Debian On DVD

jwest writes "LCS now has Debian GNU/Linux 'woody' on DVD-R We were just tired of shucking around the 6 CD/ROM's it takes to do a new installation with woody. One DVD that can be read on a common place DVD reader seemed like its time had come. More info." Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive. Update: 10/25 23:14 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "testing." Just ... testing.

Comments

Im waiting for..

[BiggestPOS]

The Widescreen DTS edition of Debian Does Dallas/b?

Re:Im waiting for..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're karma whoring has a FLAW!

Wow,

[Davace]

That's one big woody!

Re:Wow,

[gazuga]

Is that Debian in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Re:Wow,

[Cheetah86]

its not the size of your distro but how you use it

Re:Wow,

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft!

That's what all the small distros say

Re:Wow,

[Shanep]

Yeah, it's not the wand, it's the wizard.

I guess that would explain Micro Soft?

free?

[Dizzo]

Seems like an awesome idea. Any idea on cost?

Re:free?

[posix4]

it is to bad freebsd came with it first.

Re:free?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it is to bad freebsd came with it first."

?? Why, who cares if they did? How does that diminish Debian's use of it?..

Re:free?

[nexex]

$50, considering the CD version is a lot less it doesn't seem so enticing anymore :)

Re:free?

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD is dying!!

Re:free?

[Anonymous Coward]

And others did it before FreeBSD. Big deal.

Re:free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you have consider the blank DVD media itself costs arount $20.

Cool feature but..

[DeadPrez]

Can we get Woody to stable now?

Don't make me beg.

Re:Cool feature but..

[Anonymous Coward]

well, get on your knees and we'll see.

Good!

[crashnbur]

No more messing around with multiple CDs!

I suppose this has little direct bearing on other wares, but I also suppose that others will follow suit. I would love to be able - just once - to install Microsoft Office Professional, or Visual Studio, or any other suite of several CDs from just one disc.

Of course, as the DVD-ROM slowly becomes the software standard for such massive space requirements, I don't think that will a problem. In the meantime, how are DVDR drives' prices doing?

Re:Good!

[Matt Lee]

Office 2k and Office XP have both been just one CD for the "important" apps - the extra cds were just for ancillary junk like clipart, MS Publisher, and such.

Visual Studio is available as a DVD if you get the DVD edition of MSDN, I think.

The reason for so little DVD-ROM distribution is the relatively low penetration of DVD-ROM drives into the market. Most new machines still do not come with DVD-ROM drives standard, and the prices are still significantly higher than a CD-ROM drive.

Re:Good!

[smunt]

I have dedicate some gigs on my machine for a local mirror. So I don't have to bother switching CD's. My other machines update from network.

That makes life very comfortable :)

Re:Good!

[Hertog]

SuSE linux does this for some time already,,,

Yoiu get BOTH the cd's and a DVD.

Re:Good!

[crashnbur]

My work happens to require Publisher. My work with Visual Studio (or was it Virtual? can't remember which) happens to require something from all the disks.

Otherwise, you're definitely right. I don't even own a DVD-ROM drive in this machine, but I do have a slot just under my CD-RW waiting for a good deal to come along! Until then, I really have no problem loading 2 to 4 CDs for one software suite, but once the DVD becomes the standard, I might complain about going back...

Re:Good!

[Scooby Snacks]

Well, this past Sunday I bought a DVD-ROM drive from Micro Center (unfortunately, their web site sucks) for $70. IDE/ATAPI, 16X DVD read speed, 48X CD read speed. If you don't have a Micro Center near you, newegg.com has a 16X DVD/48X CD drive for ~$50. (newegg is rather highly rated on ResellerRatings.)

No connections to either company except as a satisfied customer.

Re:Good!

[Scooby Snacks]

the prices are still significantly higher than a CD-ROM drive.

Really? The price difference seems to be about $20 or so. On pricewatch.com, the difference between the lowest prices for the fastest CD-ROM drive and the fastest DVD-ROM drive is $21. This is roughly the same at another vendor whom I like. The difference in price between the lowest-priced units is $21-23.

In fact, I just bought a fast DVD-ROM drive from a local brick-and-mortar store for $70. I believe their CD-ROM drives were priced around $50.

My guess for the lack of penetration for DVD-ROM drives is that critical mass hasn't been reached yet. People don't see the point in spending a few extra dollars when there aren't very many applications available yet on DVD-ROM. Publishers don't want to press a DVD version in addition to a CD version when most people don't yet have one. As it is, there's a huge installed base of CD-ROM drives out there, so it's pretty universal. I would guess that big PC OEMs get CD-ROM drives in quantity for $5-10 wholesale and, since a DVD-ROM drive is still considered a big value-add, figure it's good enough for the general case.

shrugI don't know. The price points are there, or very nearly so. I don't see why there isn't a big switchover in the very near future. Of course, this is the same industry that clings to the 1.44MB floppy...

Re:Good!

[NRLax27]

Visual Studio .NET will ship on DVD and CD, so you can choose your preferred medium.

Re:Good!

[-brazil-]

Only for the "Professional" version, though. Which is considerably more expensive than the "Personal" version, which lacks a lot of more or less important stuff.

Re:Good!

[rfreynol]

MSDN subscribers have had the option of getting their software on DVD-ROM for well over a year now.

-Rob

Re:Good!

[FreshFromTheCows]

I think they were refering to the actual blank DVD-r disks. You can buy blank CDR disks for as low as 5 cents with specials.. Being how DVD-r disks are still like $20, it's still a little high. But then again, CDR was like that years ago too, just takes time..

Re:Good!

[Pfhreakaz0id]

I know the MSDN library has come on DVD for a while. I have a DVD drive at home and this was nice, I'd take one home (not the latest, but good enough for home) and it didn't take gobs of drive space. Very nice.

Re:Good!

[crashnbur]

Nice.. Someone should mod those comments up for you. :P

Thanks for the info. I'll look into it. I've got Best Buy, Circuit City, and other similar places in the area...

Isn't woody testing now?

[lonenut]

I think that Woody is considered the 'testing' distribution now, not 'unstable'. As a big Woody user, I have found it to be plenty stable.

Huh, huh... big woody user... huh, huh-huh...

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[noahm]

I think that Woody is considered the 'testing' distribution now, not 'unstable'. As a big Woody user, I have found it to be plenty stable.

Woody has always been testing. sid is unstable. Simply because woody is labelled 'testing', though, doesn't mean it's some kind of beta release or release candidate or anything else.

The 'testing' branch is a new thing with Debian, created in part to address the fact that Debian's freeze cycle is often so long that many of the included packages are outdated by the time it's released. The idea is that 'unstable' will filter out the critical bugs, and only reasonably high quality packages will get moved to testing (this happens automatically). Then, when it comes time to prepare an actual release, parts of woody can be frozen incrementally. Right now, for example, the base system is frozen. No new features can be added to it, only bugfixes. But the rest of the system is still undergoing development.

Woody has definitely not always been stable by any means. Recently, for example, X completely broke. Though the fix was simple, the problem was not obvious.

Another problem with using woody is that it is not supported by the security team!!! This means that security fixes are not a priority and don't necessarily make it into the distribution any faster than any other updated package. Using woody in a mission critical server environment would be bad. I use woody on a workstation, though, and have found it to be of pretty good quality. It's rare that something that I expect to work doesn't actually work. But then again, I can say the same thing for sid.

noah

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[evil_one]

bzzzzt... WRONG
Prior to the release of Potato, (the current stable) Potato was testing, Slink was stable, and Sid was unstable - woody hadn't been assigned yet.
you say Using woody in a mission critical server environment would be bad.
Where are you getting this from? Woody testing is usually VERY stable, as all packages that are in woody have been in sid for several weeks prior to their introduction into woody!
Also, anyone running Debian in a "mission critical server environment" - Or ANY OTHER operating system - should be subscribed to the appropriate mailing lists.
Problems in testing are usually found immediately, and patches released - upgrading involves ONE command as root - Compare that to the fiasco that was Redhat 6.0

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[damiam]

Prior to the release of Potato, potato was frozen and woody was unstable. Since the release of potato, unstable has been given the permanent codename sid and woody currently testing and will be until after its release. Then, stable will be woody and testing will be whatever the next codename is (andy?).

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[hackerhue]

Well, you're both wrong. Potato was never "testing" because they only created the testing branch after Potato was released. Prior to this, Sid was for architectures that were not fully supported. Woody was labelled unstable once: between the time that they opened the Woody branch and the time that they opened the unstable branch.

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[he-sk]

Woody testing is usually VERY stable, as all packages that are in woody have been in sid for several weeks prior to their introduction into woody!

It's two weeks and unfortunately this doesn't mean, that woody is the most stable distro around. Also, because of the conditions for a package to move into testing, it is often incomplete and very broken.

I'd say, that at most given points, sid (unstable) is more stable than woody (testing).

This makes sense, testing is there to test the next release -- it's tested for stableness (hence the two weeks) and completeness.

Problems in testing are usually found immediately, and patches released

But still need two weeks to go into testing.

upgrading involves ONE command as root

Well, it's at least two commands.

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[he-sk]

unstable has been given the permanent codename sid

sid is not the permanent codename of unstable. Rather, the distro codenamed sid is currently marked unstable. When woody (not testing) becomes stable and a new unstable branch is opened (yet to be codenamed), sid will be marked testing.

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[Daniel]

sid is not the permanent codename of unstable. Rather, the distro codenamed sid is currently marked unstable. When woody (not testing) becomes stable and a new unstable branch is opened (yet to be codenamed), sid will be marked testing.

This is a common misconception, but it isn't true. The above poster was correct; sid (named after the evil kid who breaks your toys) will be 'unstable' forever.
Daniel

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[Daniel]

You say: Using woody in a mission critical server environment would be bad.

Where are you getting this from? Woody testing is usually VERY stable, as all packages that are in woody have been in sid for several weeks prior to their introduction into woody!

As stated previously, the Security Team does not support woody, and security fixes will be held up until the testing scripts move them in -- if there are dependency issues, they may be stalled for significant amounts of time.

Daniel

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[noahm]

Prior to the release of Potato, (the current stable) Potato was testing, Slink was stable, and Sid was unstable - woody hadn't been assigned yet.

Nope. woody is the first Debian version ever to be labelled "testing". Before this a distribution (say potato or slink) would go straight from unstable to frozen, then along to testing. Please see the announcement on debian-devel-announce. Note that it's dated from mid December of last year. That was the first time there ever was a Debian "testing distribution".

Problems in testing are usually found immediately, and patches released - upgrading involves ONE command as root - Compare that to the fiasco that was Redhat 6.0

Nope. The progression of packages from unstable to testing is defined, and does not allow packages to be updated immediately. Packages must be in sid for 2 weeks with no updates and no release-critical bugs submitted against it. This has the side effect, of course, that if a bug is found in woody, it won't be fixed until the fix can propogate from sid to woody.

Consider the recent thread on debian-devel regarding xfree86-common and a bug that completely broke X in woody. This bug made it through the checks, and, despite being submitted to the BTS several times, still made it through into woody.

BTW, I am a Debian developer and member of the Debian security team. We do not release security updates for woody. Period.

noah

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[he-sk]

sid (named after the evil kid who breaks your toys) will be 'unstable' forever.

Really? Didn't know that.

But, as I said, the joys of Debian!

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[mbanck]

Nope. The progression of packages from unstable to testing is defined, and does not allow packages to be updated immediately.Packages must be in sid for 2 weeks with no updates and no release-critical bugs submitted against it

That's for priority: low. AFAIK you can trim down the lag by raising the priority but you should know what you do and this happens rarely.

Michael

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[TazQ]

Sid used to be 'experimental', but that seems to have dissapeared.

Re:Isn't woody testing now?

[Demonspawn]

It's a Toy Story refrence.

The things you learn having young neices/nephews...

--Demonspawn

Trolls of Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that you don't care much for ACs, but I just had to ask...

Why hasn't this pathetic little forum been crapflooded? Just ran across it... It's "Rants and Raves"... They seem to think they're flame masters...

DVDs on Linux are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Use DVDs on Windows where it is not against the law, you zealots!

Re:DVDs on Linux are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot! It's not the DVD filesystem that's illegal, it's the Content Scrambling System that video DVD's use... get a clue!

Re:DVDs on Linux are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot! It's not the Content Scrambling System that's illegal, it's current implementations and unlicensed use of the content DEscrambling... get a clue!

I mean, really. Who wants to implement or use a Content Scrambling System?!

Why the dvd?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you need the dvd for, I use the floppy disks and download all the packages I need. I think it a silly idea.

Code Bloat

[pagercam]

Why does everyone complain that Windoze is so big and slow. Windows with every driver known (probbaly more devices than Linux)fits on one CD, Linux even with source should be smaller, why 6 CDs or a DVD?????

Re:Code Bloat

[characterZer0]

Windows: 1CD
Office: 2CDs
Compilers (from Visual Studio): 1CD
Service packs: (equivilent of) 1CD
download all the other apps you still need: (equivelent of) 2CDs

thats 7. And I still don't have a whole junkload of programming libraries.

Re:Code Bloat

[John Hasler]

The kernel and all the standard packages fit easily on one CD, even with source. It's the 5000+ applications and their sources that require all that space. You can install as many or as few as you want.

Re:Code Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: your sig.

I see, afraid an AC post might offend you sensitive soul? People are SO vindictive around here only a fool opens his mouth non AC unless he's towing the party line... (Case in point) Course it is pretty obvious that no one around here wants to hear a dissenting opinion so I guess you're honest about it anyway.

SuSE has done this for a while...

[psxndc]

and installing one DVD is a lot less "sitting in front of the computer changing disks" of a hassle. Only problem is: what if you have multiple machines, some of which only have a CD drive, with others having both? I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both. Call me a SuSE fanboy, but I am.

psxndc

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[MrResistor]

I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both.

When I bought 7.1, professional was the only way to get a DVD (at least for x86). I've been really happy with it. The only machines I have that don't have DVD drives are so old that I'm doing totally stripped down installs anyway, and everything I need is on the first and second CDs.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to setting myself up for network install...

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[Klaruz]

Only problem is: what if you have multiple machines, some of which only have a CD drive, with others having both? I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both. Call me a SuSE fanboy, but I am.

It's debian, if you want 6 cds and 1 dvd, pay for it. If you don't, don't buy the dvd, or don't buy the cds. Debian isn't generally a 'boxed' distro. The developers almost always use the network to set it up, and update themselves... The cdroms/dvds are good for initial install. I havn't done a cdrom install since RedHat 4.0.

Also, before somebody bashes it, the $50 for a beta copy on DVD would probobly be because they're doing it on DVDR. Call it a guess.

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[pwagland]

Well, call me a SuSE fanboy too....

However, I only ever use the DVD (a friend and I have a distribtuion sharing arrangement, we get each release, but share the medias) and so I find myself installing over the network a lot.... With SuSE this is dead simple, you even get a choice of FTP/NFS/SMB. That's right, you can use your windows machine as the install media holder...

I imagine that with Debian this would be fairly easy as well....perhaps not with as many options.

Now, if you have a lot of machines in disparate locations, well that's another matter :-)

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[MindStalker]

I personally havn't installed Debian in a long time, but I'm pretty sure it includes network installs. So Put the DVD in one computer then share it via ftp. You still need to make bootdisk of course, but no biggie.

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to setting myself up for network install.

?

what's to set up? put disc in drive, mount (if not auto)... done.

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[chris_sawtell]

You do a network install.
NFS works best, HTTP next, and FTP is as slow as a wet week.
You only need one CD or DVD drive per network.

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[MrResistor]

There's the small issue of getting the system you're installing on to recognize the source path. Since I've never done it before, it probably seems like a bigger problem than it really is...

Re:SuSE has done this for a while...

[psxndc]

But what if you're only machine with a DVD drive is a windows machine? I'm not going to install and ftp server on my windows machine, that's for admn sure.

psxndc

NOT Debian unstable!

[emag]

Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive.

"woody" is the debian "testing" version, not the debian "unstable". Debian's "unstable" is AKA "sid". Still cool, though.

Now I wish I either had a laptop w/ a DVD drive, or could find a decent SCSI DVD drive for my home system, since IDE sucks so bad.

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cheap. It's slower. It shits itself easily. It's cheap. That's why "almost all systems use it".

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[cymen]

Highly off topic but what exactly are your problems with IDE?

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[ryanvm]

...since IDE sucks so bad.

Okay - I'll bite.

Yes, IDE drives are a little slower than SCSI drives. Yes, IDE is a storage-only protocol.

But to say "IDE sucks so bad" is basically like saying Honda Accords suck because they can't do 180 mph like a Dodge Viper.

With a lot of things, you get what you pay for. But with SCSI hard drives in a workstation environment, that's just not true. You pay substantially more for a marginal speed improvement. By buying a faster processor with the money you save on IDE, you can more than compensate for the CPU cycles it wastes.

Thanks for the entertainment - it's been a while since I've been trolled like that.

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[Fjord]

But by having a slow disk, you end up spending more time paging. The disk I/O is the largest bottleneck on a workstation. Followed by the RAM I/O 1.7GHz is good for most tasks these days. Without addressing the other part of your system, upgrading a processor is going to have a more marginal effect.

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[Peaker]

What makes IDE suck so bad?
Its an OK interface, aside for its small number of bits used to represents disk block offsets.. :)

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[ryanvm]

I acknowledge that IDE is somewhat slower than SCSI. My point is that for most situations (particularly workstations) the cost premium for SCSI just isn't worth it.

If IDE and SCSI were the same cost, then the previous poster would have a legitimate reason for saying "IDE sucks so bad".

Re:NOT Debian unstable!

[Anonymous Coward]

"But by having a slow disk, you end up spending more time paging. The disk I/O is the largest bottleneck on a workstation. Followed by the RAM I/O 1.7GHz is good for most tasks these days. Without addressing the other part of your system, upgrading a processor is going to have a more marginal effect."

You're assuming the system doesn't have enough RAM that paging doesn't occur. RAM's cheap these days (may not always be so, but it is for now).

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah... can you slim down your windows install to be 240MB? (can be done, a slim and trim debian with only X and mozilla is that big) How about putting every piece of software microsoft makes on 6 cd's?

Jebus a DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I will stick with Crux, at 413 MBs, I am quite happy with all its packages.

still not where it needs to be for me

[EllF]

the dvd-distro is innovative, but i'd be more interested if there was a change in how the installation process was handled - right now, it feels out-of-date and is rather frustrating.

no, i'm not complaining about the install system itself; it's not pretty, but it's stable and powerful. i'd *really* like to see support for installing onto HPT370 RAID partitions (and other IDE RAID chipsets on modern motherboards), though. as of 2.4.10, there has been support for these devices, but as of now the only real way to get an install done is to make a custom 2.4.10 boot floppy, mount and bootstrap onto the devices, and go from there.

rant, rant. lots of love to debian, nonetheless.

Re:still not where it needs to be for me

[he-sk]

the dvd-distro is innovative, but i'd be more interested if there was a change in how the installation process was handled - right now, it feels out-of-date and is rather frustrating.

Yeah, that might be true, but then again, you'll only go through the installation system once.

I've went slink -> potato -> woody -> sid and then changing back and forth between the last for four years now, without a single re-install.

Ahh, the joys of Debian.

Re:still not where it needs to be for me

[mbanck]

though. as of 2.4.10, there has been support for these devices,

We don't consider 2.4.10 stable. If you do, go ahead and use the custom disks. But woody will be around for a long time and a broken installation isn't the most appealing thing in this situation

Michael

Re:still not where it needs to be for me

[kikensei]

Hmmmm.... SuSE has supported the hpt370 controller with 7.2 out of the box. Not with RAID though. That controller is software RAID, the drivers tell the OS how to write to the "RAID" arrays. Highpoint has come out with linux drivers, but even if you get them to work, the linux read/write method to use RAID is different from the Windows driver method. Thus you wouldn't be able to read your windows raid partitions from your linux partition. If you just want the ability to install the OS on that controller, sans RAID, its already there. As for change of install, sounded like they were rolling the Progeny's (R.I.P.) finer points into debian vanilla, so in time the GUI install method from progeny should be an option for plain ole debian.

Re:still not where it needs to be for me

[Daniel]

Well, supposedly the new freeze procedure will allow future freezes to be shortish compared to this.

(personally, I'll believe it when I see it, but..)

Daniel

Just like Mandrake....

[Linegod]

...which has 7 of its 9 (heh, 7of9) CDs available on DVD in it's ProSuite Edition - http://www.mandrakeforum.org/article.php?sid=1329

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[BlueWonder]

I bet you'd need more than 6 CDs for Windows, plus thousands of applications for it, plus source code of all of this.

Re:jwest

[Anonymous Coward]

that's *A* West... Adam West, numbnutz!

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[pigeonhk]

Well I imagine a complete debian distro contains every single applications or utilties you could think of for linux. You don't get much when you buy a box of windows. A plain windows installation even with a full installation, I'd say there's nothing I really want to use, or useful at all. At least you'll need a box of m$ office?

tried to like it but couldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

We (friend and I has over 4 yrs Debian experience) spent 7+ hours trying to install Debian. Ok well it installed just fine but impossible to get it to work with Matrox
G400 and he tried various irc channels, faqs, etc. I guess if your hardware supports it then it might be decent.

I've learned to stay away from Mandrake...especially in a production environment. I'm happy with Redhat on 4 of our servers at work.

My hope is in 6 months or so (progeny 1.0 had same problem with G400 though) when progeny merges their additions into mainstream Debian it'll be on par with say Redhat 7.0 (I mean that in the sense of the kernel and hardware support). Then I can see what this Debian cult is all about.

Re:tried to like it but couldn't

[TeknoDragon]

WTF? I've been using a G400 dualhead for over a year! I even got quake3 up and running at over 40fps BEFORE Xfree 4.0 came out.

Try faq's at dri.sourceforge.net, or download the mga_hal.drv from www.matrox.com. I've reinstalled woody once and with Xfree 4.0 my G400 works _out_of_the_box_!!! Barely any configuration!

Try reading the debian wikki! Go to www.debianplanet.org... still need help... well maybe you're not ready for debian or debian isn't ready for you... one of the two... Debian is deffinately an advanced Linux OS, I won't lie to you, but when you get it up and running it kicks DeadRat's but any day. Not only that but consider that Debian unstable == redhat's rawhide, and debian testing == redhat x.0... yes things will be buggy, but updates are made every day. Try again in a few days and maybe your packages will be fixed.

Re:tried to like it but couldn't

[John Hasler]

I've been using Debian with my G400 for over a year. I had no trouble at all installing it. Did you ask for help on the debian-user mailing list?

Re:tried to like it but couldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm well this was like 10 months ago I think. Regardless I wasn't knocking Debian in the least. Well just saying that it's hardware support isn't up to the level of Redhat that's all.

Then again...today I'm looking for a SCSI RAID card single channel and two 36GB SCSI drives to upgrade a server at work and REDHAT Hardware compatibility list shows question marks for Mylex...what the hell.

As soon as Woody is out as STABLE...believe me I'll give it a whirl and give it a chance on one of my GeForce2 video cards. ATI sucks, Matrox sucks.

DVDs are replacing CDs for other OSs also

[Black Acid]

On June 29th, FreeBSD Services Ltd. announced release of a bootable DVD containing FreeBSD. You can buy the 9GB DVD at http://www.freebsd-services.com/. There has also been some discussion of selling a FreeBSD DVD at FreeBSD Mall. A Japan retailer is offering NetBSD on DVD. When will OpenBSD follow? I expect there will be difficulties, as Theo copyrighted the CD layout - that's why you won't find it on Linuxiso.org. That's too bad, as an OpenBSD DVD would be quite convenient.

Mandrake 8.1...

[Mr.Ned]

http://www.mandrakestore.com/en/storemdkinc-8.1.ph p

Mandrake 8.1 is (will be?) available on DVD-ROM as well - it's $60 USD - $50 for the DVD, $10 for shipping/handling/contribution to Open Source (that's novel) - and that's instead of 7 CD's.

If Mandrake releases the Gaming Edition with that WineX wrapper on DVD, that would be really good. You could fit more than the Sims on that :)

windows is bare, debian has basically everything.

[Crow-]

Windows is just a file browser and some very basic tools like notepad, media player and a few card games.

Debian is 6 cds because it everything under the sun, It would thousands of dollars and gigs of HD space to install the equivalent amount of software on a windows machine.

keep it small

[lunpa]

what happen to the good old days when you can run a decent OS just with a few floppies? Remember how 650 megs was all you even needed? ( at least for a linux distro)? Guess not

Re:keep it small

[SquadBoy]

This only needs to be on a DVD because there ara packages for everything under the sun. The basic default install is still *very* small. http://markybobdeb.sourceforge.net/elf/ Debian rocks...

Re:keep it small

[sg_oneill]

Actually you could probably put together a really fecking minature distroo if you wanted to. Having recently been working on some embeded linux (axis ucLinux on Etrax100lx. Good stuff!) apps, what linux actually *needs* is surprisingly small. A kernel (For fortitude, compile the modules into the kernel) a badly abused inittab (You can it as an RC) a smattering of libs (basic glib) a few prudent patches, a file system, busybox and ash. Then if clever you can wack on an Xwindows kit+twm, and all up stuff it in under five meg.

The hard bit would be "how to make usefull".

Re:keep it small

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can still *boot* Debian with a few floppies - it's what I do all the time. I just have to make sure I'm on a decent net connection, boot the Debian rescue disk (which seems to double as an installer), partition the drives, and suck over the 15-ish M base install.

From there, I'm just a dselect/apt-get and coffee-break away from all the software I want. It's one of the reasons I rave about Debian to my friends (and raving is *definitely* the key word here).

Re:keep it small

[akc]

What you want is

http://www.toms.net/rb/home.html

What should I do?

[cr0sh]

I have never tried Debian, but it is on my list for "next install" (I currently run SuSE). I figure that by the time I do go to my "next install", that DVDs will be pretty much standard across the board for both OS installs and other software (regardless of OS). It is rapidly going that route.

However, I am a "conciensious (sp?) objector" to the tight fist of the MPAA - buying a DVD drive will give them their "fee", because said drive will most certainly include software for movie playing (though it will be for that other OS), which will have a licence fee attached to it.

If I could just by the drive, and only the drive - then I might consider it - but I still don't know if the MPAA doesn't have their hand still in the cookie jar somewhere.

Do I need to just bite the bullet, and throw my moral and political objections out the window? I don't think I can do that! I suppose I could buy the drive, then donate $50.00 or so to the EFF... I would rather not have any money whatsoever go to the MPAA...

I suppose I could just not buy Debian (or any other distro on DVD) - ideas or suggestions, anybody?

Re:What should I do?

[ArsonSmith]

download the 3 floppy disks from the images-1.44/compact directory and install over the internet. All the new kids are doing it. Why do it that old school way of messing with big files and distribution media???

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its EXTREMELY easy to find a bare drive. www.pricewatch.com.

Re:What should I do?

[Sentry21]

Get a disk drive, an ethernet card, and broadband. Go Debian, and don't look back.

Heck, if you have a DOS partition, you don't even need the disk drive.

It's very nice.

--Dan

Re:What should I do?

[sg_oneill]

Not necessarily. Remember that the MPAA only gets licence fee on software, I am not aware of the drive itself being covered by anything more than the same sort of hardware patents that probably also cover floppy drives and cd-roms.
Get an OEM one (many shops will sell 'em) and you get to *not* pay MPAA..

I could of course sugest then using DECSS, but we wouldn't do that , wouldn't we :)

Re:What should I do?

[peterw]

Remember that the MPAA only gets licence fee on software, I am not aware of the drive itself being covered by anything more than the same sort of hardware patents that probably also cover...

You "are not aware"? "probably"? Translation: you're guessing. I would be very surprised if 1) even a "bare" drive lacked the DVD logo and 2) some fees were not collected for that logo, regardless of whether the drive included any DVD-CSS software.

I'm with cr0sh here... if you're not sure your money won't go to a prty you don't support, then don't spend it.

Re:What should I do?

[sg_oneill]

No seriously man. I'm not guessing. There are hardware patents involved. I'm not disputing that. We can assume to be factual that if there is no software being sold, there hasn't been CSS licence fees being paid. Any company that paid for stuff they didn't have to would be to stupid to contemplate
The DVD logo will almost certainly belong to the persons who own the patents for either the disks or the players. That is separate from the copy mogrification algorithm.

Re:What should I do?

[Fjord]

If you want to try it out and your computer has a perminant fast internet connection, I suggest just downloading the 6 diskette images from their site. Only the packages you install will be downloaded, and you can easily add more through dselect and apt. This DVD is really more for an evironment where you have multiple systems you have to install it on or for a slowly connected server, thus reducing the downloading.

Re:What should I do?

[sammy baby]

Fees are collected for the use of that logo, by the "DVD Format Logo Licensing Corporation." According to them,

The DVD Logo is a mark that symbolizes the legitimacy and better compliance of the DVD product. When used correctly, it shows that the product was manufactured by a Licensee (legitimacy) and that the product passed the Verification test (better compliance).

Wanna know who these cats are? Again, from their own web site: "[the DVD FLLC] was a mutual effort of the ten companies that originated DVD Format back in 1995... These companies are: Hitachi, Philips, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, JVC, Pioneer, Sony, Thomson, Time Warner and Toshiba." Fascinating, what a thirty-second exercise with Google will get you.

Whether or not they are worthy recipients of your hard-earned money is left as an exercise to the reader.

With Debian ..

[SquadBoy]

it is better to just do a net install for so many reasons. In particular if you are going to track Woody. How long ago did they pull the image for this? Just go here (http://markybobdeb.sourceforge.net/elf/) get the netinst image, burn it, install, then apt-get to update everything.

Re:With Debian ..

[gomadtroll]

It is always appreciated when someone in the community does the work, i.e. the 'netinstall iso. You can also use Disk 1 from Potato, gets you to the same place :)

Re:With Debian ..

[baschie]

Indeed, I love this netinstall image.

Of course the initial install from a DVD image would be quite a bit faster than a netintstall if you have a 2mbit connection like I have. But as it goes with testing packages, the version numbers just keep incrementing as we speak. If the DVD is a little old, you're doing an apt-get upgrade that takes the same amount of time a netinstall would take.

Other distributions have a great set of netinstall bootfloppies / CD's too. I know of mandrake's netinstall that's only 1 1.44 disk.

I have the choice between downloading N iso images and burning them with my damn old 2x CDwriter, or i can just download 1 disk (or the debian netinstall iso which is around 30 mb for potato) and download only the necessary packages during a net install... talk about bandwith saving :)

Of course I like the idea of this DVD for users without a fast (and unlimited) connection.

Re:With Debian ..

[SquadBoy]

But the netinst image is only 33KB makes a big difference in the not pounding the mirrors dept.

Re:With Debian ..

[SquadBoy]

And when we get somewhere where it is going to pause for a time say when woody finally goes stable and then getst to r3 or 4 a DVD would make sense because at the point the apt-get -u dist-upgrade is most likely only going to be a few security packages. But for a testing branch no not at all. :)

Is woody ready for production server?

[ClarkEvans]

I only need a few things: Open SSH, Apache, Python, PostgreSQL, Exim, Bind. Right now I can't use potato since I seem to be having a socket problem with Python 2.1 on Potato which goes away if I use a new version of RedHat ... so I figure it's the kernel 2.2 or an older glibc... is this good logic?

Re:Is woody ready for production server?

[noahm]

Woody is absolutely not ready for a production server. Especially not one that will actually be connected to the internet or have users. The reason for this is that the security team is not repsonsible for anything to do with woody yet. You have no guarantees of any security fixes reaching your system in a timely manner.

If you're really good about keeping up with bugtraq and friends, then maybe, but you're on your own.

noah

Is everything on the DVD?

[Mustang Matt]

I've been buying SuSE since they released 7.0. Each time I get a DVD (Or did 7.0 have one? 7.1 and 7.2 definately did.) but I've never used it because I just don't think about it.

Is it simply all the CDs on one disk or is there more on the DVD as well?

Re:Is everything on the DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the DVD has certain packages that were cut from the regular distro, and commentary from SuSE engineers.

Re:Is everything on the DVD?

[Datafage]

I don't know what's funnier, the comment or the moderation...

Better yet....

[Raster Burn]

How about that floppy disk netinstall? It only takes 2 1.44 meg disks, and you can install whichever version you want (stable, testing, or unstable)! We don't need no stinkin' newfangled DVD thingeys!

Re:Better yet....

[technos]

Why DVD?

Because I can pull 20M/s sustained from my DVD drive and only 4.5K/s from the network.

Re:Better yet....

[blixel]

It only takes 2 1.44 meg disks

No doubt... and with a cable modem you can get mega fast downloads using apt-get. Once someone was done installing from the DVD the first they are going to do is "apt-get upgrade" 80% of their packages anyway...

Re:Better yet....

[blixel]

Because I can pull 20M/s sustained from my DVD drive and only 4.5K/s from the network.

...and when you're done installing from DVD, you have to "apt-get upgrade" 90% of your packages anyway... 4.5K/s? eeeek... 56k dial-up eh?

But it's still just a snapshot....

[Jetson]

I love Debian and use it on all of my boxes (including laptop), but question the point of buying a DVD snapshot of a testing distribution. Woody is updated on a daily basis and any machine installed from DVD would be obsolete almost immediately. The DVD wouldn't save much time or effort because you'd end up replacing a majority of the packages via internet by the time Woody hits "stable". Better to wait for a stable DVD and then just download the security fixes.

DVD != bloat

[gus goose]

Have been using Suse for almost as long as I have used Linux - 6 years Linux, and SuSE since SuSE 5.1

SuSe has offered DVD for ages, but we already know that. My real point is that DVD != bloat. SuSe offers a number of install options. The default (KDE with Office) installs in less than 1 Gig, where as their "bare minimum" installs in about 100M. Even then they need things like perl (used in the configuration of SuSE).

Basicall, SuSE comes on 7 cd's and 1 DVD which is just a merge of the CD's. I like the DVD because drive space is cheap, and I cp -a the dvd and then install via FTP for all my machines.

But then, SuSE is a bigger thing outside of the US, so not so much media time is given to the product, which in my opinion, offers much greater things than Redhat.

gus

Re:DVD != bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Even then they need things like perl

Of course they need perl. Unix without perl is like... well, Unix without perl! Besides, it's well worth the few megabytes it takes; perl probably has the best functionality-to-size ratio of any package on a Linux system.

Re:DVD != bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware is nice. I like slackware. It can do all the things you've mentioned, only better. No, it doesn't have a nice spiffy DVD, but its not really needed either. Funny thing is, its all Linux anyways.

Come on now, you know at least one person had to mention slackware.

Installing Linux software.

[chicobaud]

I just saw @Slashdot that Debian Woody has now a DVD distro in order to avoid cdrom replacement in installation and came to my mind: Wouldn't it be great if the packaging in Linux was similar to FreeBSD ? Do we like to check for dependencies each time we upgrade to a new version of an app we like ? I know I don't and I sure would like more download time if packages came with all dependencies already.

Re:Installing Linux software.

[damiam]

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. What happens when you're on a 56k modem and you have to download copies of the Linux kernel, glibc, X, and GNOME in order to install a 40k utility program? Besides, it's pointless when you already have apt to automatically download and install dependencies.

Re:Installing Linux software.

[cymen]

Are you serious? Don't you notice when you type "apt-get install my_daddy" it grabs the dependencies too? When you "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" it'll grab all the new versions of the packages. If anything the package management in Debian is more robust than the package management in FreeBSD. That doesn't neccessarily mean it is a better though! Personally I'm thinking of moving all my servers to FreeBSD due to the slow releases that come from the Debian project. I'd rather track FreeBSD stable via cvs and get up to date software via ports then deal with Apache 1.2.9-patch-29343234 on Debian Stable. Debian has built up a fascinating infrastructure but in my opinion it is all a waste of time if a release can't get out the door on a regular basis. It's a crying shame.

Re:Installing Linux software.

[diamondc]

then just switch to testing ... at work we run debian testing on our mail/web server. testing is about a month or so behind the real cutting edge (unstable) and is tested enough for me. so far, so good.

Re:Installing Linux software.

[cymen]

I did switch to testing a couple months ago. But I still am uncomfortable with the solution because security fixes are low priority on testing and it is testing. I don't care how stable it is (and I know it is stable) - I shouldn't have to run a "testing" release on a server just to get up to date software. I've also found that the prepackaged apache+php4 really doesn't work for me so I'll have to recompile it manually and either use debians tools to create a package or use ports on freebsd. FreeBSD's ports is less work. Obviously it is a rather large choice to switch operating systems but I'm beginning to see a number of advantages to FreeBSD. I'll always run Debian on my laptop but on my servers I'm no longer so sure...

So I've gone ahead and setup FreeBSD as a test bed (I've already run a FreeBSD server for a couple years but I haven't maintained it in the same manner I maintain Debian with apt in terms of upgrading the OS, etc). The only way I can answer my question is by having experience with both so in a couple months I should have a clear view of which I prefer and find easier to maintain. I'm not trying to start a flame war here but rather find out which works best for me and why.

One last note - I don't have a problem compiling apache+php4 myself. After all that is how I did it all along until I decided to give Debian a try. But once I have to step outside of the packages that make Debian so easy I start to spend more time using Debian tools to build packages to install software. This strikes me as horribly silly because we've moved from compiling source to packages to compiling soure to build packages. When you always want to compile from source ports is much simplier...

To keep this on topic - I think Debian on DVD is a wonderful idea but like many of the other people in this thread I'll be using the net install and upgrade method over any other medium (as long as I have my broadband connection!).

Dvd prices (drives and media)

[__aawwih8715]

Since everybody is going to ask this anyways, and other will speculate, i thought i'd make a nice list for everybody.

All prices are from pricewatch.

dvdrom drives:
(ide or eide) - 16x for $42, 12x for $39, 10x for $35

dvdram drives:
(scsi) - 5.2GB for $189 (creative), 5.2GB for $249 (toshiba), (single/double sided) - 4.7GB/9.4GB for $468 (panasonic)
(ide) - 4.7GB/9.4GB for $440 (ibm)

dvdram media - 1 for $11 (smart & friendly)
dvd-r media - 1 for $8 (pioneer)
Couldn't find dvd-r drive on pricewatch.
Sorry, looks like they are still expensive.

Hope this helps.

Encarta 2002 is available on DVD

[aclarke]

I bought Encarta 2002 -- for my wife!!! ;-) -- the other day on DVD. Last version was 5 CDs, this one's 1 DVD. Very nice change for the better. So yes I imagine that most of Microsoft's products that take up more than 1 CD will be available on DVD in their next release.

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[MrResistor]

A friend of mine claims he can trim windows down to ~75MB. It won't do anything, of course...

Old concepts on new media...

[TV-SET]

I don't want to go deep into history, but not that long ago several floppies installations have been replaced by single CDs.

Now we are actually doing the same thing with different media. I don't like that, to be honest.

Network installation is much more interesting idea, IMHO. It's just that one should remove all possibilities of "network unreachable" and increase bandwidth per unit of money :)

Re:Old concepts on new media...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Network installation is much more interesting idea, IMHO. It's just that one should remove all possibilities of "network unreachable" and increase bandwidth per unit of money :)"

Not all of us have the money or opportunity for broadband access; doing a large apt-get upgrade over a dialup link is A PAIN. It's also faster using a DVD or CD install than a network unless you've access to a Very Fast (OC-3 or better) link. It also gives you a handy backup of your installation from the get go.

Re: I found dvd-r prices

[__aawwih8715]

On pricewatch i found 2 dvd-r drives

Cheapest is the panasonic.
It is combo dvd-ram/dvd-r drive.
It costs $445 for the bare drive (ide)

The pioneer dvr-a03 is the de-facto.
It is combo dvd-r/dvd-rw/cd-r/cd-rw.
It is also what apple uses for the "superdrive"
It costs $475.

Here are stats about the DVR-A03:
8x cd-r
4x cd-rw
2x dvd-r
1x dvd-rw

1x may sound slow, but, uh, thats 4.7 gigs in an hour or 2.

I found this link.
http://www.meritline.com/supa1dvwrit.html
and this one showing most of the industry offerings.
http://www.meritline.com/dvddrives.html

Somebody find a dvd-r howto, or write one.
And include a part about how to author one that will play movies in standard component dvd players with the use of free tools.

Mandrake makes DVD too

[2ms]

Mandrake 8.1 is available on DVD too. Suse has been doing it forever. A particularly cool thing about DVD installs is that DVD drives have much higher transfer rate than CD-ROMS, so not only do you not have to waste time keeping track of cds and shuffling them in and out, but also the read itself is going faster.

dvd?

[Suppafly]

hell.. last time I installed debian i used 2 floppies and copied another 7 floppies worth of stuff off an fat32 partition.. who needs 6 cd's or a dvd or whatever when you got broadband..

The ultimate irony..

[A_Non_Moose]

if hidden somewhere on the DVD was DeCSS, ripper/player software (and maybe DRM removal software...salt+wound, rub).

Debian is a German Distro, correct... could be possible as a) our legislation does not affect them (I think) and b) DeCSS was originally generated in Germany (remember Jon Johanssen was the "distributor" of sorts, he said (IIRC) it came from a "German IRC" chat/hacker aquaintence of his).

I've tried an older version (5.x era) of debian and I was impressed.

Down side to using it was my campus was mainly RedHat. Heh, and I'm a Slackware boy from a while back.

Two lovely quotes about Slack:
on /. " Slackware: when you know what you are doing"
and
From a "linux shootout" article I read a while back that gave me a chuckle "Slackware is not for everyone, the learning curve is steeper than other Distros, but is best suited for those people who never had enough toys to play with as children" .... Heh, explains a lot about me... (G).

Unix in general: "Unix is user friendly, it is just pickier about its friends".

I'll shut up before I stray off topic.

Re:The ultimate irony..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Debian is a German Distro, correct ... "

NoperNoperNope. Debian == Debbie + Ian, the names of the two originators of the distro, way back when. SuSe is the German distrol.

Re:The ultimate irony..

[dvdeug]

This is massively inaccurate. Debian is not German; it's pretty close to international, with an occasional US bias (and an occasional Japanese bias, if a little rarer.)

Debian has not had a 5.x release; woody will be 3.0.

DeCSS won't be included since Debian is too uncomfortable with the legal aspects, and we'd rather not get ourselves, or CheapBytes or some other distributor in legal trouble. (One of our developers is currently in court over his personal distribution of DeCSS in the US.)

Re:The ultimate irony..

[Sentry21]

1) Debian isn't German, it's an international, country-indepenant effort.

2) The DCMA will screw Germans, Japanese, Canadians, etc, the instant they set foot inside the US, and most people want freedom to travel. There are very few countries I can't go to as a Canadian, I'd like the US not to be one of those.

3) Do you mean glibc 5.x? 'Cause there ain't no Debian 5.x out there.

4) Slackware is for people who would rather manage their computers than use them (naah, just kidding; I used to use Slackware too... but then I tried Debian)

5) Debian: it's what your mother would use if it were twenty times easier (wildly inaccurate I thought, but amusing)

6) Debian doesn't even have LAME, BladeEnc, etc. in the package lists, because they don't like walking the line. DeCSS would go against every ounce of common sense anyone in the organization has.

--Dan

DON'T FEED THE TROLLS

[Anonymous Coward]

just a friendly reminder.

DVDs providing woody

[evil_one]

There has been discussion of this within the debian developers.
It was pointed out that this is actually unnecessary, as most people will only need CD1 and/or CD2 when woody is finally released.
My primary workstation is running woody, and required a TOTAL of 500mb in the way of packages from debian.org - The extras on the other discs are things like alternate daemons (eg, you have your choice of 3+ sendmail replacements, 2 versions of telnetd, etc.) and are not needed for the typical home user.

Debian based in Germany?

[Phil Hands]

you seem to have got it mixed up with SuSE.

Debian is based just off the coast of Greenland, on average ;-)

Also, Debian's version is currently 2.2, soon to be 3.0, so I'm not sure where you got 5.x from.

Re:Debian based in Germany?

[A_Non_Moose]

Quite possible...been a long day with NT4/Tired Brain/Crack Pipe/Non Stop trouble shooting...or as we call it on a college campus: "Thursday".

(apologies to George Foreman) "I was wrong!"

Doh.

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[Brand X]

MacOS 7.1 could be compressed to 1.1 MB. MacOS X can't fit in less than 180 MB (I've been trying to strip down a version of 10.1 for the hell of it) and MacOS 9.2 seems to be limited to 64 MB at the smallest functional...

I've got a bootable floppy with a bare 2.0.x linux kernel, but almost no drivers, and a fully bootable 20MB CD business card (rest of the space is diagnostic tools)...

So... which version of Windows can he trim down to 75MB?

muttermutterbloodybloatwaresomethingswronghereI' mn otsurewhatbutit'sreallynotaddingup

No reason an OS needs 6 CDs

[badmonkey]

Is there a good reason debian doesn't fit on one cd? I mean you can tell me its all the included open source, but text files compress really well!What exactly is on these 6 CDs?
Even bloated evil windows is ONE CD!
Am I dumb, or what?

Re:No reason an OS needs 6 CDs

[Sloppy]

Am I dumb, or what?

No, you just forgot that a typical "Linux Distro" is a lot more than just an OS. It's also a ton of apps.

Re:No reason an OS needs 6 CDs

[mbanck]

Even bloated evil windows is ONE CD!

But then, where are the apps in Windows? Oh... Wordpad, I forgot :-P

You can install Debian from 2 floppy disks over the network, the base system is way below 100Mbyte.

Michael

Re:No reason an OS needs 6 CDs

[Penguuu]

Those packages with debian aren't coming in sources (you can get sources though) but most packages in dvd are precompiled binaries. It is not very good way to put all the packages in sources to cd-rom, because then you would need to install compiler, libraries etc. before you can install anything. And it takes LONG time to compile all of your packages.

Debian Testing Locales Package

[carney1979]

I heard a rumour from another Debian fanatic that the testing version of the locales package had been broken.

If true, did it get fixed??

Re:Debian Testing Locales Package

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at http://bugs.debian.org/ for more info or to file any problems.

why use a dvd? just setup a package mirror

[cwebster]

apt-get install apt-move

setup apt-move.conf, and then maintain a package mirron on one box, and keep it updated. Then all your other boxes can reference the local mirror instead of the normal ones in its sources.list

a full unstable mirror was only about 4 gigs while i was maintaining one myself.

It's all a matter of cost economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but not practical.
The reason is simple. .24 cents for one CDR * 6 = $1.44.
1 DVD = 11 dollars.
Now at companies like Linux System Labs, it a very simple point of economics.
The Current Debian Woody they have there with all 6 discs cost $9.99, where if the charge had to include purchasing a DVDR other such equipment. Add in the media, and your cost has at least tripled.
It's all a matter of cost economics.
Dave

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[Anonymous Coward]

blah, i've trimed 95 down to 35 megs

Technically Illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Naive question: In order to read such a distribution, wouldn't it be necessary to have Linux based DVD reader software (like DeCSS) which (if not licenced/sanctioned by the MPAA or whoever) some people would call a "circumvention device", under the (possibly unconstitutional) DMCA and which they would consider 'illegal' to share with somebody else, ie via the web? (Even if it is not 'illegal' to possess?)

Or is there some DVD reading software which could not possibly be used as a "circumvention device"?

(PS. I realize that 1-nearly anything can be used to duplicate copyrighted material and 2-that debian is not attempting to prevent duplication, and 3-that the DMCA only applies in the US)

Thanks.

Re:Technically Illegal?

[Dahan]

DeCSS is for DVD movies. DVD-ROMs aren't encrypted, and don't require DeCSS.

Good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! Now if they could just get their piece of shit package management system working.

DVD? Out of curiousity...

[MissMyNewton]

If this were Windows, wouldn't we see about 300 posts complaining about bloat?

Pray-tell, what is there that a full DVD is needed for??!?!?

Where can I get the latest KDE .debs???

[Anonymous Coward]

kde.debian.net doesn't seem to be up anymore (or at least today).

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[narfbot]

I can trim Win95 OSR2 down to 30 MB! And it works normal. That is just the basic shell, however. But it's great for small HD's like my 40 MB HD which was all I had at the time.

I'm a computer game fan, because when I got my 100 MB HD & 200 MB HD, I added them in and Voila! I could install games, like Starcraft. Too bad I only had a 486 and 12 MB of ram. It would freeze after 5 minutes. Outta memory.

oops, typo

[noahm]

Oops. Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I mistyped in the first paragraph. Prior to woody, a distribution would move from unstable to frozen to stable, not to testing. (obviously, since this was prior to testing, but I want to clarify)

noah

Re:DVD? Out of curiousity...

[Garinwirth]

This page might be helpful.

*sigh*

[Garinwirth]

Or this.

Re:*sigh*

[MissMyNewton]

Ha ha --

No interest in hacking private IPs...

Only wanting to know what in god's name fills a DVD with operating system cruft?

If this were Apple or MS we'd rip 'em good! Why should Linux get a free no-rip pass?

Re:*sigh*

[Hast]

Because whay you get in the package. IT's not only an OS with Notepad. On the DVD you get basically all the software you'll need. That's the point.

If MS delivered XP with Office, Photoshop, and a bunch of other "big apps" then noone would complain. (Besides Adobe.) That's what's on the DVD, check the above mentioned "allpackages" link for more specific info.

Do many people actually install from CD?

[mj6798]

Everybody I know installs a base system from CD and then uses apt to bring it up to the latest version.

Re:Do many people actually install from CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, so you answered your own question: yes people (including you) actually install from CD. I know, it's a drag.

Re:Do many people actually install from CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The base system is a 35M tar file. You don't need a DVD for that, and you don't need "testing" for that either.

Re:DVD? Out of curiousity...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were Windows, wouldn't we see 300 posts complaining about bloat?

From your comment, I would guess you're not a GNU/Linux user. When one installs a GNU/Linux distribution, they not only get the base OS but thousands of applications, too.

To put it another way, if MS did the same with Windows as distribution teams/companies do with GNU/Linux, when you install MS Windows you'd not only get Windows/IE but also MS Word of Windows, MS Money, MS Works, Power Point, Visual Basic, JDK, several hundred games, MS Visual C++ suite, Microsoft Development Network SDKs, IIS, etc, etc.

Users who refuse to buy DVD ware?

[2Bits]

Ok, sounds like a good idea to be able to have everything on one disc. Now, what would happen to those people who stick to their principle, and refuse to buy DVD wares because of this stupid regional encryption scheme?

I don't mind having my debian on multiple CDs, but I refuse to buy any DVD wares. Give me my debian on normal CDs!

Re:Users who refuse to buy DVD ware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a total idiot or what. DVD stands for Digital Versital Disk, and in this case just contains ISO9660 data.

Or did you think that all DVD's were movies.

Re:Users who refuse to buy DVD ware?

[Vegan Pagan]

DVD-ROM doesn't do regions all by itself. DVD-video files on a DVD-ROM disk are regioned. All other file types on DVD-ROM are region free.

Re:Users who refuse to buy DVD ware?

[scharkalvin]

I don't yet have a DVD rom drive on my computer,but as soon as the new DVD-RW drives drop in price by half an order of magnitude I will get one. DVD is more than just movies, it is also one HUGH digital container! Get used to the idea, DVD-rom will soon become the way linux distros are shipped, CD-ROM is just toooo small!

BTW I have no desire to watch DVD movies on my computer. The screen is too small and the wrong aspect ratio, the sound sucks, and the office is not that confortable. I prefer my family room with it's 40" TV, surround sound system, and comfy chair.

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[biohazard99]

That is an excellent question, can anyone on here give an estimate of what a vanilla win32 release with source would be.

Whats the point?

[xted]

What is the point in putting debian on a dvd when there is such an awesome packaging system? Why in the hell would you want to install 200 packages, only to apt-get upgrade and download those same 200 packages again? Debian on a deskette or one of those mini business card cd's is what we need, not dvds.

Re:Whats the point?

[Will Collins]

U could put debian on a mini CD, but then you'd need a fast internet connection to get the things u want.

U'd buy the DVD if u didnt have a fast internet connection

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[AntiNorm]

That is an excellent question, can anyone on here give an estimate of what a vanilla win32 release with source would be

Windows itself: 1 CD
Source: 3 CDs (maybe only 1 or 2)
Electronic file containing MS Source EULA: 441 CDs

So I'd put it at about 445 CDs.

Bootable?

[Millyways]

Is this DVD bootable? Last time I checked the Woody boot floopies where still a major stumbling block on the road to a stable release. I just finnished installing Debian Unstable (sid) on my laptop by installing a base debian potato system from floppies and then upgrading to unstable.

I was wondering if this DVD used a similar system or has a workable version of the woody boot floppies included.

That's a quick way to get a root kit.

[SgtChaireBourne]

I had to cure my co-workers of that last year. Like everyone else, our site was / is under constant probing, so by the time the patches and upgrades were downloaded and added to the installed-from-CD base system, they were owned.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll just work online first for a few minutes...What's this, now? ps and top just got weird"

It's good to have everything you need on CD so you don't have to break the airgap until you're as close to secure as you can reasonably get.

http://dvdimage.debian.org/

[juha0]

So, when will we have that one..?

Re:why use a dvd? just setup a package mirror

[Phil Hands]

or even simpler, and more efficient, just use squid.

If you add a line something like this to your /etc/squid.conf:

refresh_pattern debian.org/.*\.deb$ 129600 100% 129600

so that it keeps .debs for a long time (about 3 months, or until it runs out of disk) then set all your machines to use the cache (http_proxy in the environment, or a setting in apt.conf).

You still get the benefit of downloading any particular package file only once, but you don't waste bandwidth on downloading packages nobody installs, you don't have to have as much disk space, and there is no admin overhead after telling squid how much disk to use.

Re:windows is bare, debian has basically everythin

[Anonymous Coward]

snot that bare, has a pretty good webbrowser & email/newsreader. & xp has some niffty gadgets.

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[GaCRuX]

I've got a p100 box with an 80meg HD running Debian. It works just fine, as a web server, ftp server, and masquerading box. Lets see your 75meg windows do *that*. ;-)
Oh, and I'd like to see it done. I've tried and I can't get win95 below 90meg min install...

Somehow methinks maybe it could be done with XP though?

*cough*sarcasm*cough*

Oh, and I've got a p200 box I use as a bridge (well, I needed a makeshift hub, and had a shitload of spare network cards lying around...) with *no* hard drive in it. Don't even get me started on LRP... =)

I'm sorry

[kraf]

but it doesn't take 6 CD-s to install Debian Woody.
You need the boot floppies and an ftp/http mirror.
What's the point in having thousands of packages you will never install, and are already obsolete at the time of the release on DVD ?
Yet another non-story on Slashdot.

Re:I'm sorry

[scharkalvin]

Yes by the time you get the DVD it will be old news. HOWEVER, not everyone has DSL, Cable modems, or even 56K. For the poor guy stuck with 28K dialup, that CD or DVD is a good way to get started. He can upgrade packages over the slow pipe piecemeal later.

Woody CD ISOs

[ultrabot]

But where, then, can I get ISO images for Woody CD's (not dvds)? I recently installed red hat 7.2 (over potato), and it seems to be a bit too "minimalistic" for my needs.

How Jim did it...

[lordsutch]

Jim posted details of how he mastered the DVD-Rs under Linux on the debian-cd; however, the interesting part is:

Burning the DVD-R is another story. schilling@fokus.gmd.de is
making noises about making cdrecord (pro) a "for-profit" piece
of software, and has not released the code that
will actually burn a DVD-R......but that is another story.

Can anyone else confirm this information?

DVD's Via Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of begs the question. If you have a DVD drive, and wine, and a software decoder, can you watch DVD's in WINE.

I admit, I haven't touched wine since its infancy, but then it had some problems with peripherals like sound cards.

Just curious. I know it isn't a popular idea, but then I could still consider myself a non-dual booting inidividual, and go out and buy a DVD or two. I haven't bought any, yet, but that Godfather series looks great.

Re: I found dvd-r prices

[IQ]

This is great. Now, what software exists (4 linux) that will allow me to burn to dvd-r/dvd-rw/dvd-ram? Formats I need to burn are: just data; dv; dvd video; vcd; svcd.

I want to archive my old Hi8 and DV tapes to a mediam that might last osama's nuking of my neighborhood.

http://www.dvdwriters.co.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys I found this web site, it has a review
on the Pioneer A03 drive.

http://www.dvdwriters.co.uk

Not wanting to be a troll.. but

[Idimmu Xul]

ive taken to installing over FTP now.. luckily I do have broadband.

i probably wont be buying distro cds again, but I will be showing supports by buying t-shirts :)

How is this newsworthy ?

[tmark]

Sorry, but I just cannot see how the distribution media really is newsworthy. Who cares ? At best it saves an admin a few CD changes, but as most people probably realize a standard install of the average distro only needs the first (sometimes the second) CD; especially if you are installing a server without all the application junk. More advanced users who have to install a bunch of boxes are almost certainly doing unattended network installs, and these are the people who would most benefit from saving a few media changes - except they don't have to change any media anyways ! Finally, I don't know what sort of servers most people find themselves administering but I can't think of any at our company that feature DVD drives.

Re:How is this newsworthy ?

[jayteedee]

We'll if this is NOT newsworthy, then why didn't you skip it when you read the appropriate title (highly appropriate given the usual Slashdot fair). And even more importantly, why did you bother responding with a non-newsworthy post to a 'alleged' non-newsworthy article? This (US centric) is called capitalism. Different people want different 'stuff'. Just cause you don't see a need for it doesn't mean it's not newsworthy. I actually read at a lower score level with this article, because me, myself, and I thought is was newsworthy, otherwise I would have never come across your 'non-newsworthy post'. Also, some of us administer many unix boxes and have servers with DVD drives (my last was a $28 unit from computergeeks.com - refurb - basically the same price as a CD-ROM drive - so I can't lose). I would much rather apt-get from a server/DVD-ROM than from the internet any day. Plus I myself, as an administrator and getting sick and tired of the bloated pile of CD-ROMs that I'm accumulating and would much prefer a single DVD over a pile of CDs, just like most people would prefer a CD over a pile of floppies. This is for reasons of storage and portability as much as disk-swapping during the installation process. So fine, go install Debian with a pile of 3000 floppies, but don't expect many of us capitalistic-self-centered-pigs to follow you.

Excellent Strategy...

[crashnbur]

Unfortunately, I don't have the money for a hard drive dedicated to such a task or the capacity to simply copy CDs/DVDs to a hard drive specifically for such a task. I would rather use hard drive space for storage of files that I use more than occasionally, and keep software packages and such on their discs.

Re:Excellent Strategy...

[smunt]

Takes up about 3,5 Gig. That's including nonfree and non-US.

I can live with that

Debian Network Install

[Evil MarNuke]

SuSE has done this for a while and installing one DVD is a lot less "sitting in front of the computer changing disks" of a hassle. Only problem is: what if you have multiple machines, some of which only have a CD drive, with others having both? I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both. Call me a SuSE fanboy, but I am.

Well Debian can easily be installed over a network, so to answer your question, if you have many machines but one dvd drive you just mount the DVD on one machine, setup a ftp or http server, and do a standard network install. Now if you have a many simler machines that require the same config you would want to setup FAI (fully automatic installation) on a master node and use the DVD as the package source.

Re:and people say windows is bloated

[MrResistor]

I carried a floppy with Tom's Root Boot on it around with me at my last job just to see what I could get it to boot on (we made digital video equipment, which was all x86 for top level control), but I seem to have misplaced it since then. A google search for Tiny Linux turns up plentyu of good link for this kind of stuff. The card CD seems like a really cool idea.

I beleive it was win98 (not SE) he was trimming. Another poster in this thread claims 30MB with win95.

Debian (logo) has a life of its own

[Rohan Talip]

Has anyone else noticed that if you look at a large version of the Debian logo it appears to have a life of its own. (Probably reflects the actual distribution.)

You have to move your eyes around a little. If you have a very high resolution monitor you can try looking at the reversed version for T-shirts or print it out onto a T-shirt (or buy one).

Re:Wow, big woody!

[castlan]

Yeah, it sure is. Compared to this, the previous relase is just small potatoes.

FreeBSD Press

[Nishi-no-wan]

This month's FreeBSD Press has the usually 4-6 CD-ROM set of packages on DVD ROM. It looks like more and more magazines in Japan are moving toward DVD.

Re: I found dvd-r prices

[__aawwih8715]

Dunno.
I know cdrecord can handle it i believe.
THats just for the burning, i suggest you consult freshmeat.net to see if there's anyting that will make an image of those filesystems...