[ Yes, I'm renaming the subject yet again ;-]
Alexandre Oliva wrote:
As in, make the installer one of the applications of a Fedora Core
Live CD? First thing it does is to copy the contents of its root
filesystem to the chosen root filesystem (should be faster than
`rpm'ing around lots and lots of packages, and saves CD space!), then
enables the user to select additional packages to install/remove.
Oh, no. I don't think I was saying that at all. Doing a "Live!" CD
would only bloat the sucker, while adding additional engineering
effort.
What I'm proposing is just:
1. A careful re-evaluation of the "essential" components
2. These components go on Fedora Core CD #1,
which can _now_ be standalone (you only need CD #1)
That's _all_ I'm suggesting. All it takes is some careful decision
making regarding packages, but *0* re-engineering effort. At most,
there would just need to be some checking that _nothing_ on CD #1
has any dependencies on any other "Core" CDs.
Maybe I only confused people by calling it "Quark" or "miniCore."
In a nutshell, I'm just talking about making Fedora Core CD #1
standalone -- that's all!
But if careful planning is required, then we _might_ need to add
a 6th repository guideline (I call it "Quark" by call it whatever):
Dependency Limitations
Quark: Quark
Core: Quark, Core
Extras: Quark, Core, Extras
... etc ...
We'll still have "Core" for Legacy Red Hat Linux (RHL) and all its
dependencies. But sooner or later (hopefully sooner), it would be
nice to define a "smaller Core" -- one that amounts to less than
500MB compressed would be ideal (fits on a single CD). Let us
aim for just basic client functionality using X+GNOME (and minimal
at that!).
I call this Fedora "Quark" for repository/dependency arguments
sake (call it what you will in the finale).
Fedora "Core" should continue to be developed, as-is, as the RHL
replacement. Quark will be a part of Core. But Quark will offer a
"reduced package list" that has self-only dependency, just like
Core is to Core, Extra to Extras, etc...
[ BTW, someone could certainly make a "Live" version of Fedora Core
CD #1, but I'm not suggesting the Fedora team head that up. There
are plenty of people who could do this after-the-fact. In fact,
something like "Quark" should be defined in the first place _before_
someone comes up with a "Live" CD. But a Live CD is something else
entirely. ]
Chris Chabot wrote:
Actually rpm packages compress the binary payload (gzip default,
configurable for bzip2), so uncompressed on cd storage would require
more space. Secondly cd read speed is slower (presumably) then your
HD write speed, so extracting & writing files should be faster then
copying them straight from cd.
Just to re-iterate, I was not talking about a Live CD. That's not
related to my recomendation for a "subset" of Core that weighs
in at less than 500MB, has 0 dependencies on anything else, and would
ideally be CD #1 in Fedora Core itself.
--
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. -- b.j.smith(a)ieee.org