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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.
The Widescreen DTS edition of Debian Does Dallas/b?
What, me worry?
That's one big woody!
Seems like an awesome idea. Any idea on cost?
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?
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
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.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
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.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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created in part to address the fact that Debian's freeze cycle is often so long that many of the included packages are outdated by the time it's released.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
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.
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?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
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?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
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
.. if only.
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.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Why DVD?
Because I can pull 20M/s sustained from my DVD drive and only 4.5K/s from the network.
.sig: Now legally binding!
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...
' mn otsurewhatbutit'sreallynotaddingup
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
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
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.)
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.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
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".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
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
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
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
Everybody I know installs a base system from CD and then uses apt to bring it up to the latest version.
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.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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.
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
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Can anyone else confirm this information?
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
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.
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.
I beleive it was win98 (not SE) he was trimming. Another poster in this thread claims 30MB with win95.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.