Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:22:30 -0400 From: Jim Pingle <lists@pingle.org> To: Wesley Shields <wxs@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Dan Allen <danallen46@airwired.net>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 7.1 Content Message-ID: <48BFEF26.2070405@pingle.org> In-Reply-To: <20080904134305.GC1188@atarininja.org> References: <35445338-D597-4FE2-996F-DEC7BE986741@airwired.net> <20080903191454.GA15376@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <DC1CA362-09F3-4D85-BE20-776A133FD3D6@airwired.net> <48BF23D3.2070509@brianwhalen.net> <B1F9E128-A66F-4A5A-BBA1-A016F4ECDF77@airwired.net> <20080904134305.GC1188@atarininja.org>
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Wesley Shields wrote: > On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 06:28:44PM -0600, Dan Allen wrote: >> Hey, these great comments bring up a different solution, which may be >> the way to go. >> >> It is simple: have a few of the common apps that are net-centric (like >> firefox) be simply calls to pkg_add -r in the installer. No ports >> databases, no packages on the discs. A few packages may be useful >> (like perl) to someone without net access, but many need the net to be >> useful. > > No thanks. This means you have to have a working connection to install > firefox via this method. Since not everyone will have that it is still > necessary to bundle the firefox package on the media, bringing us right > back to the very issue you are trying to solve. Could this not also be resolved another way? Most desktops these days have DVD drives. If someone wants a bootable desktop-targeted release with X, Firefox and such, why not make that a DVD instead of trying to shoehorn all of this into a CD? Most of the older machines with aging CD-ROM drives or without a DVD drive may not have the horsepower to run a live CD with X anyhow. My servers only have CD-ROM drives, but then again they wouldn't be using a desktop-oriented live CD with X either. :-) Sure, the download would be (much?) larger, but you would have a lot more room to work with. The CD installs are great for me, and have worked well for years. Personally, I install, update to -STABLE from a local cvsup mirror, then use an updated ports tree or install packages remotely. The packages on CD are out of date practically from the moment they are placed there, so I rarely use them. The only package I regularly used was cvsup-without-gui, which has been replaced by csup in the base system. Also, is not Ubuntu a "downstream" release of Debian, much like FreeSBIE and PC-BSD are "downstream" of FreeBSD? If you want to compare apples to apples, you might investigate those choices a little closer. Jim
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