On Sunday 19 January 2014 20:17:38 David Sommerseth wrote:
> On 16/01/14 04:58, Andrew Z wrote:
> > I guess im missing something tonight.
> > So back to my question - why not to have a group of scientific apps in
> > installer ? Whats the advantage of having a separate iso for the  os?
> > Say in fedora the scientific apps will be latest git versions and on el
> > level - production quality.
> 
> It most likely  has to do with limited space on the DVD images.  You can
> only squeeze in a certain number of packages, depending on the package
> sizes into an image.
> 
> So to avoid making many ISO images for download, as most users would
> normally only need one image, special interest groups would then require
> two or more images (unless you have a networking functional during
> install).  With the Fedora spins you get everything for a specific interest
> groups on separate images.  And the result is that you you usually only
> just download one image and (hopefully) get exactly what you want
> instantly.
> 
> But I'm just thinking aloud, I might be wrong.

Precisely. To further the explanation, consider the case of musicians, artists 
and others who have a need for a liveCD that includes enough drivers and 
accessory programs to effectively/meaningfully operate a synthesizer, software 
controlled amp, tablet touchscreen, medical device, etc. and you definitely 
have a space VS utility issue.

Trading away non-English language support, games, about half of Gnome, KDE, 
some of the wilder fringe driver support, etc. in exchange for a more limited 
desktop environment, an office suite, compilers/runtimes for several languages 
and the most commonly used data manipulation and scientific software might be 
a win -- but I have no idea.

Its all about trade-offs and there is definitely competition for space. It 
gets much more strict when building a CD instead of a DVD install, and even 
more when building a live VS install CD.