Problems trying to fit antiX-full on a cd. So, please think about these questions.

1. How important is it for you to have as many printing apps/libs on the livecd?
eg cups, system-config-printer etc

2. Is gdebi really that useful so it has to be included on the livecd?

3. How about file archivers? We already ship with xarchiver. File-roller (and the mate desktop alternative) is nice, but ups the MBs.

4. Any other thoughts?

To me. CD size is paramount as not everyone is PLOP proficient as I am so usb combo PLOP boot is just beyond some users skill set.

I have yet to wonder why Libreoffice needs to be on the live cd but I guess Live with Persistence dudes will rat pack me for that statement,
Meta Package installer is another I wonder about in a live session.
To me. As a rescue CD. Gparted. Slitaz Mountbox. NTFS driver to get into Windows. blkid, leafpad, parted, automount.
You know. The repair crap.

That is what I see as a must have for a live cd. One can build up from a install from there.
Anyways. This is just the 1st reply to this question.
I am hoping there will be many others.

For me personally, I don't use a printer, I use tar & gzip occasionally, & have never used gdebi.

What I see as important are a full set of wifi drivers, a decent web browser, decent file manager, plus a music/movie player (& alsa); & of course, a package manager.

Then, I think it is down to the user as to what else gets installed; though most people do seem to expect an office suite.

There seem to be plenty of people who can only install from a CD so size is definately a priority.

Just my thoughts. __{{emoticon}}__

If its possible I think libreoffice should be kept. maybe pair down to writer and calc instead of everything. If it must go due to size...I'm not sure I would replace them with abiword or gnumeric. I like gnumeric well enough, but abiword (unless its gotten substantially better lately) completely scrambles standard academic necessities like foot notes and such.

I would be OK with dropping file-roller and gdebi. claws-mail and luckybackup are other candidates. I wouldn't replace claws-mail with anything. DosBox as well (although I actually use the thing, hello Mechwarrior 2!)

I have got the iso down to c. 670MB with removing gdebi and its dependencies, and some printer-drivers.
File-roller is kept, as is some printer/cups stuff.
Libreoffice remains.

In alpha3 (IIRC) a few large, stray, var/apt/cache files may have been unnecessarily included in the distribution.

Last time I checked (alpha3?) deborphan indicated about 17Mb of unneeded libs present.
On my own (you might not want to 'damage' the distribution by doing this) I freed a noticeable chunk of space by
emptying the contents of the ...themes/icons/*/256/* directories.

(previously discussed) mlocate.db can be omitted ~~ it's regenerated on-the-fly
icon cache files can be omitted (to be regenerated manually, on-demand... or as a scripted step in the installer)
*.pyc files can be omitted (will be regenerated later, automatically, _IF_ ever needed)
apt-xapian-index/ files are already being omitted, yes?

rokytnji wrote:To me. CD size is paramount...

In full agreement with this.

anticapitalista wrote:1. How important is it for you to have as many printing apps/libs on the livecd?
eg cups, system-config-printer etc
...
Libreoffice remains.

dolphin_oracle wrote:If its possible I think libreoffice should be kept. maybe pair down to writer and calc instead of everything. If it must go due to size...I'm not sure I would replace them with abiword or gnumeric.

Depleting printing ability while retaing an office suite which relies heavily on being able to print seems to be sending mixed messages.

I agree with the comments about abiword and gnumeric. Perhaps a suite such as WPS Office suite might be a potential candidate for shipping with Libreoffice available via metapackage. Although it is not a complete replacement for Libreoffice it takes up significantly less space and claims high compatibility with MS Office.

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Other ideas off-the-top-of-my-head (i.e. little thought) for alpha6
* Remove Clipit
* Remove Vim (already have leafpad & geany)
* Replace Xfburn with something smaller e.g. SimpleBurn
* Remove XSane (keep Simple Scan instead)
* Uncertain GNOME PPP, GPRS-EDGE-UMTS-Panel

I concur with removing gdebi as well as dolphin_oracle's suggestion of paring down LibreOffice to just Calc and Writer. Do you really need the other LibreOffice components on a live USB? I would also consider removing the number of window managers that come by default; maybe offer different ISOs with different window managers.

I'm not sure how useful having CUPS on a live USB is. I personally have never had a need to use a printer while using a live USB, but that's just me.

maybe there needs to be a Full ISO that's designed to be written to a USB (as it may be too large for a CD) while having a more stripped down ISO for CD/DVD.

Thoughts?

Some other distros handle this by having a program that runs at the end of the installer where you select other major programs beyond the defaults and they get downloaded and installed at that point. I think you want a basic, functional system with all utilities, disk access and recovery programs included that fits on a CD, but perhaps with only one of each major type of program, like browsers and such. That way you can run from CD or install to USB or hard drive or SSD.

Maybe a variant of the"select services" menu thing in the installer?

IMHO,
if the"true" full version becomes larger than that which can fit on a single cd, then there should be 2 options
1) full dvd iso / usb installation
2) multi cd iso

in option 2 you would load the first cd.
The first cd would have 2 grub options:
1) the"true" full option which would prompt for the extension cd at boot (which is basically a sources.lst cd) and install all that is included on that extension cd. Then continue to load the environment.
2) load the first cd without the extension to allow quick rescue and prompt for the extension cd at the end of the installer / or at the first boot into the newly installed system.

But that is to say we will no longer fit on a cd....
Which is on of the primary goals as far as I know. __{{emoticon}}__

Or maybe have a base version, with an"upgrade to full" script, if that is not too much work?

My comment came from Manjaro's install where they have/had a tab for each major group of programs where they had too many choices to be able to get them on one CD, so you did a basic install, and then could select others on the post install program.

And yes, a screen like where you select services would work for each group of programs or maybe all of them sorted by group. For example, you could select any or all Firefox, Aoura, Chromium, Opera or Midori I think on the browser tab, but I think Firefox gets installed initially as the default from the CD itself.

To be honest, for a sharp user, its not much better than using synaptic, but for beginners its a blessing because they can just click it.

And I don't have any problem with Dave's suggestion either if the main apps ever get to where they run out of room trying to fit on CD, but I am glad that keeping it fitting on a Cd is seen as important, because for rescue use it is.

Just remember fellas. We are a lean, mean, small, mighty team with minimal resources at hand.

Not like Ubuntu, Open-Suse, or Debian who do not even offer a stripped down Icewm cd distro
of their releases as a live cd.


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Let alone some more Window Manager choices and still fit on a cd. So I am quite happy with

I have got the iso down to c. 670MB with removing gdebi and its dependencies, and some printer-drivers.
File-roller is kept, as is some printer/cups stuff.
Libreoffice remains.

Myself.