I'm just a user, but:
* I disagree with dropping the first 4GB "DVD" install image, I think
it's quite useful (although you might just name it "4GB" and drop
the DVD naming). Users shouldn't need Internet to have a mostly
functional system, and I cannot imagine they produce too much extra
overhead to maintain compared to the netinst images for example.
* I agree that non-install images (-*DVD-2, etc.) should be dropped.
Users can use tools such as debmirror to easily create a local
repository if they wish to.
* I know this is somewhat controversial, but images with non-free
firmware are also quite important in practice. I suggest to also
produce a 16GB image with non-free firmware.
* 16GB is a common size for cheap USB drives nowadays, so I think 4GB
and 16GB would be good sizes for these offline images.
Thank you.
Às 23:48 de 18/07/20, Dan Ritter escreveu:
Andrew Cater wrote:
Separately, we also had a quick think about the numbers of iso images in
general. A suggestion: For the future, we should produce physical media for
the netinst.iso, the first DVD image in any set and one larger image to be
written to a USB stick if wanted - and corresponding source for each size.
All other .iso files to be distributed as .jigdo and .template files.In
most instances, the netinst is enough, if you have network connectivity and
bandwidth. The DVD is enough to install the basis of any of the graphical
environments readily. This does not mean that you couldn't produce every
other image - but very few people are on a desert island and need every
piece of software Debian has produced on physical media.
At this point in 2020, I think it would be reasonable to only produce
netinst images and jigdo (and live, but that's a different-ish
project). Drop the DVD images.
All of my installs in the last six years have either been via a
USB netinst image or PXE. New laptops and desktops are generally
shipping without optical drives at all. My oldest non-toy
hardware can boot via USB.
-dsr-
