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 a Anaconda as an appliance (short: Standaconda) 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).

Note the Live architecture uses anaconda too, just running as a regular desktop application (henceforth called Anaconda-app).

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 I believe has a superset of features compared to the Anaconda UI)

Key Standalone Anaconda

 * Standaconda allows choosing filesystems
 * Standaconda allows installing with updates before reboot
 * Standaconda can act as an upgrader as well

= Unification =

A possible plan:


 * Create a DVD-sized Live image that also includes all of its installed RPMs in standalone .rpm file form


 * Add RPMS (not installed) to fill out a full desktop install, such as OpenOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, etc.


 * An explicit "Upgrade existing system" .desktop file can then consume these RPMS and offer the same set of possibilities that it did in the Standaconda scenario (such as filesystem choice, upgrades)


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