changelogs in packages and space use

[Douglas McClendon]

Bill Nottingham wrote:
> seth vidal (skvidal at fedoraproject.org) said: 
>> on my system 1128 packages installed:
>>   new changelogs: 2.2M
>>   old changelogs: 8.6M
>>
>>
>> That may not seem like much but when we're squinched for space in 700M
>> on a livecd that 8.6M might be all that's needed.
> 
> I'm not sure. Trying to fit on a livecd is always a losing game - software
> never gets smaller, the media never gets bigger; all this will save us
> is maybe one release cycle of pain.

OTOH that is the great thing about the game.  It puts a very clear 
pressure in place to prevent, or at least slow, bloat.

I'm personally AMAZED that fedora7 runs what I would call "usably well" 
on a 7? year old laptop I have that has <128M ram (some shared with 
video).  My speculation was that the only reason this happened, was 
because of the pressure OLPC put on the distro.

Looking forward, don't we want fedora to be usable as an embedded 
distro?  That was a laughable proposition before OLPC, but with 8G 
microsd flash shipping, and no doubt being 'dirt' cheap in a couple years...

So maybe the above (I'm skeptical, was that 8.6M *squashfs compressed* 
saved?) only helps for one release cycle.  Then for a release cycle or 
two you have to sacrifice shipping every language in the world on the 
same cd, and go with regional spins.  I can see the 700M form factor 
lasting quite a while.  And I think that the pain of trying to make it 
last, will have many, perhaps more important, secondary benefits.

$0.02...

-dmc