[plug] Woody on 7 CDs!? Why?

[Michael Hunt]

Trevor Phillips [mailto:T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au] wrote:

> On Monday 22 July 2002 20:24, Michael Hunt wrote:
> > Craig Ringer [mailto:craig at postnewspapers.com.au] wrote some of this:
> > > > since it's 8 cd's, it will be a bit more expensive than the $20 for
> > > > potato... :)
> >
> > Well prices vary from $25 for Everything Linux 7 CD Set [1] (note not
> > available until the 12th of August) to $44.95 for a 8 CD set ...
>
> Why the heck would your average net-enabled person need all 7 CDs?

If you have net access you _don't_ need all 7 CD's. But not all net-enabled
people were created equal !!!! (Or maybe that should be 'were granted equal
access')

> I don't understand. Is it just the act of knowing you own the whole
> thing? Do people use the whole set?

Owning the whole set is impressive. Have you seen the stats on the distro
??? 8710 packages and Sid has over 10,000 [1]

Still if you live in a country where the bandwidth of a camel loaded with
CD's crossing the Sahara is better than the crumby dialup you have available
you _will_ use the whole set *grin*. (I speak from experience). Personally I
would rather get the DVD as it is more convenient. Now that woody is stable
you would be able to copy the whole lot to a HDD and keep it up to date with
a mirror using rsync.

[1] http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/25/

> Personally, I have CD #1 on a CD-RW, and occasionally I'll
> download (at work
> where it's fast & free WAIX) a new CD #1 as new releases come
> out. Usually,
> CD #1 contains enough base system, and the rest I download over my aging
> 33.6k modem (Bloody ADSL "coming soon" crap), even if I have to leave it
> going overnight. If I was on ADSL, then I'd definitely only need
> the first
> CD, and get the rest online, where newer, and security patched versions
> become available.

I use PGI — the Progeny Graphical Installer, to setup Debian based systems
[2] and find that it works great and is simpler to install for newbies due
to its graphical nature. At the moment there are only beta versions of the
woody installer available [3] but this works fine for me and I think the
only thing stopping a non beta version coming out was the release of woody
proper. HP plans to use PGI for its Debian release that it will ship with
its Linux boxes. Another alternative is libranet [4] which you can use to
get a base system up and running and then do and apt-get update to bring it
in line with woody stable.

[2] http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/
[3] http://archive.progeny.com/progeny/pgi/
[4] http://www.libranet.com/

> To me, saying "Here it is" and getting 7 CDs is clunky. Don't get
> me wrong, I
> love Debian's package management system, but I think their CD usage needs
> some work. Heck, maybe there's tools and info out there that I don't know
> about!

7 CD's are clunky. In fact two CD's are clunky hence the reason people
either:

a) Install Multiple CDROM's in their machines.
b) Copy the CD's to their HDD.
c) Get the CD's put onto a DVD.
d) Use the net and a distro that supports it.

I really think Debian does the best thing for all the above. With apt-cdrom
you can catalogue all your packages across your CD's and apt will prompt you
for the CD to install. As earlier posts with Red Hat indicate, multiple CD's
with packages spread across them can be a real pain.

Anyhow from Debian's website we see that:

Here are the basic advantages of the CDs:

    * Installation from a CD set is more straightforward.
    * You can install on machines without an Internet connection.
    * You can install Debian on more than one machine.
    * The CD can be used to more easily rescue a damaged Debian system.

On the other hand, a network install also has its pros:

    * You don't have to pay for the CDs.
    * You will only download those .deb packages that you actually want.
      If you get a whole CD set, you will get a lot of packages that you
won't actually use.
    * A network installation of the "testing" distribution will provide you
with the very latest packages, whereas any CD images of "testing" that you
download would be outdated very quickly.

And if you are after net install CD's you can find a list of them here [5]

[5] http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

> 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?

See Matts post for further info on this.

> 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. Maybe go to an advanced mode to add certain other
> packages to
> the list. Maybe say "Add everything I currently have installed".
> Maybe even
> "Add everything I currently have installed on these 5 machines". The info
> would be saved to a config file that could be used to generate
> newer versions
> of the custom CDs as they came out. Whack the boot & base stuff
> on the first
> disc, and keep the rest customised. It's probably possible to do
> this sort of
> thing already, but a nice tool so your average Joe can do it
> would be useful.

Again see Matts post. Some info for making customised PGI disks can be found
here [6]

[6] http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/guide.html

> 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?
>
> This rant would probably be better sent to a Debian-specific
> group, but hey. I
> still feel like a little fish in a big frelling pond. ^_^;;

Well rants on a local list help refine your answers/questions and makes your
thinking clearer on a certain subject before you post to the big wide world
of Debian mailing lists.

> And who knows, maybe some of what I'm after is out there, somewhere, that
> someone here knows about...

That's what the web, mailing lists, the net in general etc are there for !!!

> Trevor Phillips

Michael Hunt