Fedora 32 Install Media Unlikely To Lose Weight But Fedora 33 Could Be Zstd'ed

There had been a proposal to better compress the Fedora 32 install media via SquashFS without the nested EXT4 file-system setup for its live images and also ramping up the XZ compression. But this proposal was rejected at yesterday's engineering meeting on the basis that a more optimal compression path could be utilized.

In particular, making use of Zstd compression could be a better route for better compressing the Fedora install media. Issues over latency / CPU resources in ramping up XZ compression impacting the Fedora Live experience were raised.

Due to these factors of being "able to do better" by pursuing Zstd and not wanting to degrade the initial Fedora 32 live experience, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee members rejected this F32 change proposal.

For Fedora 33 they could end up re-submitting the proposal and aim for Zstd-compressed media, but it's too late for that to happen in the current Fedora 32 cycle.

And for some good news: at yesterday's meeting they did okay the Fedora Workstation working group's plan to enable EarlyOOM in Fedora Workstation. EarlyOOM is the current step for improving the Fedora experience in cases of memory pressure and for systems with limited RAM, but ultimately systemd is working towards a formal solution but that is still months down the pipe.