Desktop/Whiteboards/UnifiedInstaller

Unified Installer

Fedora currently provides two major different ways to install, and it's really confusing. The installer guide has an extremely brief summary here.

Terminology here is complicated by the fact that while we sometimes refer to the "Live CD", some instances don't actually fit on a CD (x86_64), and there's no reason that a Live-based system has to be constrained to a CD size.

So in this page, when we use the term "live architecture", we're not referring to CD size, but rather to the way the operating system is built. Likewise, we use "Anaconda-the-OS" (shortened to AOS) to refer to Anaconda as a standalone interface, which is what's used on the DVD as well as netboot scenarios (even though there's no reason a DVD couldn't be Live based).

Key Live architecture benefits

• Live allows try-before-you-buy
• Live allows using the web browser during an install to find out more
• Live allows you to configure your network using the desktop NetworkManager UI (which has a superset of features compared to the Anaconda UI, as of this writing)

Key Anaconda-the-OS benefits

• AOS allows choosing filesystems
• AOS allows installing with updates before reboot
• AOS can act as an upgrader as well

Unification

A possible plan:

• Create a DVD-sized Live image that also includes all of its RPMs in RPM form, as well as the additional RPMS (not installed) to fill out the @gnome-desktop target, such as OpenOffice.

• Rebase the netboot architecture to be an extremely minimal desktop image (say just Firefox, gnome-terminal, and Anaconda as installed apps, nothing else)