Re: [gentoo-dev] Missing: Universal-CD - Gentoo discriminates shell and networkless users

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Mon, 2006-10-09 at 10:38 +0200, Simon Stelling wrote:
> Dominique Michel wrote:
> > When an user or a potential user read it and want to do a networkless install,
> > it will just use the Live CD install, and just get in trouble. It is even worse
> > when many Linux magazines will have this CD. And you cannot argue at it is just
> > to use catalyst or to burn a CD from a stage 3, when the doc say "a bootable CD
> > that contains everything you need to get Gentoo Linux up and running."
>
> That statement is still true. I have done 3 networkless installations
> for this release, without a problem. I used the installer. Using it you
> get your box up and running fast and convenient, so what exactly is the
> problem? It's not like you can't get Gentoo running without a network
> connection anymore.

The problem is that it is a change, and our users resist changes.

While I appreciate the input from our users, I have no intentions on
"going backwards" to what we had before.  I was planning on adding more
content to the LiveDVD images next time around, such as more packages,
and likely the stage3 tarball.  Whether I include any distfiles or not
is still up in the air, mostly due to the massive number of bugs that
were caused every single release due to people using the provided
distfiles/packages incorrectly.  We simply don't have enough manpower to
test every single possible combination of USE and packages during the
release cycle and our calls for testing usually go mostly unanswered.
We saw a definite increase in the number of developers helping with
testing this past release, but we still need more.

At any rate, the next release will allow a user to *very* easily to
networkless installs *without* requiring them use the installer itself.
I will have this documented by that time, so there's no need to fret
over it.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation