Re: [gentoo-releng] GameCD's and Installation ability

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 13:06, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> The primary (only?) reason for GRP is to offer fast installs.  The primary
> (only?) reason to support fast installs is to minimize the amount of
> downtime on a user's computer while they're waiting for things to compile.
> With Gentoopix (and as soon as someone comes up with a better name, I'll
> start using that), you have *zero* downtime.  It's actually less downtime
> than with GRP.  You start the Gentoopix CD which presents you with an
> X-based environment, replete with browser, email client, file manager, etc.
> You start your installation like you do now and, once the compiling starts,
> you have a rich, full-featured graphical environment available to you while
> you wait.

Personally, I think being forced to wait possibly days for the install
is something that puts off quite a few people and is also the main
reason the GRP was created.  Also, what about the Gentoo Server (or
whatever it is called this week) project?  Is one of their main concerns
not the ability to do fast installs?

> If we had the user do some partitioning first, we could even allow them to
> store stuff (email settings, browser settings, files, whatever) on the HDD
> while waiting for their "real" operating system to finish up in the
> background.  This would allow the user to fully-configure their email
> client and browser settings while the compile was still going and, once it
> was done and they booted to their "real" installation, all of their
> preferences and settings would be maintained.

We need to support removable media, such as USB keys and also FAT
partitions for this.  I think a requirement would have to be something
like a gentoopix-hdinstall, just like knoppix does, to allow a user to
quickly mirror a gentoopix CD to their disk.  It should take no longer
than the time necessary to copy the files and configure a few settings
to have a running system *from disk* and not from the CD.

> Gentoopix solves all of the same problems that GRP does, but it comes at a
> greatly reduced cost.  There are far fewer QA headaches, build time, bugs,
> mirror resources, etc required for Gentoopix than for GRP.

I agree, provided it DOES provide an answer to the "fast install" and
not just masks the problem by making the machine "usable".

> This also allows us to have a greater separation between the installation
> part of Gentoo and the "main" part of Gentoo.  The install team can work at
> their own pace, implementing features that are important to that project
> without requiring time or resources from the larger body of Gentoo
> developers.  Right now, we have to freeze trees, synchronize on versions of
> catalyst, create package lists, debug build problems with GRP sets and a
> number of other minor issues that arise as as result of GRP.  Obviously,
> there still needs to be close coordination between the two groups, but they
> do not have to be linked at the hip in order to coordinate a successful
> release.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer
Games/LiveCD Teams
Gentoo Linux

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