Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] Image size issues

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Author: anonym
Date:  
To: The T(A)ILS public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] Image size issues
23/12/10 22:11, intrigeri:
> Hi,
>
> building the current devel branch (based on Squeeze) produces images
> ~738M => too big for a CD.
>
> we probably could find clever ways to get this number down.
> in the meantime I've had a look to the dumb ways :)
>
> * without I2P: 693M
> * replacing openoffice with abiword + gnumeric: 645M
>
> what I'd like to avoid is the need to prepare, release and distribute
> two different images (i.e. light and deluxe).


Agreed. Incognito originally also had a <=50 MB "tiny" version aimed for
business card-sized CDs, but it was a major hassle to maintain two versions.

If we're already approaching the 700 MB limit, perhaps we should look
into a lighter DE than Gnome?

> opinions, better ideas are of course welcome.


I have two suggestions:

1. Let's clear out /var/lib/apt/lists (except the sub-dir called
"partial", which can be left empty). That's 60 MB in T(A)ILS 0.6.1. That
makes it annoying to install new software though since one has to
"apt-get update" before. If we choose to do this, perhaps this directory
is another candidate for being persistent once that has been implemented?

2. One thing I cleared in Incognito for additional space was
/usr/share/doc, which in T(A)ILS 0.6.1 amounts to another 66 MB. One
possible legal problem with this is that licenses usually reside there,
and I guess most licenses require them to be shipped with any binary
distribution. Parhaps we could have a script which re-names them
appropriately and puts them in a licences subdir? E.g.
/usr/share/doc/tor/copyright --> /usr/share/doc/licences/tor-copyright, etc.

In total that's a whooping 126 MB, but the licenses are ~8 MB, so if we
keep them that's still 118 MB, which is still pretty good. I suppose
that translates to about half when compression is taken into account,
which should be enough for shipping both I2P and OpenOffice.

Also, there must be several packages of the 900 installed packages
(that's in 0.6.1) we can clear out...

Cheers!