by kmihelich » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:06 am
The long delay in getting them to update images is an issue and has been since they showed up. We update at least monthly and they have always updated what they host on their own schedule, regardless of how many times we have asked. Typically, the image gets updated only after they have made some change to the firmware to support something new that they want all images to support out of the box, and the image needs to be updated yesterday. Worth noting that this did not seem to apply to their Debian image, which they had no issue updating more often while leaving ours at the same version, despite newer images residing on our mirrors.
It has also been over a year since they said they would implement a system in which special tarballs we already create and provide them would be spun into standalone dd images as well as integrated into NOOBS. This was supposed to be an automatic process whereby we could push updates to them on our schedule, and the changes would be reflected soon after. This has still not happened, they are still doing things manually, and have given no indication they will ever complete this project. In addition, they refused to simply link to our mirrors for download claiming that it was impossible. In contrast, I wrote our automated tarball image build system in my free time over a weekend, which produces 30 customized installations across three different CPU architectures targeting over 50 platforms. They are a for-profit company with full-time employees, needing only to target one platform, one architecture, and create maybe 6 different images in the end using source tarballs given to them, built to their specification, and ready to use with no manual intervention. We are already doing far more for their platform than any other we support. They have the resources, there is no excuse at this point.
Moving to a tarball aligns the platform with all other installation methods we provide for every other system, and allows for the easiest customization of installations by users along with easing our maintenance load and further unifying instructions. Let's not forget our own inundation of complaints that the dd image didn't use the entire SD card, or that a user did not wish to use ext4, or any other myriad of issues that are solved when you have direct control over how you install.
Any Linux or OSX computer will be able to create an SD card following the instructions, as they both provide the requisite tools. If partitioning, formatting, and unpacking a tarball is an "impossible" task, Arch is simply not the right distribution for you. As our front page has always said, which mirrors the Arch philosophy, we target and accommodate competent Linux users.
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