[Cialug] Debian 3.1 Sarge is Released

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:01:07PM -0500, Alan Maupin wrote:
> Why are there 14 CD images?  

Because sarge is the biggest freedom-loving chunk of software
released this way ever.  

14 CDs just gets you the binaries for one architecture.  You'd
need a whole heck of a lot more than that for all the
architectures and the source.  Thatsa lotta software.

> Are all of these necessary?

Necessary for what?  For whom?

If you "need" a package that's on disk 12, or whatever, and CDs
are the only way you have to get it, then yes, you need disk 12. 
Ditto all the other disks.

If you've got a net connection, then no, you don't need all of
them.  Installing from CD is handy to start with, but disk 1
will get a running system capable of using your net connection
to install other packages.  I've seen someone claim that most
people will at most want the stuff that's on up to about the
first 3 CDs.  But, like most things, "it depends".

In fact, if you've got just about any kind of a bootable Linux
live CD (eg KNOPPIX) and a net connection, that's all you need. 
You could do a chroot install using debootstrap and never use
one of the Debian install CDs.  

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html#chroot

This is growing to be my favorite way to do an install, both
because I got bored with tracking down and burning the latest
testing install CD and because, well, it's sort of fun and
interesting to see how well I can get it setup right the first
time before trying the reboot.  I generally get tripped up
somewhere, like editing /etc/mkinitrd.conf, or forgetting I need
an /etc/fstab, or forgetting to mkdir a mountpoint for /proc. 
The last time I did this, I was still learning how to install
and use grub, so there were some issues there.  But if it's your
Nth install, it's a great exercise.  I wouldn't recommend it for
your first install, or for doing on your only machine.

It all depends on what your needs and situation are.

-- 
D. Joe Anderson         http://www.etrumeus.com/~deejoe
"DRM [...] is to copyright law as a machine gun on                                          
a motion detector is to real estate law"  -- Don Marti