On Wednesday 01 June 2011, Wookey wrote:
> Pre-built images comes from an 'embedded systems' view of the world.
> Real computers can run installers to put their operating systems on
> and set themselves up, and we should be taking advantage of that. ARM
> computers are real computers now and we should be treating them as
> such.
I've been claiming for some time that the devices we are dealing with
are actually a new class of devices that are neither "embedded" nor
"real computer". You have the option to install anything you like
in a system like Android or an Ubuntu based netbook, but installing
one from scratch requires much more customization than installing
Ubuntu on a PC. E.g. most devices today require their own custom
kernel.
I absolutely agree that we should consequently think beyond image
generation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a CD image
to perform an unattended installation is a better answer.
> Yes it takes a lot longer on initial boot, which is why I agree that
> there should be at least one 'instant gratification' image, but for
> real work, having to install your OS the first time you boot a board
> is not a big deal, and provides enormous flexibility. We can make it
> slick and painless.
My main question to this is "install from where?". Optical drives
are probably out of the question here, and if you use a single SD
card as both the source for your packages and the root file system
to install them on, it still sounds rather pointless to have an
installer.
If the answer is that we always want to install from the network,
then there might not be too much work required at all: As you say,
we still need an image file for the installer and it can probably
be quite similar to the one debootstrap output we are already
using, except that it boots into whatever frontend to apt is
being used this decade in order to complete the installation.
> So, that's all. We don't necessarily need to have a big debate about
> this now, I'd really just like to make sure that this is properly on
> the agenda for the next cycle, and that we don't all get so stuck in
> the 'everything must be supplied as pre-generated image' mindset that
> we back ourselves into a very inefficient corner.
Thanks for bringing it up.
Arnd
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