[plug] Woody on 7 CDs!? Why?

[Matt Kemner]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, quoth Trevor Phillips:

> First idea: It'd be nice to know WHAT is on each of the 7 CDs. That can't be
> that hard. If all the BIG things I want are on 1 or 2 CDs, then why bother
> having the rest?

The packages are ordered on the CDs according to "popularity"
I have no idea who decides how popular they are[0], and you can never
please everybody, but it's probably safe to say anybody will be able to find
over 80% of the software they want on the first 2 or 3 CDs.

> Second idea: I'd like the ability to easily make custom CDs. I'd like to fire
> up something similar to TaskSel, and select the main categories of stuff I'm
> interested in.

Looks like the "debian-cd" package does most of that already.
I haven't used it, so I don't know how well it works, but I just had a
quick scan through it's README, and it says:

make list TASK=tasks/your-task-here

which looks like you can use the tasks from TaskSel and fill up the CDs as
you want.[1]

> Third idea: I'd like to see a "Best Of" collection. No-one installs ALL
> packages, do they? Why not find out what are the most common packages used,
> and make a 2 or 3 CD set, just of those packages?

See my response to your first point - if you download/copy/purchase only
the first 3 CDs, you will most likely have most (if not all) of what you
need anyway.  I'm sure LinuxWA etc would be more than happy to sell you
only the first CD, or the first 3 CDs, or however many you would prefer.

 - Matt

[0] I haven't lurked on debian-devel or debian-cd for a while, so
    I don't know how exactly they determine the popularity, but
    I'm certain it is all well-documented for those who care.
    (and most likely open to improvement)
[1] Again, I haven't used it, I could be wrong! :)