Re: guixsd offline installation media

[Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl>]

If you are on a slow connection (and 90% of the world IS on a slow
connection) downloads are a problem. I am in Africa now. Guix
pull is one problem - I accidentily did that and now I can't do
anything because it wants to fetch a complete rebuilt Guix. But also 
installing by package is problematic, though I appreciate that
Guix does not load things twice (well, actually it does when a
transaction gets interrupted or fails - we could avoid that by caching
intermediate source tar balls and binary downloads, really no reason
not to since they have hashes too).

Similar to the minimal tar-ball release we could provide a bare-bones,
desktop, desktop for developers, and 'sumo' release quite easily and
seed those with torrents. I think. It would also make sense to sell
DVD's or USB's with Guix installed. Maybe a little side-business for
the FSF?

Pretty much what Debian does.

Even though Guix is a rolling update distribution, tar-ball installs
make sense.

Pj.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 03:03:31PM +0700, Dika Setya Prayogi wrote:
> I understand, that's why I write it "for future guixsd" not for next
> guixsd. from my thoughs offline installation is the nicest way to
> autobuild a system. for me, I prefer download an 4Gb iso file rather
> than failing build 4 times (that will make me angry and wreck
> something, lol). and in this modern live there is many download option
> like a postponeable download ex:torrent that will cover up an slow
> bandwith, but in a case sensitive like building OS, a failed download
> can be a disaster. my conclusion is it's nice to have a stable system
> first then you can costumize or wreck it as you want, whatever how
> many times you misconfigured or break your os you can reinstall the
> stable installation and wreck it again. thanks for your attention Ludo
> :-)
> 
> 2015-12-18 5:41 GMT+07.00, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>:
> > Hi!
> >
> > Dika Setya Prayogi <dikasetyaprayogi@gmail.com> skribis:
> >
> >> can we make an offline installation media for future guixsd ? because
> >> it is more reliable and easy to build in slow or problematic bandwith
> >> like in my town
> >
> > The main difficulty is that the set of packages needed depends on what
> > the OS configuration file contains.
> >
> > We could populate the installation media such that it contains
> > everything needed for the bare-bones.scm config, or for the desktop.scm
> > config (but it would be big!).
> >
> > However, as soon as the user would choose a different config, they would
> > have to download different things, and perhaps those already in the
> > installation image would happen to be unnecessary.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > BTW, note that our current server at hydra.gnu.org performs very badly,
> > which explains the slow bandwidth (as well as the current fundraiser,
> > see <http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/donate/>.  :-)).
> >
> > Ludo’.
> >
> 

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