[SoaS] [DP] Why current linux install systems aren't good enough for truly portable Linux installations.

[Martin Dengler]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 03:05:51AM -0400, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> [I'm tagging this note as a Decision Panel message since I think it's
> relevant to why I think Sugar Labs should at
> a minimum do its own Linux distribution variant.  If SL is going to
> promote Sugar to the masses via a live USB images
> we need to be in a position to work directly on the kinds of
> problems/issues that I discuss below.]

I agree we should discuss and the bottom line you're asking for SL to
do a ton of work.  Work that you claim Fedora and every other Linux
distributor has not done.  I don't think that's a viable position to
have SL take.

> I'm thinking about getting the broken/inconsistent PC hardware
> platform to actually work.
> [lots of variants on this theme]

You think SL will be able to succeed here where every other distro
vendor has not?  I don't think it's possible nor do I think it's
necessary.

> I have a donated lapop that won't boot from a USB stick and can't
> use the current Strawberry CD boot helper.  It will boot from some
> Linux boot CDs just not from the Strawberrry ISO.  I'm pretty sure
> that this is because BIOS only supports 'floppy emulation' booting
> and the modern way to make a bootable Linux CD is to use isolinux
> with no emulation mode.  My reading of the syslinux/isolinux
> site/mailing list is that this was (and may still be) a limitation
> in BIOS.  If Windows doesn't use a feature of a standard then it
> probably doesn't work in half the machines which are first shipped
> to that standard.  OTOH, any machine that supports the 'no
> emulation' booting probably does the full standard.

So again, SL is going to solve this problem?  And solving this problem
is core to SL's mission?

> > The same hardware drivers are installed at install time for a "live"
> > install as for a non-live, subject to the "live" image creator's whim.
> > For example, check the SoaS package list at
> > http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd - 43 xorg-x11-drv rpms for hardware
> 
> That url gives me a blank page.

Whoops - I meant
http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd/soas-xo1/soas70xo.tree.packages.txt

> Bill Bogstad

Martin
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