...Taken from the Open Office poll thread.

I've been mulling this over. I like the idea, but if you take it to it's logical conclusion, you get to a point where nothing is installed by default, and everything gets installed in this way after the OS itself is up and running.

... I don't see this as a bad thing though. Clearly too late to implement in 0.6, but perhaps something to consider for 0.7 and beyond. I think something like this will help Shift stand out from the other *buntu distros.

Just an idea...

Sounds like a Debian "net install"

And it sounds just great.

--//--

IMHO, i feel there's a gap between netinstall ISO or DSL and the 700MB LiveCD. Something betwen that, with a WM like Fluxbox (ok, i'm a little biased in this point ) and some useful apps: i.e., a lightweight GUI text editor like leafpad, an irc client (irssi), a term emulator (maybe urxvt or xterm) and even MPD + MPC/Sonata, Firefox and/or emesene.
This will be something like 300MiB; will have a basic ready to run system and still offers the possibility to costumize a lot

@Mark - yes it does.
@esquiso - yes, exactly what i was thinking.

This is what I was getting at. Not quite as basic as the Debian net install cd, but a way of booting into whatever DE, and then selecting which apps you want to install.

I can envision this going even further. Take pidgin as an example. Clicking the entry in the menu would pop up a box asking if you want to install from the repo (supported, slightly out of date), or from source (unsupported, bang up to date). The first would simply apt-get from the repo, the latter would execute a script to wget the source code and configure (with suitable options)... make... make install it.

Is this even possible, or am I talking rubbish?

I kind of like the idea.

And I think that this might make Shift stand out a bit from the many other distros that are out there.

mark, exactly. None of the most used distros (ok, maybe PCLOS has some version with this propuse, but they haver versions for all sort of stuff) has this middle point.

Well I'll be.... they do as well! http://docs.pclinuxos.com/MiniME

Their emphasis on "ME" is a bit of a put off, after that other OS named ME

I really like the idea, though. Definitely something to look at for 0.7.

Laughs* Who came up with this idea?

I'm not sure I'm understanding this right. If you have a live cd, surely you want it to carry a fully useful general system so that whenever someone uses it for a live session they don't have to download extra things. They are just up and running.

Are you suggesting, though, having an option on the boot screen to install (a) the full live cd system or (b) a barebones system you then customise in some way? If I were using it live, I'd want a good system on the cd. It might be nice to have the option of barebones for an install though. Is this what you were thinking?

But even then, having quick links to let you download OpenOffice or whatever for those using the cd to install seems a bit overboard given that, if you want to install a barebones system, chances are you can just use add/remove or synaptics or something to get the software you want to add.

Good points. I must admit, I wasn't thinking about it from the live cd perspective at all. The idea was based on a "normal" install - more like the Debian net install disk - rather than booting into a live session and installing from there.


Yes, a barebones system which you can then customise yourself virtually from scratch. Having the option of booting into the live cd environment instead would be good though. I like this idea too.

I see what you're saying. The idea, though, was to be able to get to a working desktop environment as quickly as possible, and having a small-ish iso to download. You'd then have full control over what you want to install.

Thinking again about this... I agree, it does seem pointless having a cd full of stuff so that the live cd system is useable... and then just not using it. Perhaps this would be more of a Shift spin-off project (kind of like MiniME) as opposed to the way Shift is released.