Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 14:20:13 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: ScrumpyJack <scrumpyjack@me.com>
Cc: Alpine Devel List <alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org>
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] On the relevance of alpine-standard.iso
Message-ID: <20150818142013.050eee83@ncopa-desktop.alpinelinux.org>
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Sorry for late reply.

On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 12:46:33 +0000 (UTC)
ScrumpyJack <scrumpyjack@me.com> wrote:

> Poking around the alpine ISO, there seems to be a healthy selection of
> packages in there geared toward the assumption that the user will be
> building a switch, a router, or a voip appliance, SIP or something
> similar.
> 
> This seems to show a bias towards network appliance building, and is the
> result of a choice in packages to include, and that choice implies a
> preference, or a bias. This would be fine if network appliances was all
> Alpine Linux was good for, but, of course Alpine Linux is much more
> than that.
> 
> The obvious question is why exclude or omit this or that packages?

Good question.
 
> In addition, that makes the ISO an edited version of the ever growing
> Alpine Repositories.
> 
> To avoid this sort of limiting experience, or bias, or edited selection, I
> wonder if there is a use of a large Alpine Linux ISO build/distribution.
> 
> At risk of sounding like a sales person, the alpine-mini ISO, which 
> contains the essential packages to boot a basic operating environment, 
> set up wired/wireless networking and an ssh server, allows the user enough 
> to go find the exact packages she needs to build her environment and 
> choose the software she'd like.
> 
> In addition, it was pointed out to me that perhaps packages in an ISO
> might deter some from connecting to, or setting up, a repo, which has 
> implications on keeping up to day with security patches.
> 
> Would there be value in ceasing to provide the current Alpine Linux
> "standard" ISO, and replacing it with the Alpine Mini ISO (and dropping
> the mini label)?

I think you have good points.

I gave it a bit thought and realized that the bigger iso is for typical
live/diskless/tmpfs installs. I think this is the only reason for using
the alpine.iso.

In all other setups I would think that the alpine-mini.iso  would be to
prefer.

But to avoid confusion. I would like to avoid re-use the alpine.iso
name. (also, why do we call it alpine.iso and not alpine-linux.iso?)

So what i think would make more sense would be to rename
alpine-mini.iso to alpine-bootonly.iso (or maybe
alpine-linux-bootonly.iso) and alpine.iso to alpine-livecd.iso (or
alpine-linux-livecd.iso) or similar.

I do think it makes sense to promote the alpine-mini or alpine-bootonly
iso on the frontpage instead of the bloated image.

Does anyone else have better ideas?

-nc


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