Decide what software should be on the Live CD

[xavid]

Currently the live CD doesn't have any of -extra-software{,nox} on it, and removes the following packages/groups of packages:

diveintopython   
bogofilter                                                       
gnome-games                                                      
ekiga
tomboy                                                           
f-spot
openoffice.org
gimp-help
thunderbird-locale-en-gb
python-uno

We should figure out some useful Athena tools that don't take up a lot of space that it'd make sense to put on the CD. We currently have ~22 compressed megs free. hesiod, krb5-clients, remctl-client, screen, lynx, subversion, git-core? Quentin wants some of LaTeX, though texlive-full won't fit.

Should we be removing more stuff? Quentin suggests compiz, which is worth a few uncompressed megs, though that'd be a pretty big change from upstream, so I'd be against it.

Should we cut enough other stuff so we can include at least some of openoffice.org? I'm biased against it, but it seems like lots of people use it.

[xavid]

As of right now, I'm installing

    emacs                                                                       
    vim                                                                         
    hesiod                                                                      
    texlive-base                                                                
    krb5-clients                                                                
    remctl-client                                                               
    screen                                                                      
    lynx                                                                        
    rcs                                                                         
    cvs                                                                         
    subversion                                                                  
    git-core                                                                    
    tree                                                                        
    bind9-host

and removing

^diveintopython$                                                            
    ~nbogofilter                                                                
    ~ngnome-games                                                               
    ^ekiga$                                                                     
    ^tomboy$                                                                    
    ^f-spot$                                                                    
    ~n^mono-                                                                    
    ~n^libmono-                                                                 
    ~n^openoffice.org-help-                                                     
    ~ngimp-help                                                                 
    en-gb$                                                                      
    en-au$                                                                      
    en-za$                                                                      
    ^wbritish$                                                                  
    ^python-uno$                                                                
    gnome-user-guide                                                            
    ^language-pack-bn$ ^language-pack-bn-base$                                  
    ^language-pack-de$ ^language-pack-de-base$ ^language-pack-es$               
    ^language-pack-es-base$ ^language-pack-fr$ ^language-pack-fr-base$          
    ^language-pack-gnome-bn$ ^language-pack-gnome-bn-base$                      
    ^language-pack-gnome-de$ ^language-pack-gnome-de-base$                      
    ^language-pack-gnome-es$ ^language-pack-gnome-es-base$                      
    ^language-pack-gnome-fr$ ^language-pack-gnome-fr-base$                      
    ^language-pack-gnome-pt$ ^language-pack-gnome-pt-base$                      
    ^language-pack-gnome-xh$ ^language-pack-gnome-xh-base$ ^language-pack-pt$   
    ^language-pack-pt-base$ ^language-pack-xh$ ^language-pack-xh-base$

and I have ~10 compressed megs left. Suggestions welcome.

[geofft]

It would be nice to include lvm2.

(We should separately convince upstream to put LVM support on the stock live CD.)

[jdreed]

So, in revisiting this, we should think about what the usage model of the Live CD is.

Is it:
a) trying out Debathena
b) supported installation method
c) recovery CD
d) Non-destructively creating Debathena machines on the fly (c.f. RSI's usage model last summer)

I think that's the rough order of priority in terms of usage, with (b) and (c) probably tied. For trying out Debathena, we certainly don't need *everything*. Frankly, I'd be happy with a small subset of things, and maybe a .desktop with a link to a web page saying "Here's what you get if you install the full version!"

For (b), it might be clever if the installer fell back to network installation if at all possible, rather than trying to support full offline installation, as Ubuntu does. In particular, anything above -standard is mostly useless without network, and if you can't get network with the Live CD, you're probably not going to be able to get network once Debathena is installed.

(d) is definitely the hardest. I mean, we don't need -cluster, because the Live CD itself provides the serial reusability.

Alternatively, we make it a live DVD, and stop caring about disc space.

[xavid]

The installer currently uses network installation for installing -workstation. I think it still requires network to install -standard, even though it shouldn't really need to. I mostly haven't cared too much about supporting networkless installs.

The script also generates a Live DVD, but we don't have nice pretty DVD-Rs to burn it onto, so it hasn't gotten much use.

[jdreed]

This will be mostly fixed by the fact that we're moving to DVDs, so re-milestoning...

[jdreed]

At a recent release-team, we decided to suck it up and call the pre-printed CDs a sunk cost, and move to live DVDs.