Why this might not be good
Having exclusively a "live" installer would seem to be incompatible with media-free installation, where PXE or Grub loading an installation kernel and initrd, plus network access, are all that is required to initialize and complete an installation, same as every other major Linux distribution I've ever used. I know little about live installers, having only ever used one maybe three times tops that I can recall, all Knoppix. Need to download in advance a full installation iso, burn it somewhere, then boot it, would in all likelihood mean I do no more alpha/beta testing, which in turn would likely mean I abandon Mageia altogether. Is my unfamiliarity with live installers making me misunderstand the proposed end result? Will initializing installation by advance fetch of only kernel, initrd and maybe a modest squashfs no longer be possible?
REPLY
Youn discuss here an area outside my experience. I was suggesting commonising the Live & Classic installs. "media-free installation, where PXE or Grub loading an installation kernel and initrd, plus network access, are all that is required to initialize and complete an installation" I would leave as-is. Must try it one day.
REPLY to reply
For alpha and beta testing, any way other than media-free is a waste of bandwidth, unless specifically testing that the media itself can do what it needs to do. A "media-free" installation is a Classic installation minus media, which avoids download of packages that will not be installed, and download of packages that will have been superceded within minutes, hours or a few days of use, obsoleting what would have been on the downloaded media. The Classic and media-free procedures are identical once initiated, except that in media-free some configuration can be done in advance via cmdline, obviating need to type it all in at the start, such as networking parameters. NAICT, elimination of "Classic" installation would thus eliminate media-free installation.
Drop this It seems that if you propose a feature, it is up to you to do it. Not what I expected. In this circumstance, there was no point in me suggesting this feature, so it is best forgotten. Lewis
