Split Media - A use case

[Bill McGonigle]

On 06/15/2009 12:24 PM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> In fact, why are you wasting a DVD or CDs? That's not very green of you.
> Give them a USB stick with the DVD install ISO loaded on it so it can be
> reused for more useful things.

On a machine with only a CD drive, it's not unreasonable to assume 
either a BIOS that can't boot a USB stick or USB 1, which is likely 
slower than IDE CD.

One population I've been recommending for Fedora lately is folks with 
Apple PPC gear which has been abandoned by Apple.  Devices like iBooks 
often came standard with CD-ROM.

If I'm helping someone with an install, it's usually at my office with a 
fast cable modem.  Around here, though, more than half of the population 
is on dial-up.  Even a LiveCD install isn't sufficient for many of them, 
though delta RPM's are a major advance for them, once they've installed 
the bulk of data.

Does Fedora want to exclude folks with old machines on dial-up?  That 
would be a strategic decision with positive and negative implications.

I seed the Centos 5.3 CD's because I use them quite a bit on older 
servers and see that set as one of my highest bandwidth users.  The 
mindset seemed to be for a while, for servers, "it's not a multimedia 
machine, it doesn't need DVD".  That's the height of narrow foresight, 
but seemingly common in mid-sized companies' data centers.  And getting 
a replacement DVD for their stupid proprietary slim CD slot is somewhere 
between ludicrously expensive and impossible.  But they usually have 
USB2.  I could probably count a dozen machines I've installed from my 
own CD set.

Really, though, if I can compose a CD set from a repo or DVD, and it's 
ridiculously easy, I don't care if it's on the mirrors. Does jigdo make 
it that easy?  I haven't tried yet.

Does smolt report data on optical drives in machines?

-Bill

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