debian-cd-clone/tasks
Raphaël Hertzog 458a589244 - Remove kernel cruft.
- Fix sorting in list2cds and cds2src (problematic with perl 5.8 and random
  hashes).
2004-01-29 00:39:07 +00:00
..
Debian_potato integrated whatever was useful in -redhat into -fromcd23 and ditched the rest; more updates and reshuffling in -fromcd23 and forcd1 2003-07-25 11:14:18 +00:00
Debian_sarge integrated whatever was useful in -redhat into -fromcd23 and ditched the rest; more updates and reshuffling in -fromcd23 and forcd1 2003-07-25 11:14:18 +00:00
Debian_sid integrated whatever was useful in -redhat into -fromcd23 and ditched the rest; more updates and reshuffling in -fromcd23 and forcd1 2003-07-25 11:14:18 +00:00
Debian_woody integrated whatever was useful in -redhat into -fromcd23 and ditched the rest; more updates and reshuffling in -fromcd23 and forcd1 2003-07-25 11:14:18 +00:00
README reverted to multiple-field sorting of the popcon results, it's somewhat better 2003-07-30 18:31:47 +00:00
base-sarge - Updated tasks/base-sarge with debootstrap 0.2.23. 2004-01-28 23:35:48 +00:00
base-woody * Updated script in tasks/base-woody. 2002-03-16 23:07:55 +00:00
debian-installer Updated debian-installer related tasks. 2003-11-13 17:33:50 +00:00
debian-installer+kernel add console-cyrillic, console-terminus, hotplug 2004-01-14 00:41:59 +00:00
empty * Many modifications to support the inclusion of local packages 2000-03-07 18:59:31 +00:00
exclude-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
exclude-sarge - Remove kernel cruft. 2004-01-29 00:39:07 +00:00
exclude-src-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
exclude-woody These files get things we don't need (like kernels) off of CD1, and promotes 2002-07-01 19:03:42 +00:00
forcd1 add console-cyrillic, console-terminus, hotplug 2004-01-14 00:41:59 +00:00
interesting-fromcd23 removed word2x (unmaintained and only a subset of wv's functionality) 2003-09-13 13:46:51 +00:00
interesting-tasks-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
kernel-related-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
linuxexpoamsterdam2001 * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
linuxtag2000 * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
popularity-contest-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
popularity-contest-sarge reverted to multiple-field sorting of the popcon results, it's somewhat better 2003-07-30 18:31:47 +00:00
popularity-contest-woody * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
task-essential-sarge * Fix two stupid errors/typo. 2002-10-10 17:27:12 +00:00
task-full-sarge sync with task.list 2003-07-24 23:40:27 +00:00
task-woody Modified Debian_woody 2002-05-04 12:34:16 +00:00
task.list rearranged so that some of the beefier tasks don't try to get onto the first CD 2003-07-24 23:33:00 +00:00
unexclude-CD2-potato * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00
unexclude-CD2-sarge - Remove kernel cruft. 2004-01-29 00:39:07 +00:00
unexclude-CD2-woody These files get things we don't need (like kernels) off of CD1, and promotes 2002-07-01 19:03:42 +00:00
xservers-XFree3 * Updated and reorganized package/popularity lists, as produced by the 2001-04-24 23:27:10 +00:00

README

NOTE: In these lists, package names should be on one line by itself.
      No spaces/tabs/comments on the same line.

cpp does not remove spaces/tabs, and perl apparently considers literally
everything between \n and \n as package name. So, it's best to have no
spaces/tabs at all outside the comment delimiters.

The exclude/unexclude lists are NOT preprocessed, so comments there are
not supported.

-----

Popularity contest results:

 wget http://people.debian.org/~ballombe/popcon/main/by_inst
 wget http://people.debian.org/~ballombe/popcon/contrib/by_inst
 grep -h '^[^#]' by_inst* | egrep -v '(Total|-----)' | sort -rn -k3,3 -k7,7 -k4,4 | awk '{print $2}'

-----

THE "USEFUL CD 1 PROJECT" RATIONALE                  J.A. Bezemer, Jan-Apr 2001
                                                     costar@panic.et.tudelft.nl

Quite many Debian users do not have the Complete Official CD set, but only
one (or sometimes two) CDs. They expect that CD to be as useful as
possibe, that is, to contain as much useful packages as possible.

We have four means to determine the usefulness of a (set of) package(s):
the Popularity Contest (see above), the task-* packages, packages included
on the official CDs of other distributions, and our own experience.

We can distinguish two main groups of people that will use a single Debian CD:
1. People paying nothing
2. People wanting to pay as little as possible

ad 1. This happens mostly at tradeshows/expos/conferences. We can further
subdivide this group into two opposites:
a. Complete Linux newbies that want to use Debian as their first
   distribution.
b. Well-experienced Linux users that want to compare Debian to other
   distributions, mostly with the pre-determined intent to either switch
   to the "best" distribution for their own personal use, or employ the
   "best" distribution for some specific project in their company.

ad 2. This occurs mostly by people ordering CDs from regular vendors.
While groups a. and b. are also present here, there is another group that
deserves attention:
c. Relatively experienced Debian users with a reasonably fast and cheap
   Internet connection that order CD1 to get the bulk of the upgrades, and
   fetch the rest from online repositories.

The mentioned groups each have specific expectations from their single CD.

ad a. Newbies often start using a Linux system guided by some manual or
other piece of literature that may, or may not, be Debian-specific. Many
introductory Linux books describe/demonstrate the same utilities and
programs; however several of these examples don't have much to do with the
daily routine of a more experienced user.

What they do use:
- install tools
- "easy" packages, like task-newbie-help, task-dialup(-isdn), X, Gnome

What they don't use:
- "difficult to learn" packages, like task-sgml, task-fortran
- development packages (well, they may want to compile a new kernel)

ad b. When comparing Linux distributions, quite often either a simple
install without much packages is tried, to see "what it looks like", or a
more elaborate install that mimics one's currently working system, to find
out "what it feels like." Once Debian is recognized as the truly best
distribution, a complete CD set will be bought which will be used to
set-up the production system(s).

What they do use:
- install tools
- "easy" packages
- to compare distributions: packages found in their current distribution /
  other distributions from which they have collected CDs

What they don't use:
- packages that require much setup/tuning, or just "a long time to get
  functional", like task-database-*, task-news-server,
  task-parallel-computing-node
- "heavy development" packages, like task-sgml-dev, task-objc-dev
(maybe they are interested in these packages, but they will recognize
them as being "advanced", and not expect them on the "most popular" CD)

ad c. Upgrading as much packages as possible from a single CD means that
the most-used packages on Debian systems should be present on that CD.

What they do use:
- packages used on at least 5% of all Debian systems (which happens to be
  the top 5% of the Popularity Contest results)

What they don't use:
- the rest

Keeping all this in mind, a solution was developed that (implicitly) uses
all mentioned "rating methods" to create a CD 1 that should answer the
stated demands as well as possible. The lists were entered, tested, verified,
cross-checked and adjusted, until an acceptable result was reached.


Further work/Recommendations:

The described procedure has resulted in a drastically reduced number of
task-* packages that are forced to go on the first CD. But since the
Popularity Contest can't handle task-* packages very well, most of them
will be moved to the last CD in the set, while in many cases all of their
"contents" are available on "more popular" CDs. It would make more sense
if a task package is included as soon as, say, 50-70% of it's dependencies
are included. Since all APT tools are available during CD image creation,
this can probably be automated entirely.