On 01/05/2012 07:46 PM, Ed Heron wrote: > On Thu, 2012-01-05 at 18:15 +0200, Manuel Wolfshant wrote: >> ... It depends heavily on the ending result . If you just need a fresh >> machine, installing from fresh is ( was for me at least ) the fastest >> way. OTOH when you also have a ton of additional applications (maybe not >> all of them available as rpm packages) installed / configured... things >> might be different. > I can accept that custom applications might be easier to include > in images. Creating a RPM or install script for a rarely installed > program may not make the top of the priority list. However, if it is > installed identically on multiple systems, it could be converted to rpm > or a scripted install, which could be included in an automated clean > install. As an example, I uuencode my current DHCP configuration, DNS > files, firewall rules and openvpn certificates into a kickstart file to > cleanly install my firewalls. Each is different but is scripted, partly > in the scripts that create my kickstart files and partly in the > kickstart post section. My colleagues from the engineering dept ( I am IT... ) have to use a commercial application which comes as 2 CD images plus 3 sets of 2 isos with updates. All of which have to be installed (at last theoretically ) one after the other and only via their own Java-based installer. Guess who is not going to rpm-ize the process of installing that 8*450 MB piece of wonderful software. And by the way, there are 50% chances that this piece of software was used in the process of design of your phone. At least if the phone was engineered after 2000.