Re: What to do about the "Official" CD
IMHO this discussion is skirting round a larger issue. The need for an
"entry level" Debian disc.
Economic necessity has dictated that I supply other distributions as well
as Debian. The one advantage that these have is that they are "entry
level" distributions, i.e. good for people starting out in GNU/Linux,
whether it be in an educational institution, commercially or by
themselves.
They are single discs, a quick rather mindless install and a functioning
system. I subscribe to a couple of NZ Linux mailing lists and I see
people struggling with problems caused by some of these distributions when
if they had started with Debian ....
I suggest that we consider biting the bullet and produce such a CD
complete with mindless (oops, easy) install and configuration. This CD
should be completely compatible with the normal distribution CDs which
would mean that people could migrate to this when they were ready.
This would probably be best achieved by a separate team involving;
1. Debian CD. The debian_cd scripts should present no real problem.
2. Boot disks. Re-worked to give the easy install - part way there.
3. Package installation scripts. (ouch). However, I think that it should
be possible to have a library of alternative scripts external to
the packages which could be called upon during the install.
This is a very general idea at the moment, and (3) would be the tricky
bit. After looking at these .rpm distributions I am certain that we could
produce a better product using .deb
Phil now ducks for cover.
Phil.
On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Fabien Ninoles wrote:
> Quoting Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>:
>
> > On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> >
> > > Dale Scheetz writes:
> > > >
>
> [snip first part]
>
> >
> > There was a package (I don't remember the name) that does some HTTP
> > package installation which had a pre-depend that caused dselect to die
> > horribly. I repackaged it without the pre-depend and did the check for the
> > required packages in the preinstall script. The patch I submitted to the
> > maintainer in a bug report was rejected.
>
> If you're talking about
> #34804 - dpkg-http predepends breaks install
>
> the bugs is still open. I thing the explanation the other gives you
> for refusing the patch is fare enough. It's more a bug in the methods
> scripts of dselect and dselect itself have with Pre-Depends.
>
> Hopefully, apt goes well around... maybe one day we can get everything
> do intelligent pkg ordering (just like dftp and apt).
>
> >
> > That, and making sure the upgrade directory was available with its desired
> > contents allowed me to build a CD that could install every package on the
> > CD without problems (with the exception of a conflicting web server), as
> > well as upgrade both Bo and Hamm systems.
> >
> > I don't see this as having made any "improvements". Asside from being
> > different in content and structure, I tested both upgrades and new
> > installs with the CD, and everything worked. It just seems to me that
> > having a process that will deliver beta CDs to testing people can help
> > catch these little dangling gotchas.
> >
> > That is all that I am suggesting.
> >
> > Waiting is,
>
> I agree that ED is different than the 1st CD. But I really hope to
> see you're Debian-Live CD coming up again.
>
> >
> > Dwarf
> > --
> > _-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-
> >
> > aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769
> > Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road
> > e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308
> >
> > _-_-_-_-_-_- See www.linuxpress.com for more details _-_-_-_-_-_-_-
> >
> >
>
> Take care,
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fabien Ninoles Chevalier servant de la Dame Catherine des Rosiers
> aka Corbeau aka le Veneur Debian GNU/Linux maintainer
> E-mail: fab@tzone.org
> WebPage: http://www.tzone.org/~fabien
> RSA PGP KEY [E3723845]: 1C C1 4F A6 EE E5 4D 99 4F 80 2D 2D 1F 85 C1 70
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> --
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>
Philip Charles; 39a Paterson St., Abbotsford, New Zealand; +64 3 4882818
I sell GNU/Linux CDs. See http://www.copyleft.co.nz
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