[Koha] Live DVD

[Lars J. Helbo]

Den 28-05-2013 09:39, Mason James skrev:
> hi Folks
>
> i think this topic still needs a little more discussion, so i added it to the agenda of the next Koha meeting
>
>   http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_meeting,_5_June_2013
>

I was the one, who trickered this discussion - sorry ;-)

Anyway, I have a few points, which somebody might want to consider.

First of all, I think it would be useful to make a distinction between 
live DVD and installation DVD. Here we are talking about live DVD (which 
to me means running the program from the DVD for testing purposes only). 
But to me this DVD is much more like an installation- or distribution 
DVD, making the installation proces easier and thus making Koha more 
easily available to a broader public.

The second question is, if it is legitimate to install Koha from a DVD 
instead og doing a manual installation? For me the only thing that 
matters is the result! I give lectures in Windows, Excel etc. for 
absolute beginners and I allways tell my pupils that most things on a 
computer may be done in several ways. You may copy a string with the 
menu Edit/Copy, with copy from the contextmenu or by pressing Control-C. 
But I also tell them that one way of doing things is not better or more 
correct than the other. I say: "Do things the way you like it, the only 
thing that matters is that you achieve the result that you wanted to."

The same way you may change the MySQL password with a command entered in 
a terminal, with MySQL Workbench or with phpMyAdmin. But how you do it 
is up to you. I have a computer here, on which I installed Koha 3.10 
from the Live DVD, I installed the Danish language files. Now I have 
updated it to 3.12, using packages. Everything works like a charm. As 
far as I can see, the result is exactly as it would have been, if I had 
made a manual installation in the beginning. So what is the problem? At 
least the argument being used against the Live DVD with "lack of update 
path" is definately wrong.

Yes, I do have a graphical desktop on this computer. Yes I know, you may 
run a server without a graphical desktop. But I like to have a graphical 
desktop, so why shouldn't I? Basically I think this has to do with 
"freedom of choice", which should be held high in an open source community?

Another argument being used is about the possibility of giving support. 
I dont really understand this. If somebody has installed his Koha from a 
DVD, then I know that he has a "well defined starting point". That way 
it sould be easier to guess, where he made the mistakes and tell him, 
what he still has to do?

Just my thoughts :-)
-- 
Venlig hilsen
Lars J. Helbo
Borgergade 44, Sall
DK-8450 Hammel
tlf+fax: (+45) 8696 9315
lars at helbo.org
www.helbo.org