[CentOS-devel] LiveCD suggestion

Mon Jun 7 12:43:33 UTC 2010
Phil Schaffner <Philip.R.Schaffner at NASA.gov>

R P Herrold wrote on 06/04/2010 10:23 PM:
> On Sat, 5 Jun 2010, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
...
>> As far as I have seen while being in #centos, most beginners' questions
>> (in the context of netinstall) were more or less similar to "what should
>> I put in the 'mirror' and 'path' fields ?". Can we patch anaconda so as
>> to prepopulate those two without overloading any particular mirrors
>> (maybe using somehow the output of mirrorlist ) ?

Pre-populating the mirror fields is, like improving docs, a good thing, 
but really a separate issue from including a netinstall option on the 
LiveCD.  A more valuable option IMHO would be the install-LiveCD-to disk 
via whatever mechanism, but that too may be a separate discussion.

...
> The next question in #centos from beginner is 'why did my 
> install across the internet fail' and

Similar questions come from forum users.  That to me is the real killer 
disadvantage of netinstall - it is just not going to work well for a 
significant fraction of users, even if the mirror fields are optimally 
populated, leading to frustration and a bad initial experience with 
CentOS.  Having it as a LiveCD option seems to be an implicit 
endorsement that this is a viable way to install.  More savvy users will 
know the pros and cons of netinstall, particularly assuming they read 
the (improved) docs, and can easily grab the small ISO image if they 
want it.

Phil