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Install CD Bloat Thread Summary: |
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Kurt Lieber started off the thread: |
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"I've used the same installation CD for most of my gentoo installs over |
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the past few months, so I was shocked today when I realized that the |
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smallest install ISO that we currently offer (at least for x86) is |
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80MB. When I started with Gentoo, it was ~15MB. |
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What brought about the nearly six-fold increase in size for our basic |
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installation CD?" |
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The first culprit pointed out was vim. Many said that they would not |
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need vim, or even vi, to edit their /etc/make.conf. Others said that |
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because vi was a UNIX/Linux/POSIX.2 standard, it needed to be on the |
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CD. Although no compromise was reached, it was generally agreed that |
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vim should be replaced by a smaller vi clone, perhaps nvi (the standard |
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BSD vi) or vi itself. Aron Griffis pleaded that no substandard vi |
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clones be considered. Several people asked that no tools duplicate |
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functionality, such as nano and vim. The thread degeneraged quickly. |
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Another culprit for the increase was the inclusion of Perl 5. No one |
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could figure out a good reason for it to be on there. |
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Sven Vermeulen asked if links would be kept or replaced with lynx. |
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While lynx is smaller, it does not display tables or frames. Links is |
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more difficult to configure with a proxy. Stewart Honsberger suggested |
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that lynx go on the minimal cd (see below), while lynx go on the larger |
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CDs. |
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Stuart Herbert suggested the use of cloop, which should be in portage in |
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less than a week. |
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Chris proposed three CD sets: an minimal install CD with a stage1 |
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tarball, a large LiveCD with common UNIX tools and a GUI, as well as a |
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full GRP CD. Luke-Jr replied that the new InGen LiveCDs would fit as |
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the "large LiveCD", but thought that there would not be enough space to |
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also use that as a base for the full GRP CD. Stuart Herbert and others |
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asked for the minimal install CD to be less than 55MB in order to fit on |
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keychain USB devices. Others wanted the minimal install CD to size down |
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to the original 16MB. Another idea was for each user to generate his |
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own custom LiveCD through a set of scripts. |