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.

[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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[Vic Beckley]

Luke,

For me personally, I would go with just the DVD option and hopefully it
would have all the latest stuff on it. I always download the biggest image I
can find. If there is a real need for it, it isn't too difficult or consume
too many resources and if it doesn't prevent the newest stuff from being on
the DVD image, then option 1 would probably be the way to go.


Best regards from Ohio,

Vic

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Luke Yelavich
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 6:29 AM
To: vinux-...@googlegroups.com; vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX-DEVELOPMENT] Should we reconsider shipping a Vinux 4 CD
image?

[Rill]

I would be concerned that some users might have band width issues and a
large image could be problematic. Can we do some easy install scripts or
pop up a message to go to the wiki to learn how to install a few things?
One of Vinux's strengths is being available to anyone worldwide who
needs the kind of access Vinux provides. I've always thought of Vinux as
one of the tools for bringing justice to a population which is often
left out, left behind and ignored.
Rill