[Mageia-discuss] I'd like to start to discuss the possibility of having one language per iso when it comes to full DVD-versions, similar to the Live-versions.

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 14 September 2011 10:32:32 nicolas vigier wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, Kristoffer Grundström wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > A long time have I wondered why a Swedish man/woman would want to have
> > more languages on his/her iso to install just Swedish as language.

What is the benefit to removing a language one particular user doesn't need? 
What is the cost (to other users who may need locales).

Note that languages are a specific problem, due to how initial installation of 
the distribution is different to package installation (it is more difficult to 
add languages post-install exactly the same as if you had selected them during 
install, compared to how easy it is to add more packages that you didn't 
select or weren't available during installation).

> > I'm therefor opening a discussion to perhaps solve this little proposal
> > that I've got.
> > 
> > Look at the Live-iso's that we have to offer, they come with 16 languages
> > each.
> > 
> > Lets think for a second that a user doesn't want to install a Live-system
> > & to use a large iso with unnessecary languages is out of question.

Maybe we should go back to *why* there are multiple live images with subsets 
of languages. It is *not* so the user has the convenience of not choosing 
their language, but because it is difficult to have a "complete" enough system 
catering to most use cases in under 700MB that supports all the languages. So 
for example, the choice is to drop LibreOffice, or only support a few 
languages per ISO.

If the software for a good default install would fit on 

> > How does he/she solve it to install Mageia?
> > 
> > My idea is that we transform the full-DVD iso to one-language only, but
> > more iso's in the end.

So, it is your opinion that >90% of the users use more than ~ 60% of the 
software that will fit on a DVD ISO (without any other languages)?

Maybe you should start off with your proposal of what these packages are that 
are so important to be included on 100 DVD ISOs.

> > 
> > Like this:
> > 
> > mageia-dvd-1-i586.iso in a language-dir under
> > ftp://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/mageia/iso/1/
> > 
> > The result is that you shrink the DVD much & you can add other stuff that
> > doesn't fit in the ordinary DVD's for some reason.......perhaps add more
> > drivers.
> 
> Yes, but you will get an iso with unnessecary drivers. And unnessecary
> applications. Maybe we can make ISOs with only one language, one driver
> and one application ?

It starts to sound like it should just be a custom live image made with 
draklive ...

Why stop there? What about variations for authentication libraries (e.g., some 
people may not want *any* LDAP in their system)? In this case, we may want to 
have versions of the packages built without LDAP support. Same for PAM (like 
Slackware). Same for databases. Maybe one without any php? One for python-
haters (let's hope they don't have HP printers)?

Maybe a Gentoo-based system that compiles the whole distro with the selected 
features and genearates an ISO. But, then, why generate the ISO, updates would 
have to be customised anyway.

It seems you have come up with a solution to a problem that either does not 
exist, or that you have not been able to communicate, with significant costs 
on *everyone* involved in the distribution, with no motivated benefits.

Regards,
Buchan