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List:       fedora-desktop-list
Subject:    Re: Dropping i686 media for F24
From:       Adam Williamson <adamwill () fedoraproject ! org>
Date:       2016-01-28 20:09:27
Message-ID: 1454011767.13948.53.camel () fedoraproject ! org
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On Thu, 2016-01-28 at 18:39 +0100, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> 
> > All distros which ship hybridized ISOs really *need* a tool like
> > this;
> > I've actually poked through the docs for most distros and they all
> > have
> > some kind of instructions for doing a dd-style write on Windows and
> > OS
> > X, and they all kinda suck just like ours. So I think a shared tool
> > with good cross-OS support would be a huge win for all of us. I
> > included links to the support pages for the major distros here:
> > 
> > https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/02/04/more-on-booting-a-practical-
> > fedora-uefi-guide-and-dont-use-universal-usb-stick-writers/
> > 
> > you can see from that that we're all promoting a kind of mish-mash of
> > non-purpose-built tools which don't really give a great user
> > experience
> > overall.
> 
> Having one finalized tool for all distributions is frankly a no-go for
> me. The last thing I wanna have is a tool that people download at
> getfedora.org and that offers them a list of distributions including
> our competition. That would not be wise.

That's not the idea.

> Having some common base which every distribution would use to build
> their own branded LUC on? 

That's the idea. The important bits of the tool are generic, anyway -
the actual writing (and restoring) code (and if we ever get to the
point of writing them, the overlay bits - or if there's distro
specificity to this, it can be made one of the modular bits). The
branding and the list of images for download can very easily be made
modular, such that they can be specified as part of a build step. Then
each distro can have its own 'personalized' package and/or executable
distribution(s), but it's really the same tool under the covers, we
aren't all wasting time working on a dozen bad implementations of the
same thing.

> Why not, but it's definitely not in the scope
> of the current initiative. We will be glad if we have it ready for
> Fedora by 24. And I also think it's in the interest of other
> distributions to drive the project in that direction, we're not the
> ones to create the demand.

I think it's in *everyone's* interests for distributions to collaborate
where it makes sense. A decent USB writing tool is just a box all
distros should be checking, and which we're currently all not checking
while simultaneously wastefully spending separate resources on. A USB
writing tool is really not a big enough deal to be a 'selling point'
for a distribution, it's something we should just get together and
maintain collaboratively to be more efficient and avoid the situation
where we all have a half-assed tool that isn't maintained half the time
and so people wind up using unetbootin or Rufus, failing, and deciding
Linux sucks.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net

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