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.