You lost a new Ubuntu user

[Ian Lynch]

On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 19:53 +0000, Richard Tattersall wrote:
> I dont feel that the time is quite right to move to having the default
> release as a DVD.  

Why not have more than one default release? Ok it sounds tricky but if
the DVD release is simply a superset of the CD it should not be much
more work. As I said before, with 16 gig USB drives becoming common and
netbooks with entirely solid stat storage it would be really neat to buy
a solid state disc with Ubuntu and all the popular apps pre-installed
and just insert it into your machine. A lot of people would pay for that
convenience and it's something tat would e pretty well impossible to do
with proprietary software.

> Obviously at some point in the future as the code increases this will
> have to happen, but surely this should be a decision taken by the core
> developers only when they feel that trying to make it fit on a CD
> will mean removing too much of the core functionality to make it a
> viable out-of-the-box desktop experience.
>  
> Much of the usefulness and charm of Ubuntu comes from it maintaining
> its relatively small size and handyness, even on older systems.
>  
> As a small aside, i also fear that moving to a DVD too early may
> result in unessesary bloat.

To an extent one man's bloat is another's essential feature :-)

> Is it not possible to release cd images with a default language other
> than english?  Surely the most logical solution would be to have a
> separate .iso released for handful of the most common languages.
> I am not familiar with how translation in software really works so
> please correct me if I am barking up the wrong tree here.

Not sure with Ubuntu but OOo has separate localisation projects and each
project can produce it's own ISO if it wants to.

> I would also like to lend support to the idea of asking the user
> before the installer connects to the internet.  Although it may seem
> trivial to some people, I see it as simply being polite.  I dont want
> to feel like my OS thinks it knows what I want better than I do.

Agreed. I think this is a bit of a different issue really because
updates would still be needed whatever the size of the default install.
 
> A simple dialog along these lines would suffice, and help the user to
> feel like they are using an OS, not the other way around:
>  
> "To install the the following components you have selected, extra
> packages must be downloaded from the internet:  
> <packages>
> To install these now, please click continue.  If you do not wish to
> install these right now, please click install later
> <continue><install later>"

-- 
Ian
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