[RULE] do we need a spreadsheet of the software?

[Colin Mattoon]

Just to add my own (non-expert and quite possibly, irrelevant)
observations here:

Network installtion is often vital for this class of equipment,
because low end hardware is more likely than new gear to lack a CDROM,
and the owner is less likely to have access to a CD-RW.  But I'm not a
big fan of Internet installs, even though I use Debian quite a bit.

I would encourage the developers to restrict network installations to
NFS and to advise all potentional users to download only once -- to a
machine that can act as an NFS server.  The first installation of RULE
(to setup an NFS server) should be something done from the hard drive.
Subsequent server and workstation installations can be performed
within the LAN through NFS.

Fewer options should help keep the installer small, and reduce the
work required to debug the installer. A single download per LAN will
reduce competition for the RULE Project's ftp server resources and
bandwidth -- not to mention reducing traffic on the end user's
connection. 

Even when installing over a LAN, and when installing a variety of
distributions, my personal experience has been that NFS installs, when
the option is provided, are less likely to fail than HTTP or FTP
installers.

So, for standalone machines, try to keep the ISO small enough to fit
into, perform an hard drive install from,  the sort of small local
hard drive found in most 486 class machines. For networks, download
once to a machine slated to become the NFS server for the LAN, install
from it's hard drive, configure NFS, mount the ISO as a loop device,
and proceed to install to as many other machines as you like.

It's one of the lessons I've learned from using Slackware, and well
suited to very small distributions.

Later,
Colin Mattoon


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