elementary OS

Is the Elementary ISO (contents) verifiable??

Asked by elemen2ry

Sorry if this is a really dumb question.....but, I am struggling to understand the following:

A) Where is the correct place to download the latest Elementary ISO? I understand that there are some options when it comes to platform, 'Stable', 'Unstable' etc. ...BUT.... why isn't there a more consistent and straightforward way to make sure we are getting the right files?

B) Related to above, why does 'https://launchpad.net/elementaryos' seem to only have 'wallpapers' listed under Downloads instead of the actual OS? (again, might be an obvious reason for this, but I can tell you that for new users this is very confusing!)

C) Why is there a sourceforge page but no obvious way to see what the downloads contents are before downloading? Also, why does it appear that things are deliberately being obfuscated (no offence meant, just kinda hard to understand why an 'open source' OS that has been put together so meticulously from a UI / 'ease of use' perspective seems so hard / confusing for new users. For example, see -->
http://elementary.cvs.sourceforge.net/

...and what is with the "DO-NOT-INSTALL" stuff here??? -->
http://sourceforge.net/projects/elementaryos/files/unstable/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/elementaryos/files/unstable/elementaryos-DO-NOT-INSTALL-amd64.20130724.iso/download

D) Why do the ISO sizes listed on here not seem to match up with the actual downloaded sizes?
example --> http://sourceforge.net/projects/elementaryos/files/unstable/elementaryos-unstable-amd64.20130601.iso/download is listed as 714.1MB but appears be 680MB when downloaded?!

E) Lastly, and probably most importantly (for a somewhat cautious/careful user like myself at least).......how do I check the contents of the ISO's and what packages are meant to be there in a default install *BEFORE* downloading/installing them?

I have noticed quite a few scripts ("executables") in places like --> /sbin on a virgin install and, looking at the code, it is not really all that clear what they are doing (hint: I really like to know when things have been messed with and what stuff is doing on my systems) or if they should even be there? (again, I realise there are some checksums floating around but it would be really great to get a 'definitive' answer on this!
.......

Sorry for this becoming a bit of a rant guys - it isn't meant to be - just been struggling with these issues and very hard to be able to continue trying out this WONDERFUL OS is I can't get clarity on some of this stuff.

Any help with this will be GREATLY appreciated guys!

Best
E.

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elemen2ry (f296736) said : 		#1

PS - who is the team currently in charge of this project (officially I mean)?

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Danielle Foré (danrabbit) said : 		#2

Woah this is a long question xD here goes!

A. The most up-to-date builds are going to be found on Sourceforge. The best answer to why this isn't more straightforward is that elementary OS is as-of-yet unreleased. The way things are set up is meant to be convenient for developers, not users.

B. We don't host the final OS on launchpad, only the parts and pieces. Launchpad is primarily a developer-facing tool.

C1. I'm not sure what you mean by a way to see what the contents are. What exactly are you looking for?

C2. Those are builds that contain things our developers need to test but we really want to make sure that nobody installs them since they are pretty much guaranteed not to be good installs. Once again, it's not particularly obfuscated its just meant for our developers and not for random people.

D. There's probably something wrong with your download. There should be an MD5 available on Sourceforge to check

E1. I don't think that is really fully possible. The closest thing you're going to get is reading the source code hosted at lp:elementaryos to see what exactly happens during the build process. But we pull in way too many packages for me to be able to give you any definitive list.

E2. If you do an MD5 and it comes back fine, then everything is the way it's supposed to be.

F. Not sure of a better way to answer that than just to say the elementary OS team :p is there some kind of information you're looking for specifically?

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