2011/1/21 Máirín Duffy <duffy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > On Sat, 2011-01-22 at 03:09 +0000, inode0 wrote: >> Well, this is what was worrying me about this discussion. I think the >> live media (or some sort of live media) really has tremendous value at >> events big and small. If this leads to an effort to make better live >> media I'm all for it. Getting rid of live media is going to be a tough >> sell to those of us who see its value. > > Is the value in demoing *in the booth* or giving to people to take home? There is high value for demo use but not just at booths. The convenience of having them available on your laptop to boot in a VM at will or on a USB stick make it possible to quickly show off Fedora to an interested person pretty much any time the occasion arises. At events I think there is more value in getting people to test Fedora while they are at the event than sending a DVD home with them. Since live media can be experimented with non-destructively I often see someone come back to the booth the next day with questions after playing around with Fedora in their room overnight. That really doesn't happen with the full DVD during events. I have no way of knowing how many people who take DVDs home actually install Fedora from them but I'm pretty pessimistic about the number, I suspect it is pretty low and most event goers at least in NA and EMEA are probably quite capable of downloading it anyway. So as far as event use goes I am a big fan of live media and think it is in general a better thing for us to use to hook folks in that environment. Live media is also valuable to some people to test whether a particular piece of hardware will be happy with Fedora. That use case is small, but it can sure put your mind at ease booting it up and seeing that the wireless works before you buy it. Live media is valuable in various situations where you don't want to install but you want to boot into a safe environment. I use Fedora live media in several ways that fall into this category, but there are alternatives and using Fedora doesn't bring anything specific to these cases. >> > Maybe at events, but it is promoted as such on the website. I'm not sure >> > what % of installs originate from event-distributed media but would it >> > be the majority? I think online is probably the primary distribution >> > channel? (Does that seem sensical?) >> >> I'm sure the number of installs generated by the website dwarfs the >> number from media distributed at events. We probably only give out >> around 6k pieces of media per release in North America so I hope other >> installation sources contribute more to our user base. >> > Ah. So it may not be worth mentioning events much at all in the > proposal. Sorry for stringing it in, especially in such a misinformed > light, I'm very sorry - I don't know much about which media is produced > in what numbers, but thought we had handed out a lot more live media > than DVD at shows I've been boothing at in recent memory. I think it is fair to estimate that in the area of 25k to 30k pieces of pressed media annually are distributed by representatives of the project. Event owners request the media they want for their events, some will choose live media based on availability or their view of how well it matches those who they expect to attend. So what you see at any particular show is not consistent across shows. Freemedia is another data point but I think one you should probably disregard too. Requests for freemedia are overwhelmingly lopsided in favor of full installation DVDs but the folks requesting media that way typically do not have adequate bandwidth to download it so they want as much software on the media as possible. The volume in the freemedia program is also low, maybe around 300-500 pieces of media a month. >> >> >From the perspective of someone who has handed out such media at >> >> events, if the install to hard drive option on the live media is >> >> causing issues my suggestion is to remove it. The live media has great >> >> value without it - it seems to be almost an afterthought anyway. >> > >> > I'm glad to hear this. I don't know how widely this opinion is shared >> > but I hope it is. >> >> I know other people who love installing from live media. But as I look >> at the sources of value that live media brings to the table that is at >> the bottom of the list. >> >> I'll add that the biggest shortcoming of the current live media in my >> opinion is that it doesn't include enough software to really showcase >> Fedora in as powerful a way as it could. I would like to see us move >> to live media that includes much more, perhaps as big as 2GB which >> could easily accommodate a full installer being incorporated into it. > > Yeh, I think a word processor would help. And gimp. And inkscape. But I > am biased :) I agree. I'm not biased for either word processors or inkscape as I really don't use either but I do think they should be on the live media. What we want is to have on the media what will impress the person booting it up and looking around and we don't know in advance what their interests will be (but we know they will cover just about everything if we sum them up). John _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
