lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Paul Smith <pdereksmith@xxxxxxxxx>]

My main issue with removing the alternate install is the ability to do a
command-line install, which similar to our servers provides an extra degree
of security and the ability to do the following as troubleshooting steps
without a gui:

1)  perform initial system updates
2)  download other components, verify them, and burn them to cd
3)  browse the internet for other troubleshooting steps with a command-line
browser such lynx or elinks

Also, do we have time estimates on how long it takes to maintain the
alternate iso, or any iso for that matter?

Paul Smith


On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:04 AM, Nicholas Skaggs <
nicholas.skaggs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  FYI -- as spoken of earlier, here's the details on dropping the
> alternate installer in 12.10. Again, this is just for ubuntu, and not a
> decision for any flavors. As far as I know, no flavors have committed to
> dropping the alternate cd's. This transition will occur with the next
> milestone, which is Beta 1. As part of this, we'll need to migrate the
> alternate testcases and add new testcases in support of the new features in
> ubiquity. Thanks!
>
> Nicholas
>
> -------- Original Message --------  Subject: Proposal to drop Ubuntu
> alternate CDs for 12.10  Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:50:24 -0700  From: Steve
> Langasek <steve.langasek@xxxxxxxxxx> <steve.langasek@xxxxxxxxxx>  To:
> ubuntu-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Dear developers,
>
> As part of ongoing efforts to reduce the number of images we ship for
> Ubuntu, and to make the desktop image more useful in a variety of scenarios,
> Dmitrijs Ledkovs has been hard at work in quantal adding support for LVM,
> cryptsetup, and RAID to ubiquity.
>
> The good news is that this means today we already have support in ubiquity
> for cryptsetup and LVM in the guided partitioner, with manual partitioning
> support soon to follow.  The somewhat bad news is that we will not have
> support for RAID setup in ubiquity this cycle.
>
> I would like to propose that, in spite of not reaching 100% feature parity,
> we drop the Ubuntu alternate installer for 12.10 anyway.
>
> The arguments that I see in favor of this are:
>
>  - RAID is relatively straightforward to turn on post-install.  You install
>    to one disk, boot to the system, assemble a degraded RAID with the other
>    disks, copy your data, reboot to the degraded RAID, and finally merge
>    your install disk into the array.  It's not quick, but it's *possible*.
>  - Desktop installs on RAID will still be supported by other paths: using
>    either netboot or server CDs and installing the desktop task.
>  - RAID on the desktop really is a minority use case.  Laptops almost never
>    have room for more than one hard drive; desktops can but are rarely
>    equipped with them.  So the set of affected users is very small.  Some
>    rough analysis of bug data in launchpad suggests a very liberal upper
>    bound of .8% of desktop users.
>  - RAID on the desktop correlates with conservatism in other areas:  we can
>    probably continue to recommend 12.04 instead of 12.10 for the affected
>    users.
>  - It lets us tighten our focus on making the desktop CD shine: fewer images
>    to QA, fewer different paths to get right (like the CD apt upgrader case)
>    means more time to focus on the things that matter.
>
> So my opinion is that we should drop the Ubuntu alternate CDs with Beta 1.
> Other flavors are free to continue building alternate CDs (i.e.,
> "debian-installer" CDs) according to their preference, but we would drop
> them for Ubuntu and direct users to one of the above-mentioned alternatives
> if they care about RAID on desktop installs.
>
> Please note one implication here that, with the possibility of not having
> i386 server CDs for 12.10, the only install option for an i386 user wanting
> RAID on a desktop would be to install via netboot or with the mini ISO.
>
> Do any of you see reasons for not making this change, and dropping the
> alternate CDs?  Are there shortcomings to the proposed fallback solutions
> that we haven't identified here?
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
> Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
> Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/slangasek@xxxxxxxxxx                                     vorlon@xxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
>
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