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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD
gbl08ma writes "According to various sources, the ISO image size for the upcoming Long-Term Support Ubuntu version 'Precise Pangolin' will not fit on a regular CD, since the image size is expected to weigh around 750MB instead of the usual ~700MB. The idea is that users should either flash the image to a USB flash drive or burn it to a DVD. The extra room on the disc image could allow for integration of more GNOME3 components and Canonical applications. There was also a proposal to use a 1.5GB DVD image as the default download for Ubuntu 12.04."
This is proof positive that Ubuntu is officially BLOATWARE.
Ubuntu doesn't need to ship with everything including the kitchen sink. Then again I'm posting this from Lion which was a 3.53GB download.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
what in the world is a CD? some old tech that is not pontless anymore like an 8track or VHS tape?
The last time I burned a CD was years and years ago. With a USB key drive (4 GB) going for $5 now, who would?
This might get me downrated, but honestly, I don't think Ubuntu is for everyone. I do think that Canonical wants to stay relevant with those folks who have 5 year old or younger machines.
If you need a Linux distro that fits on a CD drive, there are other options, but just about every machine in the past 5-6 years boots off a USB key or DVD drive. Some newer machines like netbooks and macbook airs don't (and have never) come optical drives (hell I have a toshiba portege from 2001 without optical media).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
If the plan to use a 1.5GB default image goes through that will wreck havoc on the mirroring network. That's essentially doubling the size of the default ISO and will likely cause for some annoyed users waiting for the download. They're doing it wrong if they can't fit it on a CD.
This is one of the many reasons why Mint is now more popular than Ubuntu.
Practically speaking and forgetting every small petty argument. What would it take to make ubuntu (Or any other linux Distro) a mainstream desktop OS. (Highlight DESKTOP) If you were in charge of it or could give it direction what would you do to make it work, accepted and profitable. I am hoping this will be an interesting exercise.
If they could just keep it to 1.4 gigs it could at least fit on an 8 cm DVD and we'd have a nice little shirt pocket version that could load even on machines that don't have USB boot capability. Yeah, I've still got some old hardware here in the basement and deal with more people that have the same.
You'd think they'd find a way to make it fit precisely onto one CD. The previous distributions have all hovered around 650MB, why can't this one?
I'm really sick of every Linux distribution hovering suspiciously around the space of one CD or DVD. That just means it takes me even longer to try out anything new. We don't all have super-fast broadband or internet without download caps, you know. And I'm too lazy to ask for a pre-burned CD. Am I the only person who wants a Debian distribution with XFCE and almost nothing else on it (no gedit, no Totem, no Evolution, no Firefox) so I can download specifically the stuff I want after the fact?
I'm upset that they went with Pangolin instead of something with Penguin in the title.
Sure most computers can boot from a USB thumbdrive now, but if the size is ~750, why not just cut a little and fit it onto a regular CD one more time? On the next LTS, when it's 1050 and not close to a CD, then let it go.
Maybe I am too old or the idea is too old school, but is it really that hard to separate the install into two CDs? At some point the user would *gasp* insert the next disc. Back in the day of 16 bit operative systems you inserted several to make a full disc install and it was not a big deal.
...I actually used a CD to burn a Linux image... it's been DVD for at least six years...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
And thus, one of the most common entry points into Linux is lost to Ubuntu.
How many of us actually installed Linux, for the first time, onto a Factory Fresh machine?
Better yet, how many of us then reinstalled windows _just_ long enough to get online and figure out why Linux wouldn't partition/install/boot?
So, keep on about "CD's are soooo last decade", but please keep in mind just how many Linux users saw the light on old hardware of the kind that might only have a CD-ROM.
From cdrecord man page:
-overburn
Allow wodim to write more than the official size of a medium. This feature is usually
called overburning and depends on the fact that most blank media may hold more space than
the official size. As the official size of the lead-out area on the disk is 90 seconds
(6750 sectors) and a disk usually works if there are at least 150 sectors of lead out,
all media may be overburned by at least 88 seconds (6600 sectors). Most CD recorders
only do overburning in SAO or RAW mode. Known exceptions are TEAC CD-R50S, TEAC CD-R55S
and the Panasonic CW-7502. Some drives do not allow to overburn as much as you might
like and limit the size of a CD to e.g. 76 minutes. This problem may be circumvented by
writing the CD in RAW mode because this way the drive has no chance to find the size
before starting to burn. There is no guarantee that your drive supports overburning at
all. Make a test to check if your drive implements the feature.
Ok, use a DVD, now you have space for whatever Unity/Gnome3... AND Gnome 2.
If your hardware is so old it doesn't have USB booting, I really doubt Ubuntu would be a good distro choice anyway.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
This is ridiculous, CDs cost the same as DVDs and if your computer has a optical drive and is new enough that you should be using normal Ubuntu instead of one of its builds designed for low spec systems then you have a DVD drive (and a few gigs is nothing for a USB stick).
I have been burning CD images to DVDs for like 5+ years now, because unless you want compatibility with really old systems there is no reason not to and lets face it Ubuntu is not really even compatible with these systems in the first place.
So I cannot even imagine one person being inconvenience by this.
Now significantly increasing the size will effect download time, but once it is on a HD 700MB or 1.5G are both so insignificant that it does not really matter.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
WTF what a bloated shitstack!
May as well run Vista.
I like Debian's net-install to get the latest packages since stable ISOs are usually outdated. :( Obviously, if you have fast Internet connection.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution out there.
I only still burn CD isos to actual CDRs because I buy them to occasionally burn new music for my car stereo which plays mp3 off CDRs and it's a bit more efficient, and I rarely use them for the car. If it weren't for that, I'd only have blank DVDs. I have an ancient clamshell ibook (11 years old) that I play around with that is perfectly happy booting from DVD. Granted, they had DVD-ROM drives a bit earlier than most of that era, but who has a computer that can run the normal Ubuntu install and not boot from USB or DVD anymore?
At least there's no Canadian "Copying Tax" on DVD's as there is with CD's.
Are you saying that 5 year old machines don't have DVD drives..which world do you come from?
I always burned the CD ISO to DVD because it would install faster and with less noise.
I think, therefore you are.
Finally they figure that the old pc or notebook that preinstalled with cd only will not be able to run ubuntu nicely.
Any system that has been made since circa 2001 (i.e. the past 10 years) has been able to boot from USB.
Ubuntu 11's system requirements are as such:
* 1 GHz CPU (x86 processor (Pentium 4 or better))
* 1 GiB RAM (system memory)
* 15 GB of hard-drive space
By Pentium 4 or better, that likely means it requires SSE2 instructions, which means Athlon 64 is the minimum on the AMD side. 1GB of RAM is hard to find or get on 2001-2002 P4's as well due to the use of RDRAM. So you're basically looking at 2003-era systems as a minimum to run Ubuntu.
But finding an 8 year old or better system as a hand-me-down, at a yard sale, or even by dumpster diving isn't difficult at all. Never really has been. Most systems like that will actually still work once the typical spyware-infested XP install is removed.
Considering a brand new 4GB USB flash drive is a whopping $2.47 on Amazon (or $5 at Walgreen's) it's not that big of a deal to get one of those either.
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-004G/dp/B001XURP7W/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1320470296&sr=1-3
Ubuntu made the right choice by dumping what is now an arbitrary 700MB limit. I'm sure plenty of people also "saw the light" of Linux on 1.44MB floppies in the late 90's as well, but it's almost 2012, and both eras are over now.
TLDR Ubuntu requires 2003-era systems to begin with. 4GB USB drives are $2.47 these days. No big deal.
debian (you know the thing that ubuntu is based on) runs on a pentium with 48 megs of ram, gnome 2 requires like 4 megs of video memory, ubuntu minus BLOAT will run just fine on a 8 year old machine with the memory, and if you trim off all of its pre installed pure garbage runs quite well.
but its honestly less effort to su apt-get install debian where you want it, than hope and pray that you can boot ubuntu on such a machine and apt-get remove AOL, compaq utilities and MS HOME, which is what it boils down to
most people will never in their life use 90% of what ubuntu comes bloated with, nevermind the dumb shit like jello windows and the cube desktop switcher
Here you go, 4GB USB drive. A whopping $2.48 worth of pocket change.
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-004G-A11/dp/B001T9EYFI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320472244&sr=8-1
If you're that concerned, take it out of the package, put Ubuntu Linux on it, and then throw it away immediately like it's a message to Inspector Gadget.
Sadly, this way will be throwing away useful software that should come pre-installed and almost everyone uses until the ISO fits in a regular CD.
But the Canonical stuff we never use will still be there.
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
Then use Debian, use Puppy Linux, use BasicLinux, use whatever. It's your choice, whether you're running an 8-core AMD Bulldozer, a $250 netbook that leaves any 2003-era system in the dust, or something from the 1990s that belongs in a museum (or landfill).
I only wish you luck on getting any modern software, such as an ACID2-compliant browser like Iceweasel or Chromium, to run on a Pentium 1 with 48MB of RAM. Such things do not constitute Windows 98 era junkware. If you're reading this with lynx, more power to you!
Windows Vista was a hog, but Windows 7 will run on any system that Ubuntu does, and runs well on the same systems, although you may have to disable Aero. The Windows 8 developer preview is actually faster and uses less memory that Windows 7, but it does require a "DirectX 9" graphics card (most anything 2002+), as the graphics are 100% 3D-accelerated.
Win7 also remarkably stable from what I've seen for the past 2 years or so. It's not subject to the junk XP was, like having to run ipconfig /flushdns (or rebooting) to fix network issues. It also uses ASLR and DEP by default for base security purposes.
Because of that, there's no reason to use XP in the Windows world ofr anything except for 1990s-era software that requires IE6 or does things like write to its own C:\Progra~1\ directory. Not to mention XP considers SATA to be exotic hardware, drivers haven't been written for it for years, its PnP driver capabilities are way outdated, etc.
But whatever you're using, it's your choice, and do enjoy. Just thought I'd inform you on this from the other side of things. :)
For just an extra 50MB? Surely that extra 50MB could just be installed over the network out of a repository, couldn't it? Why not actually make use of the extra space whichever medium people will have to use instead has to offer? Seems like a waste of everyone's time to even talk about it for just 50 measly megabytes.
I'm pretty sure this guy isn't either. If your computer isn't cutting it anymore, stop getting mad at the internet, stop being a cheap asshole, and buy a new one.
It is time to finally move away from Ubuntu. Thank you, Canonical, for all the fish.
Who said I was male?
The fact that you assumed that, and are still unflinchingly clinging to a 300mhz system from 1997 that is grinding your swap to death, indicates that you might need to get out more.
It's about time distro makers stopped restricting their content to what they can cram within the artificial limitations of 700MB. Pretty much every desktop and laptop computer since, what, 2004 has had a DVD reader.
I've always felt that the Ubuntu DVD ISOs were a bit of an afterthought. Hopefully this will now change.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Dump Unity off the image. Everyone wins.
It places a clearly defined limit on the size of the installation media. That, in turn, places a limit upon how much has to be downloaded. And bandwidth is still at a premium for servers and end users.
I think that most of the remaining arguments are moot, except that it's possible that some of older computers may only have a CD writer. (Though I do expect anything that would run Ubuntu would have the ability to read DVDs.)
I might have gotten a distro to install from a USB drive once, ever. Every other time it doesn't boot, or it boots but cannot install. What am I doing wrong!?!?!
I cannot begin to explain how much frustration this one issue has caused me. It simply DOES NOT WORK!!
So in the interests of my blood pressure, I will continue only installing distros less than 700mb.
First, this is not exactly true. USB may be supported but there are PCs that won't boot from all USB devices.
Second, "requirements" to run a Linux distribution sounds fishy to me. People put linux on underpowered and smaller systems all the time. Ubuntu won't just refuse to boot up if you don't have enough ram. These are "recommended" settings.
Though this does point out a more interesting aspect of Ubuntu not fitting on a CD: it's getting bloated. Whether or not CDs are only for people in their late 80's it's still clear that the distributions are getting larger. Newer software does not need to be larger by some universal rule. So why is the lean mean OS going the way of Windows? Are there that many must-have applications now? Why not just declare a bunch of them optional and stick them on an auxillary CD? Are there tons of graphics and sounds just to make it look flashy?
Now that they've dropped the 700MB limit, how many months or weeks until a DVD is too small? Once you stop worrying about the waistline expansion is hard to stop.
Any system that has been made since circa 2001 has been able to boot from USB.
Um, nope. I'm typing from a high-end system circa 2008 (quad core @ 3Ghz with 16GB RAM) that can not.
Canonical will likely keep the image _as close_ to CD size as possible.
In order to attract new home users they have got to be as small as the can. ~750meg is movie size, 1.5gig isn't and a lot of people will balk at it.
Ubuntu should look at some sort of base install that will get the user booting and and into browser. The less critical apps can be downloaded in the background.
I was going to respond "get for-pay apps in the Software Center" but then I looked and that's in there now. I just came back from Debian so I didn't know. There needs to be a lot more of these for-pay apps, and they need to not suck. Ubuntu needs commercial apps that make money, and not just a little. They need an "Angry Birds" breakout success story to bait the masses of developers needed to make a successful ecosystem. That's probably the only thing Old Sweaty was ever right about. This isn't going to be a $19.95 app. It's going to be a $1 or free app. And by free I mean "ad supported" - which brings another thing: the Software Center needs to allow ad-supported apps. Yes, I know: they suck. Especially in cases like Angry Birds, where Rovio wouldn't release a sold version on Android for forever because the ad-supported version was raking in far more per install than the for-pay version. But this is the world as it is, not the world as we want it to be, and ad-supported apps and for-pay apps pay developers' mortgages the world 'round.
When you name your versions after critters official collectible plush toys and figurines in limited editions are a profit center gimme - and they make great spiffs.
I wanted the taskbar back but I just Googled that and apparently there's something called Tint2 that gave it back to me. Then I wanted the old menu back, and Google gave up classicmenu-indicator. This Unity thing is going to take some getting used to but at least I can now do the things with it now I used to do. I'm all for trying the new stuff, but this was simplified a bit overmuch. I'm sure I'll get over it. I don't know if Google Talk video chat is supported yet - but that's also a needful thing.
I'm curious as to why if as some others here would say, "nobody uses desktop Linux", there would be about 216,000,000 hits in Google for "Ubuntu". Surely Ubuntu (philosophy) was never that popular. Maybe some marketing money to fight the perception that nobody's using it when in fact a great many are. Or maybe a guerrilla effort involving something like discreet little Ubuntu stickers with just the logo and "Ubuntu.com" that fans could buy for a couple dollars a sheet of 80 1x1" clear waterproof decals we could discreetly affix to things like windows and glass doors, armrests in aircraft and waiting areas, the pages of shared magazines, the lid of a geocache. Kind of like a "Ubuntu fan was here" stamp, but not something that did damage or was hard to remove like the bumper stickers you used to get with RedHat. Wouldn't want to get people in trouble. Thinking about it more, 3x5 cards with 60 1/2" square stickers would be better as they're more pocketable and discreet - but the website has to have a background in a contrasting color if you're doing the transparent thing because functional readability is more important than artistic purity.
Ubuntu could use a Netflix app, or maybe just an Android VM with the Android Marketplace so I can use all my Android apps in Ubuntu. I could develop Android apps on the darned thing, I don't see why I can't have a Cyanogen for Ubuntu. Then I could have all the same apps on my phone, my Transformer tablet, my PC. That would rock.
Ubuntu needs an OEM to build and ship a purpose-built line of Ubuntu PCs globally including the US. Dell is doing this in China, but Dell's not going to push this in the first world. It has to be an OEM that isn't beholden to Microsoft so HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Apple are out. Maybe HTC, ZTE, Samsung, Motorola Mobility or some other company that has publicly credited Android with saving the company would give it a go. Maybe AOC, LG, NEC or Viewsonic also - they want to play in the new PC game but are reluctant to do the no-margin Windows desktop thing. Some of that last bunch are cool because they also make TV's and/or monitors, and a fanless Ubuntu embedded in the monitor or HDTV would totally rock as a thin client as well as a PC. Some of them already have Android tablets. Ubuntu's b
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It is a pet peeve of mine to install a new operating system only to find several utilities included with linux since the beginning of time are no longer installed (or included with installation media) by default. Yea I know you can just run apt whatever and install it if you can remember what the name of the package it was in.
The problem is telling people to run commands over the phone that don't exist and then having to segway into installing crap that consumes no resources and should just be there in the first place.
Or being logged into a client system without access and or permission to install software.
Linux distros are essentially commodities. Little things like this make me not want to recommend ubuntu. The badge for the smallest linux distribution might as well be a medal for the smartest retard.
Well, my grandfather’s machine (which runs Kubuntu, BTW) does have a DVD drive. In fact, it has a DVD/CDRW combo drive, which can therefore read a DVD, but not burn one.
Low-end machines of that age often can’t burn DVDs.
Still, if I were to put Linux on an old machine these days, I’d probably go with Bodhi Linux.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Slackware ships on a DVD, and a full install is about 5-6 GB. But it certainly isn't bloated. It's one of the quickest and most stable distributions I've used, so I hesitate to say that adding more stuff to the Ubuntu install justifies people calling it bloated. Ubuntu's selection of software is still conservative in quantity. If anything would be blamed on bloat, it would be implementing it in such a way that it negatively affects your system's performance. So if they're adding unnecessary things to the system startup, or a lot of background processes that you don't use, then that would be bloat. (In Ubuntu's case, this has been happening, but it started long before they ever decided to ship a release that was too large for a cd.)
My understanding is that 32 bit Ubuntu binaries are compiled with i686 instructions which means you will be able to go all the way back to Pentium Pro era machines (according to distrowatch the switch from i386 to i686 happened in Ubuntu 10.10). Those packages that are performance sensitive typically have multiple versions of the code (typically selected between at run time).
I would be amazed if typical 32 bit packages were compiled to use even SSE by default (rather than optionally) let alone SSE2 (which "only" arrived on AMD Athlon64 machines in 2003). I think the next step minimum will be 64 bit only...
However your point holds - would you want to run a recent Ubuntu on such an old machine given all the other requirements?
If you need a Linux distro that fits on a CD drive, there are other options, but just about every machine in the past 5-6 years boots off a USB key or DVD drive.
Hell, I had a DVD drive in a budget PC in late 1998. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that any machine incapable of booting from either DVD or USB is so old that its ability to install an OS releasing in 2012 is completely irrelevant. The only logical complaint is the download size for those with slow or capped connections, and they can easily just order discs which are sold at cost (5 GBP for 5 discs last time I checked).
I see this entirely as a non-issue.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
So why is the lean mean OS going the way of Windows?
people like shiny shit.
there you have new, shiny hardware with multiple cores, shitload of ram, distro worth multiple gigabytes on hard disk, and all you do is use about 3 minutes cumulative processor time in hour, while reading slashdot. for 57 minutes processor is sleeping, ready to jump on whatever fancy calculation you might throw at it.
makes you wince, doesn't it? :-)
The Linux kernel is only a few megabytes. The whole thing fits easily in the L2 or L3 cache of a modern server processor. That's Really Freaking Important for geeks like me who have to build stuff at scale.
I want to ignore your troll, but I can't. You raise an important issue, even if your motivations are suspect.
For 20 or 30 years we've had the meme "Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away." That's shorthand for the fact that Microsoft operating systems grow less performant at the same rate Intel processors grow more performant, and net the progress is zero. It doesn't have to be that way any more.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Mod parent up
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
My laptop has a Blu-ray drive. Doesn't mean I think moving up to what's relevant for ME is a good choice.
How hard is it to put the optional stuff on a second CD? Make sure you can run a low spec PC off the first CD and put all the higher spec stuff on the second one. People will have the choice to use either the DVD, only the first CD, or the two (or more) CDs. RedHat has been doing multiple CDs for years and years....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm getting more and more fed up with Ubuntu. For a while I have been considering switching to Debian or Mint Debian Edition. My friend keeps telling me to try Arch. If I need latest software I can find a backport or configure it from source. Every six months I get more annoyed with them. I wonder if 12.04 edition will be the last straw.
Well, the actual media doesn't matter to me, although it'd bug me if I someday would need to put Ubuntu on old hardware with cd only.
However, the larger the iso-image is, the more software that I potentially do not need is downloaded, and the more of the software I actually need must be downloaded once more because it's needs an update. So, if network is available, a smaller installation image would actually be preferable. But that won't cut it for the all-in-one offline live-from-disc demo... tough choice ... or why not just distribute it on different media?
Why haven't you RMA'd your motherboard yet?
Maybe they'll stop putting the images out as .iso files that force you to jump through all sorts of hoops to write them to a USB stick, then.
Linux isn't relevant on the desktop period.
Says the user whose pc is filled to the brim with cracked copies of commercial software. ^_^
If they don't include Gnome 2 in the new Ubuntu version with LTS, we will see mass migration to Linux Mint. Already Linux Mint gained 40% in a single month, 'cause of the Unity & Gnome 3 debacle. I wonder when the Ubuntu decision makers are going to realise, how bad their new Desktop Environment is.
As long as Unity is in the shape it's in, it won't be going on any of the systems I use...
Why won't ubuntu just do as fedora has done? use xz compression on the squashfs image. The live image for fedora is now 565 MB, but would have been more than 700MB if using gzip compression as ubuntu does. Reading from cd/dvd or even flash drives and harddrives (except ssds) are so slow compared to the cpu today anyway, so it would probably be faster in most cases.
Does it support more devices than XP too?
I brought a dvd/cd drive 4 or 5 years ago. I only ever use it about once a year when I get new hardware and need to install drivers (which I then update from the 'net). I'm sure at some point hardware will come with a usb install instead of an optical disc, but atm it's going the way of the floppy drive.
A stack of 20 CDs turns 5 years old in my room.
"I never liked the ocean, it ought to be paved over."
While there's a lot of useful old hardware that only has a CD drive, I'd bet most of them don't have enough power to run 12.x comfortably anyhow.
I'm already at the point with my machine that I had to settle for 10.04.1, because later versions all have a bug that causes my Logitech Trackball to get lost, leaving me with a dead mouse.
I was kind of looking forward to futzing with Unity for a day or two, but I did plan on shifting back to Gnome again after that anyhow. Unless Gnome really is as bad as some say, in which case there are other options.
But I digress...
DVDs have been my standard storage medium for over 6 years. I gave up on CDs because of cost, not because DVDs or their drives were less reliable. I burn a lot of backups weighing in at around half a gig each. It's just not sane to spend $0.60+ on CDs that hold one back-up when I can fit 8-9 on a $0.30 DVD-R.
It'd be awful handy to be able to install most of the software without a network link. A lot of regions and small businesses have pretty poor links, and while you're downloading the install components for one machine, everyone in their company is affected by you hogging the bandwidth.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Its not like modern Ubuntu releases will run on old computers anyway. No point holding back for people with 10 year old computers who cant run it in the first place.
I haven't bought CDs in years. I always burn my Ubuntu Server images to a DVD.
Gosh, someone sure likes to swap? I remember this kinda stuff from the days of floppies... a two floppy OS was NOT fun.
The trick for a distro has always been about supporting the old and the new. At a given point it is time to give up your 386 with its 1 speed CD player and buy a new computer. At least if you want to use a distro that has made it VERY clear that it is no longer aimed at weirdos. After all, how you are you going to run Unity on that old PC of yours?
Time to seek a new distro. One that doesn't just add a ton of bloat that can just as easily be downloaded.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Really old machines may have floppies only, not CD drives, particularly laptops. Generally a USB stick is a better option for such machines - even a machine with an old BIOS can use a boot floppy to boot from a USB stick.
As mentioned, most of the packages will be required to update anyway from the repo. No need to install outdated stuff. I suppose 64meg would be enough. Those that doesn't have a internet connection could of course be wanting a gigaimage with "everything". I don't see that this should be a priority for canonical though. What I've noticed with other repos (centos) which have several different sizes of images, is that a default install from CD+internet update is different from one from DVD+internet update. When you tell the repo administrators they don't believe you. When you prove it, they don't know why it's different, because they doesn't have their things in order or any tools to verify such things.
A CD is the older version of a DVD that holds only 700 MB and therefore uses much less of a 5 GB/mo cap to download and burn than a CD does.
So why is the lean mean OS going the way of Windows?
It isn't really. That fresh Windows install won't include an office package so you'll probably need another disc worth of Office (or a download of Open/Libre Office), and chances are you'll want something more than Paint if you do anything with graphics so you'll at least be installing Paint.net as an extra. People expect some variant of these things on the first disc of a Linux distro, but not on a fresh Windows install (which in my experience comes on DVDs not CDs now anyway) so it isn't an orangesoranges comparison.
Nope, Ubuntu is targeted heavily at desktop use, as such you're using the wrong time-frame.
Desktops don't do things by hours, they, and even the very very old ones work at times that are much faster than you. A desktop system works at 1/60 of a second. I push a button, I click a mouse, I wave at a camera. All of those things happen and then 1/60 of a second later the display get updated. Most of the time a desktop is usually doing nothing, nothing and nothing a 1/60 at a time. It takes much less shiny shit to fill a 1/60 than you think
I think I just cashed out all my cool points.
800MB CDs have been around for years. It's not even like you need to buy new hardware, just get an 800MB CDR and it will work.
At first it sounded like they did that on purpose to stop you from using CD's and wasting resources. But I guess they just couldn't shave 50mb from the ISO.
DVD burners have been out for many years and now cost the same as CD burners (if you can even find the latter!). Blank DVDs also cost the same as blank CDs, so that cost advantage has gone now. DVDs hold more than 6 times the data than CDs and both read *and* write many times faster than CDs.
Given all of the above, even if a distro provides a 700MB "CD" ISO, you're still hugely better off writing that image to a DVD. You'll create the image faster, you'll boot it faster and you'll install your packages faster - all for the same price as if you burned the ISO to a CD instead.
The *only* benefit to a 700MB image is that takes less time to download than a multi-GB DVD image, but with broadband speeds getting faster, this advantage is dwindling rapidly. The same thing should have applied already to the "scene" w.r.t. movie downloads (my suggestion: standardise on 25% of the size of a single layer DVD for non-720p downloads instead of the current 700MB), but it sadly hasn't - we still see nonsense like 2-CD releases for movies - again, who on *earth* burns movies to 2 CDs nowadays (along with the ludicrous disc swapping that would be needed half way through)?
well, I did say I only use XP, so I'm not judging the later versions of Windows. Anyway, XP runs my protel, minitab, matlab and labview just fine inside it's virtual cage, meanwhile I trust linux with my files and control of my hardware. It's an ideal match.
DVD drives have been available for 12 years, affordable DVD writable drives for maybe eight. Optical drives over five years old probably aren't working anyway, and drive upgrades are cheap now.
While there's something to be said to making sure what gets on the image really needs to be there, I don't see the CD format as a reasonable target in itself if they can't make it fit.
Most of all this new crappy Unity and other stuff is because they claiming they want to be more accessible on tablets and so forth. Little does that help when they shunting out such a large distro. What about people in developing nations? Was that not one of the main goals with Ubuntu? To get get Linux everywhere?!
Have been running maverick for ages and did upgrade this week, first to 11.04 which broke loads which i fixed, things that should not have broken in the first place. Then loaded 11.10 and it was/is a nightmare. Total hogwash. When people upgrade they should be kept in the same world as they were and given an option of using new interface etc, forced change is not good. Finally in Unity *spits* my system was running again. Then loaded one tiny little widget to monitor network activity and all hell broke lose and the machine now has no network connectivity. In my 12 or so years of Linux usage have I seldom seen such shit.
Am going back to my roots of Debian and sadly I cannot suggest to others to try the easy Linux with Ubuntu as it's going to be a painful disappointing experience.
The word Ubuntu means togetherness/unity/humanity; it is an African word. True to its African roots namesake we can see that 'Ubuntu' is working just as well in software as it is on this god forsaken continent of Africa; starvation, death, filth, chaos, missing the f kcing plot. /rant
It's about time distro makers stopped restricting their content to what they can cram within the artificial limitations of 700MB.
To what extent is this limitation imposed by the size of a CD and to what by the amount of data that users are willing to download? A CD is one-seventh of a 5 GB/mo cap; a DVD is nearly all of it.
You get an OS for nothing, yet you piss and moan and bitch and complain about having to lift an extra pinkie finger to be able to get it. Absolutely amazing.
CD's just work. Newer stuff may be nice but PCs really are not standardized in any meaningful way.
Booting from DVDs is not only standard, it also has been for longer than the DVD standard has existed, and it seems other vendors (Microsoft) have had no problem with releasing Vista or Windows 7 on DVD, and computer manufacturers for at least 5+ years now have also on first boot asked you to make a recovery DVD image.
I say longer than the DVD standard because a bootable DVD follows the same "El Torito" extension to the ISO9660 standard as used in CDs. Effectively to the BIOS there is zero difference between booting a CD and a DVD.
With the revelations about Shuttleworth's contempt for his user base, I am going downstairs right now and start testing other distros.
There are places in the world where they don't have DVD drives a-plenty.
Like Unity, Shotwell, mono, etc.
They should burn them on one of those GameCube DVDs.
Any system that has been made since circa 2001 (i.e. the past 10 years) has been able to boot from USB.
Wrong. I know of some OEM boxes from the '04 era that can't, and some BIOSes from even later than that make it unnecessarily difficult - Gigabyte, IIRC, wrote its BIOS to force you to guess what kind of mass-storage your USB stick should emulate. Guess wrong and your USB stick won't boot.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So does this mean they will finally get around to supporting DVD's for a Wubi install?
I understand why this happens, but I think it's a bad idea. We're talking about a 4% increase here.
It's very likely that 4% can be found somewhere. Finding it would make the distribution more universally embraceable for one more rev.
Canonical should find that 4%, one more time, even if it means making some pictures and a few programs demand an Internet connection to get installed.
I've been using the Alternative CD for years. Is it so hard to "Install a minimal system" and then "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" afterward? No. Do I expect the average user to be able to do this? Again, no. Would it be so hard to teach them this? Once more, no.
Sorry, did you just imply that a 6 year old machine is old? I have a car from 1972 and it works great. The throwaway approach society takes is really dumb.
Ubuntu CDs won't boot without errors anyway. They haven't yet fixed the bug(s) that mess up burning a CD. You can trick the CD into booting, but something like that isn't suitable for giving to a client for use during a recovery or expansion process.
I have mostly done net installs of debian and ubuntu over the years, this method is the most flexible in booting options : CD, USB or network boot. the iso are about 50MB or 150MB-200MB, PXE support files even less. what is nice is after install there's no update to be done - everything is up to date already.
it's the main thing that linux mint lacks, to me.
Yo we've got this thing called netinst, which is short for network install. Pretty sure that fits on a CD!
Some of you might think that I'm joking/trolling but I can assure you that if either upstream or the distribution cared about losslessly optimizing their bitmap images, they would gain a lot of space.
Grab your favourite distribution and optimize the PNG files with optipng; JPEG files with jhead, all done with the highest optimization flags and be amazed.
What the hell are you talking about? A circa 2001 system isn't going to have USB 2.0, let alone be able to boot from its very slow USB 1.1 ports.
Do you still use the six year old machine for what you did six years ago?
Run a version of linux from that era and i'm sure it will scream.
I agree throwing things out for no reason is stupid, and that getting devices to do things their inventor never intended is neat, however I'm sure if you attempt running unity on a 386/20 expecting it to function is a little unreasonable.
I have not used a CD to install an OS now for years now. Especially, Ubuntu can be put on a USB-stick or these outdated DVD-things I never used either. So this is a non issue.
I have a rather unique situation. I've got an old Dell laptop that can only read DVD's. It can't read CD's. I can't say for certain this is the reason, but it was around the time I put in an Amerie CD (one of the "sony rootkit" CD's) that my Combo Drive started losing the ability to handle compact disc. I tried to fix the problem by installing a firmware upgrade and don't know for sure if the problem was the cd, a bad firmware upgrade, or something else. But I am one of the few people on the planet who occasionally want to install software and can't because it's only available on CD. For instance, the Windows CD that came with the computer in the first place.
For that reason, I went from dual booting to only running Linux on that computer, just because I can install Linux from a DVD and don't have Windows XP on DVD.
Windows 7 will most definitely not run on any hardware Ubuntu will run. I can get a full fledged Xubuntu running tolerably on a machine with 256 MB of ram. Win7 requires 2 GB of ram for similar performance, and I've actually seen people "running" Win7 on 1 gig, if you can call 10 minutes to open a single app and do NOTHING ELSE "running".
You can always install LO later, it's a dirt simple install. Sames goes with a lot of other apps. It's easy to install apps, they don't need to be on the distro CD.
Why do you need to put apps, or even a WM/DE on the distribution download? Let users chose for themselves.
Debian has it right, create a plain vanilla ISO, and let users decide. Makes much sense than having a separate distro for whatever WM/DE you might want to use.
Why have a different distro for every WM/DE? And why force users to download apps that the users may not even want?
Installing apps, or a wm/de is not difficult.
My Athlon 64 has 1.5GB of RAM, was bought in 2005 and still runs great. And it runs Wheezy, not some old crap like Windows 98 (cue some Fedora fan saying "but Debian is old crap"). Since the Phenom II/Core2, computers have grown too powerful for our simple, daily needs like viewing Wikipedia or Youtube videos. Also, my PC is far more powerful than Atom netbooks and runs circles around any ARM phone or tablet. Since everyone seems to be designing OSs with them in mind now, I'd say my old hunk of junk is pretty safe for the foreseeable future.
The Humble Indie Bundle is raising awareness as to what fun can be had on Linux. People using LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, Audacity, etc know what Linux can offer, although maybe it should be better advertised that these are part of the core Linux experience. "The Open CD" was a good initiative but fizzled out, someone should bring it back. Make a complete open software suite for proprietary OSes, so that users can get used to the experience they will have without having to leave the comfort of their OS. Then at a certain point, they can just yank the rug out and replace it with Linux.
Twinstiq, game news
wow. they could no find 50megs of bloat to chop out? really? get rid of damn unity i am sure it will fit. what a bunch of crap. Im still on 10.04 and will stay on 10.04 because unity sucks.
Have you check in the BIOS for where to turn the option to boot from USB on? My ShuttleX from 2005 has it!
One must call into question whether Ubuntu is even relevant anymore. The reason Ubuntu became so popular in the first place is because they provided a really good looking desktop that "just works" and offered a really easy install. (The free CD's in the mail didn't hurt either.)
But now all the other Linuxes have caught up, and at the same time, Ubuntu now ships Unity, a desktop that is being overwhelmingly rejected by existing Linux users, and Shuttleworth is openly hostile to critics of his pet desktop. Because of all this, it's reasonable to conclude that Ubuntu has jumped the shark.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I only wish you luck on getting any modern software, such as an ACID2-compliant browser like Iceweasel or Chromium, to run on a Pentium 1 with 48MB of RAM.
Heh. I've got a Pentium-90 with 64MB of RAM, running Damn Small Linux. It can run Firefox 2.0. Slowly.
I'd try a newer Firefox than that, but DSL died (so probably nobody's packaged a newer Firefox) and I haven't bothered to look at something else like Tiny Core which might accommodate putting such an old box on the Internet.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That's OK that the new Ubuntu is too big to fit on a CD. Since it's got that craptastic Unity desktop, no one is going to want to download it anyway.
(Kidding, sort of. Even SuSE 8.1 came on two DVDs, one binaries and one source. I'm not against software getting distributed on DVD. But I am TOTALLY against Unity, which sucks donkey balls. That's a technical term).
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
It said "Pentium 4 or better", so I installed it on my Pentium 3...
Not to mention XP considers SATA to be exotic hardware
The real issue isn't to do with SATA it's that the setup program is archaic. So in the post-floppy era loading drivers for your primary storage device (be it SATA, SCSI or whatever) is a pain. Still I can make that issue go away by slipstreaming "driverpack mass storage" from driverpacks.net into my install media so it's not too big a deal for me.
drivers haven't been written for it for years
BS. Any component or perhipheral manufacturer that failed to provide XP drivers for their hardware at this point would be cutting off a massive chunk of the market. The likes of NVIDIA are even making regular updates to their XP drivers. Some complete computers don't come with XP drivers but afaict that is usually more a case of the computer vendor not bothering to collect them together than the hardware manufacturers not making them.
its PnP driver capabilities are way outdated
Really? in what way? The only real difference i've noticed between XP and win7 is that while XP pops up a dialog when it can't find a driver while win7 gives up.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Even in the era of Pentium 1's they had more memory than that. I still have an old Pentium machine. It has 128MB of RAM and was a relatively cheap low-mid grade machine back in the early/mid 90's.
I'm run Firefox 3 on a 486DX80 with 64MB of RAM all the time, runs fine with NoScript.
Back in the real old days of Linux I remember pushing the limits by running X11 on my 386DX40 (with math coprocessor!) that only had 4MB of RAM. Supposedly you needed 8MB of RAM to run X, pfffft. That was back when there was the RAM shortage and 4MB of RAM cost like $300+. Hell, I paid $300 for a 512KB upgrade on my Amiga.
At a 5 GB/month cap, your average download speed is 16 kbit/s. Nobody, or at least no geek, should be buying those things.
If you live outside the coverage area of DSL and cable, the advantage over of satellite or 3G over dial-up, despite the cap, is that satellite or 3G doesn't take up a phone line.
I'm sure that the new version of Ubuntu will be great, like most new releases are, but for the extra 50 MB of space, I feel like they could've cut back on some new features that take up more space. One of the things that has always defined Ubuntu was its ability to be burned onto a CD instead of a DVD or USB flash drive. It was nice to be able to use a CD rather than a DVD because of how much cheaper they are, granted that one DVD isn't going to create and financial issues for anybody. Sometimes it can get difficult to make a USB bootable as well. I just think that it would've been better to stick with the traditional CD install; it was one of the things they could proclaim on their website that made it even more appealing.
I know this is probably not typical but where I live, western Sydney, blank DVDs are incredibly cheap and ubiquitous. Blank CDs come individually packaged and the cost is much higher, I want to say iniquitous but that would not represent the reality. If you want a spindle of cheap CDs you have to scrounge around and ask people. Surely this is simply natural progression from CD to DVD, although I do agree that most Linuces are getting a rather bloated - but I prefer that for the moment because it is still sexy bloat and not pushware.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
I still install off of 1.4meg floppies, you insensitive clods!!!
No, I will not work for your startup
"First, this is not exactly true. USB may be supported but there are PCs that won't boot from all USB devices."
Have some Plop:
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Here's one way to get around the "USB" boot problem which works for me.
Ingredients:
CF card, USB card reader, CF card IDE adapter (and SATA adapter if you like). I use cheap Syba IDE and SATA adapters off Newegg.
Put card in USB reader, install Linux to USB (see pendrivelinux etc for examples).
Your card is now loaded, so stuff it in your IDE or SATA adapter, plug into your motherboard, and install to your hard disk! It's cheap, versatile, simple, fast, and works for doing rescues as well. Old notebooks run fine off CF cards BTW.
Ensure you use a card that will boot. Newegg reviews usually have comments regarding bootability.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yet they still won't include Midnight Commander in default.
FTR, You can boot/install Ubuntu via USB if you like. You can netinst if you like (it is based on Debian afterall), but you have to dig a little for a how-to on that.
If Canonical forces Unity down the throats of LTS users by not offering a Gnome classic mode then they are insane. Business customers don't give a flying shit about compositing, wobbly windows and other sugar candy nonsense on a desktop - they just want a stable platform. I see a mass exodus of even more disgruntled Ubuntu users in the months to come as people wise up to Canonical's arrogance and disrespect for their userbase. Ubuntu 11.04/11.10 has already demonstrtaed just how out of touch and plain misguided the boneheads at Canonical are. They fail to fix critical system breakages and now they choose a desktop shell which only a kid would appreciate.
All they need is get rid of Mono once and for all and it would actually fit on a CD...
I must admit, this is rather ominous news for me. My laptop is from 2003 or so, and it hurts me as much as anybody when distros get bigger and more demanding. (Fedora 16 marks the end of me being able to securely use Fedora, 15 requires >512MB of memory) Ubuntu seems to (with Unity and what not) be moving away from being a good OS for old hardware. It's still great, it's still Linux, but it looks like perhaps their priorities are changing.
I do have that portegé too. but given the fact that it doesn't boot up from usb, installing from network has always been a pain in the ass in that beloved portegé. Anyway unetbootin is the way to go. Yet, cd's are the easier way to put music while driving.
I though ubuntu was going to "mobile area", that desktop was dead and a loss of time and ressources. ... who cares if there is no more ubuntu there is still 50 distros of linux ...