom I wanted to stop from
> installing Ubuntu by downloading the iso quickly since he was already
> burning Ubuntu's. One is guided to the Ubuntu ISOs more easily than
> with Debian, too, just more nerve-wrecking than with Fedora because of
> the extra clicks. The download link did not allow to change to Wheezy,
> which these days might possibly be worthwhile to announce a bit more.

This reminds me:

While contrasting with Ubuntu, there is also the issue of Debian Live
CDs which are close to impossible to find, and if you eventually manage
to find them, turn out to be too big to fit on a CD.

Since I've mentioned this to a few people in person, who then said "Oh,
that's easy, you just ..." and eventually admitted that I'm right, I'll
walk you through the process in order to save you all the effort of
trying it yourselves.

So, you stick "Debian Live" into your favourite search engine
(duckduckgo.com in my case).

and it takes you to http://live.debian.net/, a nice friendly looking
site, with encouragingly cute icons -- clearly this is going to be easy,
right?

And the second link on the page is:  Download releases: stable
so let's try that...

Hmm, directories:

[DIR] amd64/                  10-Apr-2012 14:16    -   
[DIR] i386/                   10-Apr-2012 14:18    -   
[DIR] source/                 29-Jan-2012 15:43    -   

well let's pretend that newbies are going to know that their Intel Core
processor needs amd64, and click that...

Another directory:

[DIR] bt-hdd/                        10-Apr-2012 14:17    -   
[DIR] bt-hybrid/                     10-Apr-2012 14:16    -   
[DIR] iso-hybrid/                    10-Apr-2012 14:16    -   
[DIR] net/                           07-Apr-2012 08:37    -   
[DIR] usb-hdd/                       10-Apr-2012 14:17    -   
[DIR] web/                           07-Apr-2012 08:54    -

I guess there's a vague chance that the "iso" bit of "iso-hybrid" would
sound familiar, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and click
that...

[   ] MD5SUMS                                            07-Apr-2012 08:29  1.8K  
[   ] MD5SUMS.sign                                       07-Apr-2012 08:37  836   
[   ] SHA1SUMS                                           07-Apr-2012 08:29  2.0K  
[   ] SHA1SUMS.sign                                      07-Apr-2012 08:37  836   
[   ] SHA256SUMS                                         07-Apr-2012 08:29  2.6K  
[   ] SHA256SUMS.sign                                    07-Apr-2012 08:37  836   
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso          29-Jan-2012 12:12  1.1G  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso.list     29-Jan-2012 12:12   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso.log      29-Jan-2012 12:12  359K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso.packages 29-Jan-2012 12:11   31K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-kde-desktop.iso            29-Jan-2012 12:59  1.0G  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-kde-desktop.iso.list       29-Jan-2012 12:59   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-kde-desktop.iso.log        29-Jan-2012 13:00  302K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-kde-desktop.iso.packages   29-Jan-2012 12:58   29K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-lxde-desktop.iso           29-Jan-2012 13:28  753M  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-lxde-desktop.iso.list      29-Jan-2012 13:27   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-lxde-desktop.iso.log       29-Jan-2012 13:28  208K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-lxde-desktop.iso.packages  29-Jan-2012 13:27   21K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-rescue.iso                 29-Jan-2012 11:33  549M  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-rescue.iso.list            29-Jan-2012 11:33   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-rescue.iso.log             29-Jan-2012 11:33  236K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-rescue.iso.packages        29-Jan-2012 11:33   17K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-standard.iso               29-Jan-2012 11:13  232M  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-standard.iso.list          29-Jan-2012 11:13   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-standard.iso.log           29-Jan-2012 11:13  158K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-standard.iso.packages      29-Jan-2012 11:12  5.8K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso           29-Jan-2012 14:03  809M  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso.list      29-Jan-2012 14:03   18K  
[TXT] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso.log       29-Jan-2012 14:03  244K  
[   ] debian-live-6.0.4-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso.packages  29-Jan-2012 14:02   24K  

Woo! .iso images, we've won!

Oh, wait, which one ... amd64-gnome-desktop.iso?  shame there's no
README to give a hint ... (there is a "standard" one, but that has no X
so probably isn't what a newbie needs)

Hmm, the ISO for the gnome variant is 1.1G -- that's not exactly useful
for burning to a CD.  How about XFCE?  809M -- still too big.

So, after all that we've suckered people in with the cute front page,
and then comprehensively wasted their time, particularly if they went to
effort of downloading only to find that they've made a coaster by trying
to put too big an image on their CD.

I've heard the response that live.debian.net is actually supposed to be
aimed at developers, so one shouldn't expect to find anything usable
there for end users, which is fair enough, but in that case the front
page should carry a prominent warning, and not have the cute icons.

It would be really nice to have working live CDs, preferably linked to
From the front page along with the install CDs, accessible in one or two
clicks.  I realise that one problem with that is the mechanical manner
in which the ISOs produced by Debian Live just include the relevant
tasks, and there's just too much stuff in that list to fit on a CD these
days, which presumably means that someone needs to decide which packages
to strip out to make them fit.

Actually, in the case of the gnome CD, I see that it has the gnome
package on it, which of course drags in a load of stuff, rather than
just gnome-core and perhaps selected other packages.  I'm not picking on
gnome here BTW -- neither KDE nor XFCE fit either, so perhaps the
problem is really that all the underlying X stuff is too big these days.

Assuming that it's even possible to trim down the packages to fit on a
CD, then perhaps a $DESKTOP-light or task-livecd-$DESKTOP package with a
reduced set of dependencies from the default desktop package could be
created, thus giving the Debian Live people a package to use for their
CD images, and somewhere to report a bug when the resulting image creeps
beyond the size of a CD.

I can report this as a bug if that helps, but it seems to me that the
debian-live folk need to have a chat with all the desktop packagers and
come up with a solution between you (or declare it impossible, and put a
warning on the live.debian.net front page that only DVD-sized images are
available if you want to run a GUI)

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND

Attachment: pgpkLRoSdCTVH.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: