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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."
what in the world is a CD? some old tech that is not pontless anymore like an 8track or VHS tape?
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).
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This is one of the many reasons why Mint is now more popular than Ubuntu.
Older hardware which (surprisingly!) still does well with Linux, but doesn't have the capability to boot from USB - that's why you would need a CD. A DVD is probably a good-enough alternative as well since DVD drives have been pretty standard for many, many years.
I'm using ubuntu since version 6, now 10.04 - it took some time to get audio right on my machine (fujitsu siemens Xi2428, older laptop), but one of the things I like most about linux is that once it's configured properly, it will stay that way. It will not get slower over time, or suddenly change behavior, like windows (although the last version of windows I used is XP, and still do, in Virtualbox).
I think Ubuntu 10.04 is a very nice looking desktop OS, it just works, everytime, no surprises. It's ideal for running XP in virtualbox (where it's more at home, XP is more of an application than OS, imho), and rock stable. I honestly don't know what else should be added to it.
People who need/want read-only media that can't have malware inserted into it by the CVS photo printer and other people's computers...
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).
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.
Yeah but the problem with that is this: what's the first thing to go out on a DVD/CDRW or a DVD burner? the ability to read DVDs. I don't know how many machines I'd had through the shop that would read and burn CDs just fine but the DVD would be crapped out.
So what is wrong with giving folks choice, isn't that is what FOSS is supposed to be out, choice? Why not have a 2 CD set AND a DVD with everything but the kitchen sink, why not that?
Of course I'll probably get hate for daring to even say the user should have choice, I don't know what happened to the community but it just don't seem like a nice place anymore. Now it seems to be too many have this "You'll take this and do it our way and damned well LIKE it or STFU and go back to windblowz luser" attitude, like FOSS is an exclusive club and they're the gatekeepers or something.
I used to love keeping up with what's new and thought back in 03 that by this time we'd see Linux boxes in every store, but somewhere along the ways the ground turned sour and the community seems to me to be more about being in a club than helping FOSS spread to the masses.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You have a choice. You can implement it yourself ( or wait until someone does it for you )
Really, i have been burning the Ubuntu iso's on DVD since a long time : they boot up faster than CD's .
The problem with FOSS is that everyone wants the benefits, but no one wants to be part of it. And then you complain when they don't do it the way you like it.
Slipping shoelaces ?
I've yet to see any of those do anything but set a flag the OS can (and will, if infection is your concern) ignore.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It's Sony. Are you really surprised? They seem to have some kind of fetish for making their own proprietary "solutions" when better open solutions are already available. Hardly a new phenomena.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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!
CD's just work. Newer stuff may be nice but PCs really are not standardized in any meaningful way. Booting via USB tends to be one of those things that is spotty. Some will boot on USB but only certain USB devices (ie, hard drives and removable disk drives, but not other mass storage like thumb drives). Some PCs may do this just as a security measure. PCs are not thrown away and replaced every year either, and we've gone from thumb drives being tiny and expensive to large and cheap in less than the typical life time of a PC.
Also this is Linux. Linux is very often put on older computers that people would otherwise throw away because it won't run the latest Windows very well. Those older PCs are much more likely to not support booting from thumb drives.
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.)
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.
You still have so many choices for installing Ubuntu, that you won't find in many non-FOSS products:
- You can use the alternate text-mode Ubuntu installation CD.
- You can boot Windows and then install Ubuntu from there, using the Windows installer.
- You can install an older version of Ubuntu and dist-upgrade it in place.
- You can boot the USB image using a GRUB floppy or CD image.
- You can borrow an USB dvd reader for the first installation (hey, if you have defective hardware, you might expect to be required to have the proper tools to overcome your problems).
no, ubuntu has been turning into a bastardized bloated piece of shit distro
Let me break that up:
Bloated - You could call it that but it's also the closest to what the average desktop user would want right out of the box. The fact is I can install it for someone and they immediately have office, music players, etc. and a few toys. For that kind of user it's nice.
Turning into shit - The progression from 9.04 (stable, solid) -> 9.10 (compatibility issues out the ass) -> 10.04 (ok, a little more together, some issues but more shiny) -> 10.11 (why do I feel like this is the last stop?) -> 11.04 (wow, Unity is terrible, they should at least still have GNOME installed by default?) -> 11.10 (Unity still sucks and GNOME 3 isn't near functional, shit is broken left and right, installing binary drivers all the sudden breaks things, tons of functionality missing, strangely broken packages left and right, WTF!?). So yeah, turning into shit.
and now this is the final nail in the coffin.
The thing is Ubuntu still works and it does have a lot of polish when compared to vanilla Debian. For a lot of people it's that polish that makes the difference.
ubuntu kiddies need to use a real linux distro and stop trying to use "windows lite", it's slow, memory leaks all over the place and overall just a poor distro
ubuntu is an embarrassment to the linux community
I'm not really sure you could call it "windows lite", especially since Shuttleworth seems to be bent on making it look and feel like some sort of artistic deconstruction of OSX. Not really sure on the memory leaks thing either but perhaps that's a Unity thing and I don't use Unity so I just don't know. If you are a classic Linux user I'd say it's fair to call it an "emberrassment" as Ubuntu has continually chosen to discard functionality and replace it with their own brand of flashy/popular/easy - but that's also decreased the entry level and attracted a lot of new users. The fact is I can say "Linux" and now people don't look at me funny, now they get an image of an orange or purple desktop with a bunch of widgets and compositing effects.
Overburn is a great option, but it does _not_ work with name-brand media. Cheap CD media has a lot of overburn space because the manufacturing process is, well, cheap and the tolerances are not strict. Therefore the manufactures leave a lot of overburn space that may or may not be useful. With these you can get anywhere from 750-780 MB on a disk. The name-brand CDs are manufactured to ISO 900x specs, so they can bring the tolerances way down. You might not be able to go above 720 MB on some of these.
Note that no matter which type of disc you overburn, the end might not be readable! I hope that something nonessential is way out there on the end, and that the installer knows how to handle a non-read potion of the end of the disc.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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.
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.
Actually you're thinking of the SD card. The SD card is a simple flash memory with a toggle switch that relies on a controller a) recognises that the card has the switch flipped to read only and b) sends a signal to the OS.
USB on the other hand is not a direct link to the storage medium, and has hardware flash controllers onboard. The more expensive ones implement this properly, the cheaper ones actually hard limit the R/W line going to the chip. The cheap solution is robust but also easily visible because the OS doesn't know it's read-only. When you try writing to the drive you end up with a weird failed message.
Funny thing is: I live in what many people call a 3rd world country (Romania) and I have no data caps on my Internet; and nobody I know has any data cap on their Internet line.
Of course, mobile data is capped, but everything else isn't.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
and I live in the USA with a 600 MB/day cap.