[Fedora-livecd-list] Minimal development environment on Livecd

[Jeremy Katz]

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 05:29 +0100, James Gallagher wrote:
> Right, here you go, keeping in mind that this is a
> LiveCD, do we really need

It is a live CD, but it's also one of the primary installation paths for
Fedora.  So it's important that it showcase the strengths and unique
things about Fedora within the LiveCD.

> 1. Selinux, selinux troubleshooter

There have been a number of threads along this line, but SELinux is a
big part of Fedora.  Take away SELinux and you don't really have Fedora
as such.  Also, as it turns out, given that you can't remove most of it
(deps still pull in things like the libraries and utils), there isn't
much space to be gained

> 2. Totem Movie player (it doesn't actually play
> anything does it?)

It plays plenty of content!  But _free_ content, not content that's
encumbered by patents

> 3. Gnumeric Spreadsheet (How many people are gonna use
> a livecd for spreadsheet work)

Although it's not the best metric in the world, I have definitely used
it on multiple occasions.  As one of the parts is marketing, it's good
to be able to show that the capability is there to avoid people thinking
its not.

> 4.Evolution (99%  of peeps will use web based mail on
> a livecd)

Again, remember that people do install from the live image.  Which makes
it a harder call.  Especially when evolution is one of the "major" apps.
I expect that more people use it than would build kernel modules,
though.

> Also, bear in mind that many people install from the
> livecd, and are then left without an internet
> connection to run the add/remove package manager. If
> they could easily enable a wifi driver then the above
> packages can easily be added after installation.

But to enable wifi drivers, we should be working towards enabling
_supporting them out of the box with Fedora_.  Not requiring users to go
and find a howto that has them compile a driver which may or may not
infringe upon the GPL.  For your specific case of the atheros chip used
by the eee, there is continuing work to actually properly support the
chip with the mainline driver rather than completely unsupportable
solutions like madwifi or ndiswrapper.  

And if the argument is that people can't get online to do things like
install the set of packages for doing compilation, then how are they
going to get online to get the "driver"?  The chicken and the egg
problem still exists, it's just moved around a bit.  Given the way that
our livecds support installing random bits, it's easy enough for someone
who has a real need to yum install the minimal development pieces that
you're suggesting and then do the build.  Or just download a tarball of
a binary driver.  

Jeremy