Hi all, I say the most important thing first - I'm not very keen on a Live DVD. One of the things that severely goes on my man-mammaries is that every Linux, BSD and whatnot nears the 1GB mark, when a basic system install could easily fit in a 300MB image. I don't think we have too many casual users using FreeDOS anyway. If you run this on actual hardware, you kept that around for a reason and know what you're doing, and it is the same for people who configure a VM or go through a qEmu install to run FreeDOS. So I think the best idea is to have an install medium with the base system an close-to-system addons (like the network packages, archivers etc) and move other things to a Addon-CD and a Devel-CD, or just call it Applications-CD and Developer-CD, whatever floats your boat.
cheers, Danilo On Sun, 23 Oct 2022 at 20:46, Jerome Shidel <jer...@shidel.net> wrote: > > Although there has not been a lot of feed back on what to do with the > excessively (nearly 1GB) BonusCD in T2210, I think the majority of feedback > has been in favor of splitting off the development packages from the BonusCD > on to their own DevelCD. > > And, we should do this instead of dropping packages for several reasons. The > main reason is for the convenience of users who may be on older hardware or > without network support. Those users might experience some difficulty getting > all of the programs they need into their “DOS” machine. > > It has also been suggested to provide a “Developer Oriented” release of > FreeDOS. One that is specifically geared towards DOS development. > > Another suggestion has been to just slim down FreeDOS to basic DOS. Leaving > it up to the user to find, download and install what they want after the OS > has been installed. > > Personally, I don’t think dropping everything except basic DOS is the way to > go. I think doing so would be off-putting to most “New” users. Although they > would have a fully functioning DOS, it really would not do much on it’s own. > It would require them to go get other software or games and create a usage > barrier that most would just uninstall the OS an move on to something else. > > Most “modern” operating systems either provide numerous bonus software. They > do this by either providing it on their release media or through an easy > method of downloading and installing software. There are many examples of > this in the Linux world. For example, openSUSE does both. It provides > thousands of extra packages on it’s release DVD and also connects to a > download center to provide them. > > Although the next major version of FDIMPLES will most likely support online > repositories, it is being written %100 in assembly and not coming soon. Even > once the new version of FDIMPLES is ready, general networking support under > FreeDOS is very limited. This leaves us with providing additional packages on > the release media for the near future. > > I’m unsure of the best solution to the problem. > > I don’t think providing a Developer Oriented skew of the OS is a good idea. > With the LegacyCD, LiveCD, LiteUSB, FullUSB and Floppy Edition, I think we > provide to many OS skews already. Since we want to support a wide range of > DOS hardware, we really need to keep the Floppy and CD version around. > > We could probably drop the LiteUSB for several reasons. I think it’s direct > usage is very limited and most users probably opt for the FullUSB version. > Also, every “how-to” and video I’ve seen online that shows how to create a > bootable USB stick for FreeDOS uses the LiveCD to create it. However, > occasionally, I do see questions on how to write one of the USB media to a > flash drive. > > We could also probably drop the LegacyCD as well. There is only a very > limited range of early hardware that cannot boot the LiveCD. But, it can boot > the LegacyCD. That hardware will most likely also have a floppy drive. If > their CD drive is supported by the drivers, they could boot using the “Floppy > Boot Image” included in the download zip. Once that is done, they can install > from CD. > > So where does that leave us? I think there are at least two practical > solutions at present. > > First, split off all development related packages that are on the BonusCD > onto a new DevelCD. This would require very little work. The Release Build > Environment (RBE) is already capable of creating multiple extra package discs > images. However, I will probably want to add some functionality to use > specific labels for them. At present, it would generate BonusCD0 and > BonusCD1. It will not be hard to update the RBE to use custom labels for the > discs. This first solution implies we may eventually have a GamesCD, UtilsCD > and others as well. If we go down this path, perhaps we should start > separating some other packages on to their own media as well. > > The second option is to go big. On this path, we could do away with the > BonusCD. We could keep the LiveCD as-is. But, we could also provide a > LiveDVD. I do kind of like the idea of providing as much quality software as > we can on a single disc. On this path we may not need the USB versions. Most > users tend to use programs like Rufus to create bootable USB drives from the > LiveCD. > > I don’t know if there is a good solution to this issue. But, I am certain we > can not provide a "950Mb BonusCD.” > > If you have any comments or other suggestions on the problem, please speak up. > > :-) > > Jerome > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
