Hi there,
Fedora Unity is seriously considering Re-Spinning the Live Spins
released with Fedora 10, based on Fedora 10 + updates. We might call
them Re-Live-Spins, just for the fun of it ;-)
We know there is, or there has been, a lot of politics involved with the
topic of Re-Spinning in general, and with the idea of Live Re-Spins even
more so, as there has been when we first started with the regular
installation media Re-Spins, or back in the day when we did the first
Fedora Live Spin (using Kadischi). I think it's fair to say that, so
far, we have not embarrassed anyone, despite the concerns or distrust.
Different arguments in previous discussions include, amongst others, the
concern that Quality Assurance on our part might be lacking in
comparison to the QA done on regular releases, and the fact that these
Re-Spins or Live Re-Spins have not been composed on Fedora
Infrastructure -wrt. security risks. All well so far, but the fact that
these arguments have always been... let's just say... less constructive,
not to bluntly say they have often been condescending, and sometimes
even offensive.
After more then 12 releases of the Fedora Unity Re-Spins, we feel
confident we have the team suited to fulfill the desire of the community
to get their hands on some Live Re-Spins.
You may be wondering... "What part of the community are we talking
about? How many people download these things anyway?". Well, at the time
of this writing, 820 people are downloading the Fedora Unity spins[1]
through BitTorrent, compared to 628 for the Fedora Project spins[2].
Bear in mind both have alternative distribution methods as well and
these numbers do not represent anything -it's just an indication of the
amount of people downloading Re-Spins and Fedora Unity Spins (Such as
the Everything Spin).
Since it's not like we're on a tight schedule or anything, we wanted to
give the Fedora Advisory Board a chance to tune in on our thoughts and
process and discussion and tell us what you think, hopefully bringing
some new arguments to the table.
A few more things to ponder;
- Fedora Unity wholeheartedly agrees with the fact these spins should be
created on proper Fedora Infrastructure. Now, if only we could get our
hands on a x86_64 Fedora instance... Regardless of the specific version
of Fedora because our tools allow cross-composing stuff.
- Fedora Unity's Test team will make sure the Live Re-Spins also pass
the respective QA TestCases. We may even come up with a few more as we
put the spins through the wringer.
- Fedora Unity has automated the process. Scripts take care of
jigdofying, torrentifying and distributing the Re-Spins and Live
Re-Spins amongst several peers which, once the initial distribution has
taken place, will become jigdo mirrors or torrent seeds.
- Yes, these efforts might be (are) better spent at testing rawhide or
even Alpha/Beta/RC/GA releases. Don't worry, many of our efforts have
resulted in testing what was to be in Alpha/Beta/RC/GA before it ever
happened. Besides, it's not like we're proposing supporting Fedora
releases until after it's EOL dates.
- Yes, these efforts might be (are) better spent at testing rawhide or
even Alpha/Beta/RC/GA releases. However, with the Remix tools and
configuration files being out there, someone has to take up the effort
of supporting *current* releases -that includes the kickstarts, the
tools, the applications (anaconda, pykickstart, etc), the packages
included on spins, and the overall size of the spin. Right now, only
Fedora Unity bothers.
- Fedora Unity has the tools to include sources with the spins. We have
been distributing sources with our spins from the beginning, and we will
continue to do so.
- The size of each Live Spin to be respun is most likely to increase.
The same thing happens when a user respins the live media, and we are
most likely to end up stripping packages off the live media, bearing in
mind the original maintainer of the spin might be willing to help us and
preserving the original use-case of the spin, or we are having oversized
media that only fits DVDs. Right now, several Fedora 10 spins (when
respun by a user) experience the effect of larger updates and pulled-in
dependencies.
- The Fedora Unity team is also considering releasing Localized Live
Re-Spins, finally aiding those particular parts of the community that
request localized spins when walking up a booth at any given event, and
those parts that request localized spins before they even go attend at a
booth.
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip
[1] http://spinner.fedoraunity.org:6969/
[2] http://torrent.fedoraproject.org:6969/
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