Yggdrasil ships Linux Open Source DVD

JWhitlock writes " ZDNet reports that Yggdrasil Computing has released a Linux DVD Archive. It's a DVD9-ROM with the FTP archives of Metalab.org and GNU.org. It's all freeware source, no binaries, 8.3GB compressed, over 23 GB uncompressed. It has no distributions on it, so you have to have Linux first. From the website: "...you must be running Linux kernel 2.2.14, 2.3.28 or later in order to access files located more than four gigabytes into the DVD. Aside from that, your standard CD-ROM and iso9660 ("isofs") filesystem support that you use for accessing CD's will be sufficient to access this DVD. " You can only get it direct from their website" Remember the old infomagic set? That thing blew me away thinking "A whole gig!", but thats nothing compared to this stuff.

Comments

Dirty words

[SClitheroe]

Now we can finally figure out how many dirty words are in the majority of Open Source software... I wonder how long it'll take to grep 23 gigs :)

It also includes DVD-mastering software

[ethereal]

The really neat thing seems to be that Yggdrasil is also releasing the software they used to create the DVD to the community, according to the press release. They compare it to the past release of mkisofs and cdwrite that led to the move of Linux distros onto CDs; can anybody who remembers back that far comment? Was it really impossible to burn DVDs under Linux prior to this?

Re:It also includes DVD-mastering software

[mvw]

Was it really impossible to burn DVDs under Linux prior to this?

It might depend on the access method. What we have here is a giant ISO 9660 file system (the format common CD-ROMs use) to access the DVD. This seems indeed not to have been possible due to a kernel limitation in Linux.

They describe the making of the DVD here, the really interesting link BTW.

The natural format for such a large optical disc would be UDF of course. I am not sure if this is also on that DVD (or if dual ISO 9660 / UDF discs are possible at all).

Included items.

[len(*jameson);]

From the CD contents:

2 GB of hello kitty trash can icons.
A 3.8 GB collection from the "best of swap space 1998" awards.
11 GB of lazer sounds.
1.2 GB of the most realistic surround sound fart ever recorded.
120k text file explaining why you should get a high speed internet connection so that this shit isn't out of date as soon as you put the disc in your drive.

There's a little misunderstanding...

[Svartalf]

You're talking about mastering and burning a DVD recordable disk. Those are single layer affairs and can only hold 4Gb- end of story. This is a production double layer disk produced by a pressing house. The pressing houses only accept DLTs with a special formatting of the data- previously, you needed expensive, proprietary applications (that ran on Windows, for the most part, from what I understand) to master the tape for pressing. The Yggdrasil app does the tape mastering for you.

Re:DVD drives are only about a hundred bucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA gets $15 for every CSS enabled DVD drive sold, you are indirectly funding the MPAA's DVD lawsuits.

Re:Less than $70, actually.... *BUT*

[AJWM]

old enough to not have the new RPC-2 region controls

Well, there is that. Mine predates those (it was what, anything manufactured after January or February of this year?) but yes, the newer ones will probably have them (or not be able to play DVD movies at all).

Hmm, now if some off-shore DVD manufacturer were to incorporate, say, DeCSS-derived firmware rather than a CCA-licensed version, they'd save the CCA tax and be able to undercut competition. CCA of course would probably try to get the things halted at the borders, it'd make for an interesting court case.

No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
It ain't ME you're looking for.