On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:19:14 +0100 Pjotr Prins <pjotr.publi...@thebird.nl> wrote:
> If you are on a slow connection (and 90% of the world IS on a slow > connection) downloads are a problem. I am in Africa now. Guix > pull is one problem - I accidentily did that and now I can't do > anything because it wants to fetch a complete rebuilt Guix. But also > installing by package is problematic, though I appreciate that > Guix does not load things twice (well, actually it does when a > transaction gets interrupted or fails - we could avoid that by caching > intermediate source tar balls and binary downloads, really no reason > not to since they have hashes too). > > Similar to the minimal tar-ball release we could provide a bare-bones, > desktop, desktop for developers, and 'sumo' release quite easily and > seed those with torrents. I think. It would also make sense to sell > DVD's or USB's with Guix installed. Maybe a little side-business for > the FSF? > > Pretty much what Debian does. > > Even though Guix is a rolling update distribution, tar-ball installs > make sense. > > Pj. > I was going to make jokes about apt-cd and the years of issues that's caused people with fresh debian installs, but all we should need to do is populate /gnu/store with either/both precompiled binaries/source files. If/when substitutes fails, the files are already there. As an aside, I don't think targeting DVD size is a good idea, but maybe 4GB/8GB for usb sticks shouldn't be bad. Also if we had a torrent it would be easier to not rely directly on hydra for starting up. Also its an easy way to donate bandwidth without setting up a hydra clone. -- Efraim Flashner <efr...@flashner.co.il> אפרים פלשנר GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D 14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351 Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted
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