hi, i wonder if there is a chance to see network installer in haiku someday (ofcourse after R1 is released). here we can read that linux installers are not friendly in some user’s opinions, it is quite difficult to say but in my opinion linux installers like in archlinux are really nice; but ofcourse installer like we have in beos max will be much better. why i mentioned archlinux; because this distro has very nice network installer; i put it on small 210mb cd and can have always in my pocket :D. is there any plans for smaller .iso with haiku from that we will be able to download packages via network (in my opinion this would be awesome 
)?
ps. also waiting for other’s opinions
I think that haiku probably won’t be bigger than a CD. A full BeOS with office and lots of programs fits on one cd.
if programs are “BeOS” native they tend to be only half the size of linux
hmm, it is obvious i guess that beos apps are smaller; but for example i cannot put BeOS max on small 210mb cd; only some distros can be put on that kind of cds; smaller ones like bBX. still thinks that network installer will be very usable.
alzen wrote:
hmm, it is obvious i guess that beos apps are smaller; but for example i cannot put BeOS max on small 210mb cd; only some distros can be put on that kind of cds; smaller ones like bBX. still thinks that network installer will be very usable.
BeOS MAX is just that…maximum - it’s packaged TONS of stuff, and a lot of it is ported.
BeOS5 PE is only a 45mb installer… considering it’s the basis of BeOSMAX and other “distros” - you can see that it’s not the OS that is big.
PE is missing the dev tools, which roughly are about a 15mb zip.
even w/that it’s still darn small for an OS 
I think I know what alzen meant. But I think that a small OS like this should resist on a small USB memory or some other kind of media.
or an flash memory on the motherboard
A fairly simple example…
The last step of OS installation could be to select the apps from a BeBits-like web page that shows app names and a short description, and the the OS installer downloads and installs the apps 1 at a time.
That way, the packaged distro could be updated on the fly by making changes to the associated web page, and will remain tiny, because the packages are available on-line instead of on media.
I thought you were talking about booting the installer using PXE…
I know that every machine today supports booting from the CD-ROM reader, but would be very nice if we can boot the OS (not for using, just for installation).
Any comments?
PXE installation would be great - I had to PXE install R5 last night by:
PXE booting Knoppix
Installing Debian through Knoppix
Making a FAT partition and laying it out like R5 PE with the BeOS/image.be and so on
PXE booting FreeDOS 9
Running loadbeos.com
Installing BeOS from within PE
Network mounting Pro from the now installed PE to install it.
Argh.
MYOB wrote:
with chance that I sound like a total newbe. What is PXE?
PXE
ModeenF wrote:
MYOB wrote:with chance that I sound like a total newbe. What is PXE?PXE
Pre-boot eXEcution. A standard for network booting either images for system install or for just running the OS off them. Its an Intel standard, based off DHCP and Trivial FTP, and is supported by most new network cards. It means you don’t need floppies with network boot roms, or a bootp server with special support for each NIC makers boot rom standard.
Unfortunately, Intels own PXE boot agent was crap for years, but version 4.1 fixed a lot of issues.