On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Nishchaya Bahuguna <Nishchaya.Bahuguna at sun.com> wrote: > Couldn't have agreed more with Shiv. I have seen so many users, who are just > reluctant to try out open solaris because of this reason. From an engineer's > point of view, it does makes sense for not to have any redundant bits on > your system. But, if it is the end user and we are actually interested in > growing the community, then the first impression about any distro does makes > an impact on the popularity. > > I have spoken to lot many students and users and they are just too happy to > use Linux, Ubuntu, whatever. We just can't convince them to switch over > unless it is served to them on a platter. > > ~Nishchaya > > Sivakumar Shanmugasundaram wrote: >> >> +1 (in fact +billion - the population of India :) ) for a LiveDVD with >> options (in GRUB may be) to install a standard desktop, or developer >> edition, or whole DVD (examples). >> Many times, the users inside a small office setup hesitate to use >> OpenSolaris because of multiple downloads required for each of their >> desktops. If there is a choice of IPS installation from files (I know it is >> coming), then they could be convinced to download once (say to a CD) and >> then install it from there. >> We could also ask the users to download once, make a Live CD of their >> required packages and then install it on other systems, but this is going to >> put them off a bit. >> For these reasons, it will be indeed be better to have a LiveDVD with >> multiple install options. >> >> -Siva >>
A hearty +1 to all this. Taking bandwidth for granted is a big mistake. There are large segments of the Globe where bandwidth is neither readily available nor cheap. While I stay in Bangalore and have access to 1MBps bandwidth with unlimited data traffic at reasonable rates and even 8MBps bandwith available to homes, the vast regions outside Bangalore are not that well endowed. The pittance that goes there in the name of broadband is 256KBps via wire and 180KBps via CDMA wireless. Imagine doing a 'pkg image-update' over 180KBps flaky wireless connection! In addition many schools/colleges have a central 2MBps data connection shared by scores of students many of whom are busy populating music servers over bittorrent. The advantage of a DVD image is simple. One guy from a BW-starved location comes to the BOSUG meet and we hand him one or more DVDs. He then goes back, makes N copies of that and distributes it among others. Everthing needed is on the DVD so people are happy. This has been one of my gripes about the network-centric design of IPS. The alternative to a LiveDVD is a repo-DVD with a package collection on the DVD. In addition an on-disk package format really helps here esp. if people want to exchange individual packages. I have ported/developed this cool software and I want to build a package and give it to friends to test, how do I do it ? Create a repository for a single or few packages ... yuck. This topic has come up ever so often with the same feedback and comments coming forth but people do not seem to understand, sigh. Regards, Moinak. -- ================================ http://www.belenix.org/ http://moinakg.wordpress.com/
