From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 7 19:54:55 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 40B931065670 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2008 19:54:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17CCE8FC1B for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2008 19:54:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apollo.backplane.com (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id m67Jss1s030965; Mon, 7 Jul 2008 12:54:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.14.1/8.13.4/Submit) id m67JsrXA030964; Mon, 7 Jul 2008 12:54:53 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 12:54:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200807071954.m67JsrXA030964@apollo.backplane.com> To: Michel Talon References: <20080703212100.GA16598@lpthe.jussieu.fr> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:54:55 -0000 :... :minimalist people, while a graphical installer running on top of a :live CD, like in many Linux distributions, Ubuntu, etc. could be :envisioned. The DragonFlyBSD installer runs on top of a live CD, this is :the easiest way to have a full featured installer, but this requires a :machine with sufficient RAM. Anyways all those possibilities point to :the soundness of your propositions 1) and 2). : :-- : :Michel TALON Well, its actually more an issue of the space used on the CD, since the base system is not compressed on the media. DragonFly doesn't try to include all that many packages on its CD, so there is plenty of space. Our distribution CD's run about 300MB. There is some movement on getting a DVD distribution together and including a lot of packages on it. I think that's the way to go if a fully loaded dist is desired. The packages would be stored on the DVD as binary packages (hence compressed), but everything else would be live. As media gets larger the live portion of the distribution becomes a smaller and smaller piece of it. It's a lot easier to enhance and maintain a live distribution then it is a compressed one. Actual system memory use is tiny. Remember, only dirty data eats real memory, clean pages can simply be freed, so the the run-time footprint is not really all that large. And, frankly, anyone with a machine with 32MB of ram or less is not likely to care about direct-from-CD installs. They'd more likely be installing from a bootable USB memory stick (which runs $14 for 2G these days), or some other media. The box might not even have a CD drive, but it will certainly have USB ports. So what it comes down to is having a release build that is easy to extend and enhance, and doesn't shoot itself in the foot. You want to be able to use the same release infrastructure for all release targets. Compression of the base system creates lots and lots of unnecessary headaches. -Matt Matthew Dillon