Thank you Thomas. Yes, that's obviously why it was done.So - a quick look on Wikipedia suggests that this was a current machine in 2006 and was replaced in 2007 / 2008. So - if anyone has one running anywhere, it's somewhere between 12-15 years old. If anybody knows of any that they really must keep running, speak now or forever hold your peace. It's probably time for this to be dropped for Bullseye.
Separately, we also had a quick think about the numbers of iso images in general. A suggestion: For the future, we should produce physical media for the netinst.iso, the first DVD image in any set and one larger image to be written to a USB stick if wanted - and corresponding source for each size. All other .iso files to be distributed as .jigdo and .template files.In most instances, the netinst is enough, if you have network connectivity and bandwidth. The DVD is enough to install the basis of any of the graphical environments readily. This does not mean that you couldn't produce every other image - but very few people are on a desert island and need every piece of software Debian has produced on physical media. Producing every disk in every size would still be possble but using jigdo as an intermediate step. This would also mean dropping the single CD image that installs the XFCE graphical environment but that's one tasksel selection away anyway. This would ease the pressure on mirrors and the main
cdimage.debian.org server and make the task of testing significantly simpler.
New users find it difficult to work out why there should be so many DVDs and whether they need to download them all even though only one is bootable. Anything we can do to make our collective lives easier is a bonus, given the size of the team. Thoughts?