Dear Maintainer,

Calamares installer should act properly to NOT install unneeded large amounts of locales by default; on the contrary other distribution's installer like in Fedora or MX Linux behave quite properly.

If this problem is not easily solved, I would like to propose to replace the present calamares with Gazelle-installer developed by MX dev, instead. It seems that Gazelle-installer is quite a nice installer without such a problem.

I still have some doubt about this, which is a serious bug which ordinary users do not expect at all after HDD installation. Please see the related topic below.

 *Related topic:
Bug#1020940: debian-live: A large number of locales are created by default

Hi

I agree, this is among a few other issues, my #1 issue with Calamares on
our live media right now. For what it's worth, debian-installer exhibits
the same behaviour on our live media.

I took a look at it again, it solves /some/ of Calamares's problems, but
it also brings in new ones. I think it's fine (and even great) if
someone packages gazelle-installer for Debian, but since we're edging
closer and closer to freeze date, I don't think we're likely to switch
to it for Bookworm. By Trixie, I hope to have a much better long-term
solution in place.

Hi

I agree, this is among a few other issues, my #1 issue with Calamares on
our live media right now. For what it's worth, debian-installer exhibits
the same behaviour on our live media.

I took a look at it again, it solves /some/ of Calamares's problems, but
it also brings in new ones. I think it's fine (and even great) if
someone packages gazelle-installer for Debian, but since we're edging
closer and closer to freeze date, I don't think we're likely to switch
to it for Bookworm. By Trixie, I hope to have a much better long-term
solution in place.

Hello Green, Jonathan,

The Calamares installer copies the content of the live system to the
hard disk and removes a few live-only packages.
Since the live system is prepared with an extensive list of language
support, these are copied as well.

You can avoid having all languages by doing a fresh installation (as is
done on the netinst image), which will require access to the internet
(whereas the Calamares installation is (by design) offline).

Switching to another installation program will IMHO not really help, if
that program also copies the content of the live image to the HD.

Effectively there are 2 ways to install a new system (bottom-up and
top-down):
* Start from the minimal bootstrapped system and add additional packages
(the strategy of the netinst image)
* Start from a fully equipped system and remove unwanted packages (the
strategy in Calamares and the live version of d-i)

The manual mentions that the live system offers a way to do a
netinst-like installation, but that is untested, and will probably not work.
There is also the package 'debian-installer-launcher', but that isn't
tested either, YMMV.

As an installation tool, Calamares works well and has a nice and simple
GUI, so I don't see an immediate need to replace it with something else.

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

[...]

Hello,
I would like to comment on this bug report.

What I have wished for for a long time is a single USB key that can
boot Debian live or the netinst Debian Installer, depending on what the
user chooses at boot time.

Actually, the Debian Live [manual] mentions that a "combined image"
with Debian Live + "Normal" Debian Installer (netinst).
That would be awesome!

Could you please build and [provide] combined images with Debian Live
Xfce + "Normal" Debian Installer netinst into distinct (bootable)
partitions? with bootloader that lets the user choose whether he/she
wants to boot Debian Live or to boot the netinst system?

Thanks for your time and dedication!



[manual]: <https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/customizing-installer.en.html>
[provide]: <https://www.debian.org/CD/live/>