BlackRider |
05-02-2012 12:39 PM |
I see this mistake repeated every now and then in the forums, so just for the sake of sanity, I will correct it again:
You don't need the full set of Debian CD/DVD to perform a install.
The first CD/DVD comes with some useful software and suffices to provide a working system. The rest are useful for working offline. Believe me, they are really useful, if you want to manage many similar systems it is better to have the DVDs than to download lots of packages or build a local repository. In addition, you stop depending on your ISP for installing software. Deb distributions are a pain to handle in offline environments unless you have a local copy of the repositories.
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As of the DVDs. If the whole stuff doesn't fit on a DVD anymore, maybe it should be splitted for different parts of the world. As you know the kdei-series covers about several hundred of MB. Wouldn't it be an option to create (as an example) one DVD for Europe and America and anotherone for Asia and the rest of the world?
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Wow, then you would need to manage lot of additional lines of production. Too expensive and cumbersome for sure.
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There are those, however, that will want the whole thing on media. All practical modern standard medias should be available for sale - CD, DVD, and Bluray. If people want the images for free I guess they should be available too, but by being able to reliably do things over the net with 1 CD or DVD or Bluray, most would not go through that.
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Having everything is always better than having it not. First, because if I buy the DVD I don't waste bandwidth downloading from a mirror. Second, because if my ISP suddenly blackouts and I need to recompile or use the packages of the DVD, I have them without having to depend on the Internet. Third, because if I go visit my relatives who live offline I can perform a quick full install for them. Fourth, because Slackware is supposed to be fully installed. As you are surely going to download everything, why the hell should you download an stripped ISO and then a set of packages everytime you wanted to install a system (and that can be more than once)? (( This is not my case because I usually perform partial installs, but understand this is not the recommended method))
I think you should store as much software as you reasonably can locally. I save every slackbuild script I use with the source so I can replay it again if needed and without having to depend on an ISP that may not be there.
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