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

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

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: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: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created in part to address the fact that Debian's freeze cycle is often so long that many of the included packages are outdated by the time it's released.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:free?

[nexex]

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

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.

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: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.