Should we reconsider shipping a Vinux 4 CD image?

[Luke Yelavich]

Hey folks,
We are in the run up to the Vinux 4 release, and we are very close to releasing images that we would like tested more widely, however we appear to be running into the issue of disk space on the CD images for both i386 and amd64. Anybody following along with the daily images would have noticed that our daily images for amd64 have been way oversized for the past week or so, and i386 images are barely coming under the CD size barrier. Given the amount of software we wish to ship to users out of the box, it has been hard trying to trim unwanted packages from the images, and given the way the build process works, its not quite as easy as apt-get remove packagename. This is also impacting on shipping the latest accessibility tools and core stack to you the user, to make sure you have the best accessibility possible. It is technically possible to ship all the newest components on the DVD image, and allow users of the CD image to download these updates as an option later, but this is more work in the longrun.

The Vinux development team are considering the following options:

1. Raise the CD image size limit to 800MB, and ship a DVD image as well. THe CD image would then be considered a small USB image, that would also fit onto a DVD.
2. Abandon any thought of shipping a CD image, and only ship a DVD image, which would be no bigger than 2GB, although the smaller this is, the better.

From a technical point of view, either option is feesable. Either way, this would make sure you get the latest GNOME accessibility packages, LibreOffice writer and calc, as well as various other utilities people like to use on a daily basis.

Your thoughts are most welcome. At this point, I am leaning towards option 1, because we already have everything in place to produce 2 image sets, and it would still allow people to have the smaller download option, but still get all the useful essentials.

Thanks,

Luke
On behalf of the Vinux development team.

[Rob Whyte]

Hi Luke,

Thanks for such a clear explanation.

Personally I would much rather the second option as we could then
concentrate on a single 64 and 32 bit image.

Thank you again for all your hard work.
Rob Whyte

[Mobeen Iqbal]

Hello Luke.

Personally, i would go the extra mile for users. In other words, cut
libre office from the CD and allow people to download the packages as
updates later as we've done in the past. If that really is not an
option, then i'd go with option 1 though i still think we should make
some sort of effort to have specifically a CD release for those people
that don't necessarily have access to DVD's in other countries where
they aren't as readily available. It could be a show stopper if we do,
often they're more in need of free and open source tools for use in IT
training centers than we are. . I accept that people can just write the
release to a USB stick, but i know that having a CD release in the past
has been much more convenient for me personally than a DVD release when
i've not had any DVD's in stock but have had more CD's than i know what
to do with. We should try and reach as wide an audience as possible,
especially with such a significant release. My personal outlook whenever
i've worked on something is to go the extra mile, but i realise this may
not necessarily be an option as we're so close to release. There would
be no point in releasing 2 images that can both fit on a DVD, you may as
well call 1 a USB edition and the other a DVD edition. Its up to the
majority of course...

Mo.

[Bill Taylor]

Hi Luke,

From a personal point of view, I download DVD images.
 
However, I will forever remember taking 9 days to download Debian 3.0 over a dial-up connection! Today, I can get a DVD in 30 minutes or so, I guess there are plenty of people who can do better, as well. 

There are still parts of the world where my dial-up is still the standard, So we really need to keep a  small download  if we can.

That makes me a vote for option 1.

Bill

[Steve Matzura]

I agree. The difference in price and availability of CD versus DVD
media is now almost a non-consideration, and if anybody's still on
dial-up or super-slow-speed DSL, I apollogize for that, but ya know,
time marches on, and sometimes you have to give a little, as in giving
of your time to download a larger image, to get a lot, as in, to get
everything you need in one go. Also, it definitely sounds like less
work for the developer/packager side of things, and anything we users
can do to make their lives easier, a little time sacrificed waiting
for a bigger download is not a crisis. OK, the distro will be bigger,
but it will be more complete, less to have to update and mess around
with later, and they won't be on slow DSL forever.

>--

[Rob Whyte]

Hi,
good points made but Libreoffice is already not present on the CD images.

You can see the problem.

Thanks
Rob

[Willem van der Walt]

I would go for your option one below.
As long as one can get a USB bootable image, people would rather use a
bigger USB stick than trying to download hundreds of megs of data over
expensive internet links though.
HTH, Willem

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[Cleverson]

Actually, you are too tied to the CD/DVD dichotomy. Today it's much
more convenient to record images to USB pens, prefferably with a
persistence file. Thus, my vote goes to change a little your
terminology and emphasise more the USB aspect and less the CD/DVD one.

Cheers
Cleverson

[Sina Bahram]

I agree with this. if the CD requirement is out, then I see very little
point in an arbitrary 800mb.



Twitter: @SinaBahram
Website: http://www.SinaBahram.com
Blog: http://blog.SinaBahram.com

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[Angelo Sonnesso]

I go for the DVD

----- Original Message -----
From: "Willem van der Walt" <wvd...@csir.co.za>
To: <vinux-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 8:35 AM
Subject: Re: VINUX-SUPPORT: Should we reconsider shipping a Vinux 4 CD
image?

[John J. Boyer]

I think it is time to provide a DVD image that contains almost
everything that people wil need, including programming tools such as
compilers and gnu autotools. Vinux has simply outgrown the capacity of
CD's.

John

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--

John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities

[Christopher Chaltain]

I personally would always just get the largest image I can lay my hands
on and burn a USB stick. Broad band connections and USB drives are
virtually ubiquitous here in the US.

I know in the past we've had requests from other parts of the world for
a CD image. I'd like to see if there are still places in the world where
we have to worry about the size of the images, both for download speeds
and for use of CD's instead of USB sticks.

For those people, like myself, where download speeds aren't an issue, it
doesn't really matter too much to me, whether I download everything up
front in a DVD image or a large USB image, or whether I get a smaller
image and then install the additional packages I need after the fact.

Based on what I know now, I'd vote for option #1, but in the future, I'd
suggest looking into just one image, either a large image if we don't
need to worry about image size or download speed, or just one small
image otherwise, with a way to install the additional packages.

--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail

[Roland Engelsma]

Hi

To my mind both options are really ok... Only problem would be if someone
doesn't have a dvd burner etc etc ... But am not sure how many that would be
... I personally would prefer option two, because on a dvd there is still a
lot of unused space, and who knows wich accessibility things are lurking
around the corner... :) You never know... Sooner or later, the cd version
has to be dropped anyway, because more and more things will be added etc
etc...

Kind regards
Roland

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[B. Henry]

Sadly, there are some people who can't burn DVds and can't boot from USB, at least not in a straight forward manner, i.e. will need the helper disk.
I've personally not used the work around for folks who have no usb-boot option in their bios, but assuming this works for almost everyone then go for the larger than CD sized basic image.
And yes, assuming that getting under CD size is not practical, go on and put libre-office on the smaller image.
We should be prepared to send DVDs to those who can't burn them and can't boot from usb of course, at least if they are not of a technical level to understand mounting an iso and the usb work around is less than feasible.
We should hae two images though, and if it were possible to make a cd image for both arches later then do so with a file very vissible, on desktop for instance, with instructions to install any basic packages that are not included.
I think having the best accessability at release time is more important than making CD size.
And while not in favor of throwing in the kitchen sink, I'd say include a lot of acecessible software on the DVd image& most of what's on standard Ubuntu image as well. (not sure if currently anything that's on standard Ubuntu mix is left off the DVD)
--
B.H.

[B. Henry]

Am I reading wrong? Option one is for 1 image it seems, but I think at least one person who said they wanted this indicated that two images were still a better option.
I don't like to spend my time downloading a bunch of junk I will have to spend more time un-installing.
Two images just makes sense to me, but if one is to be the option, then make it a small one, certainly under a gig, and 800 sounds reasonable,
No way is it easy for the 512kbs that's called broadband by some to download 2GB, even if there are no bottle necks and they can get most of their bandwidth for the 5 hours it'd take for each GB.
I do better than that here now, but often I'm still bottlenecked to similar speeds in the town where I work.
And again remember that not everyone is downloading at home.

[Christopher Chaltain]

I think you're reading it wrong Burt. Option #1 is to increase the size
of the CD image while still making the DVD image available as well.

Here's what Luke says:

> 1. Raise the CD image size limit to 800MB, and ship a DVD image as
> well.

Luke goes on further to say:

> At this point, I am leaning towards
> option 1, because we already have everything in place to produce 2

> image sets, ....

[B. Henry]

Thanks, just wanted to be sure, and I'm so rushed right now I'm only writing cause I apreciate you and others that are always there to help keep the misunderstandings down to a minimum.
Thanks again buddy.
--
B.H.