Subject: Should we shrink the installer by a gig or so?
From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
To: Guix-patches via <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2020 22:56:27 +0200
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Guix,

I've met at least someone who was worried that Guix wouldn't 
support their System ‘because the installer fell back to text 
mode’.  They didn't mean nomodeset: obviously a 1.5-GiB ISO must 
be hiding a full desktop somewhere, not just the interface of a 
text-mode netinstaller image about 2.5% its total size:

  $ du -h Downloads/trisquel-netinst_8.0_amd64.iso
  37M	…

  $ du -h /gnu/store/l005v0ssz34gz5mrg3vpr51sq8sry8wp-image.iso
  1.5G	…

Now I'm not suggesting we add Gnome (yet), but how about reducing 
the size by 60% for 1.1.0?

  du -h /gnu/store/jcpg5wsflpymiq3vx929wq2cr0qbw44f-image.iso
  561M	…

Our CD image finally fits on a CD!  Remember those?  I try not to.

It also fits onto the ~100 1-‘GB’ USB drives I have in a box and 
can now finally give away as Guix installers.

Zisofs is a somewhat obscure, Linux-specific extension to Rock 
Ridge that transparently (de)compresses file data using zlib.  Our 
linux-libre already supports it.  As far as the system is 
concerned it's just a regular iso9660 file system.

Unlike squashfs (with which I'm currently playing) it requires 
zero further changes to the creation or boot process that could 
introduce new bugs.  Hence I'm hopeful that this can be tested and 
merged in time for the next release.

Kind regards,

T G-R