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SuSE Coming on DVD

Posted by justin++ on from the less-discs-more-data dept.

SuSE has announced that its next release, 6.3, will be available on DVD as well as CD. The release date is supposedly December. I hope this practce catches on. Debian 2.1 was 2 discs for just binaries, and it's much larger now. I have a 6 disc set of SuSE 6.2. The packaging is both neat and clumsy. Too bad the only DVD player I own is connected to my stereo....

32 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Found a SCSI DVD-RAM... by Sloppy · · Score: 2

    APS Tech has a SCSI DVD-RAM, but their DVD-ROMs are all IDE. :(


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    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  2. Re:DVD availability by debrain · · Score: 2

    I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that the current CD fabs are not equipped to stamp DVD discs, and as such there was a certain amount of capital investment necessary to either bring the CD fab up to DVD par, or build a new plant for DVD's. Either way, the fabs (and upgrades) are costly and as such the supply of DVD fabs is relatively low, so DVD stamping is more expensive than CD stamping.

  3. Re:FTP over what? by BrianS · · Score: 2

    You obviously live in the non-modem world. Try doing it over a 56k dialup. Not everyone has the luxury of dsl/isdn/leased/t1/etc.

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    -- I can't say enough in 120 chars!
  4. Re:DVD availability by debrain · · Score: 2

    DVD's are more expensive because less fabs have the technology to burn the higher density DVD disks. But DVD drives are almost as cheap as CD drives of equivalent speed. With more demand for DVD's, because the drives are so cheeply available, more demand will arise for the actual discs, and as such the cost of DVD manufacturing will go down (according to scale). As for CD's dissappearing, I'm giving them two to three years until you *need* a CD player to get the goods. :)

  5. DVD support for linux? by tsphere · · Score: 2

    I may be missing the boat here, but I thought DVD drives weren't supported by linux. I mean, I'm using one right now, but Linux thinks it's a plain old ATAPI CD-ROM. I assume that the proverbial "bad things" will happen if i try to read a DVD-ROM. . .

    Wouldn't make much sense to distribute an OS on a medium the OS can't use, would it?

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    Tetris rules.
    1. Re:DVD support for linux? by bgdarnel · · Score: 2

      IDE DVD drives use the ATAPI protocol. Put a CD in, and it looks just like a normal CDROM drives. Put a DVD in, and you can mount it just like you can a CD, except it can have a lot more stuff on it. (You should have a recent kernel to be able to read the larger filesystems).

    2. Re:DVD support for linux? by enrayged · · Score: 2

      essentally dvd movie decoding and playback is not supported in linux. data dvd's should work just fine... IE not encoded.

    3. Re:DVD support for linux? by axboe · · Score: 2
      The usual DVD drives conform to the Mtfuji or MMC spec, which is basically just a beefed up ATAPI. It will understand exactly the same packets as those defined in ATAPI 2.6 and then some. There are other differences as well, but these all relate to DVD _specific_ features, such as reading of DVD structures, CSS authentication, etc. So saying the Linux sees it as just any other CD-ROM drive is correct - indeed it should.

      The only problem you'd see by inserting a DVD movie (for instance) and copying files from it, is if the disk is encrypted. You'd then get an error in your logs stating that a "read of scrambled sector without authentication". For your run-off-the-mill porn, you could probably get by without any problems :)

  6. Re:Well now that everyone's hopped on the bandwago by Drakino · · Score: 2

    DVD drives are just seen as a standard ATAPI Disc drive to the computer. The only difference between DVD drives and CD drives are the lasers used to read the data off the disk.

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  7. A simple answer for Justin by jd · · Score: 3
    All you have to do is hardwire your stereo to play data DVD's as audio, hook a microphone up to your computer, and download the files via your sound card. :)

    Just remember to crank the volume way up, to reduce data loss from background noise. (eg: Neighbors screaming at you to turn that b* racket off)

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    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  8. But are there cheap DVD *BURNERS* by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 2
    I will begin to care about DVDs at such time as:
    • DVD writable disks cost not more than $10, so that they're not too much more expensive than CD-R's
    • DVD writer drives cost not more than $500

    Until that time, I'm quite happy using the so mature they're dead cheap technology of CD-ROMs.

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    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  9. Re:I'm having flashbacks... by Yarn · · Score: 2

    wolf3d was on 2 or 3, doom was 5.

    I had win95 beta on floppies, that was fun ~21 floppies. OS2 was about the same.

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    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  10. s/Video/Versatile/ by Yarn · · Score: 2

    According to the ads here in the UK.

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    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  11. Re:Slashdot needs a DVD icon! by Pascal+Q.+Porcupine · · Score: 2
    Uhh, what's wrong with the 'hardware' category? It's not like there's going to be a constant flux of non-movie DVD articles or USB articles period... (And it's a category, not an icon. Categories just happen to have icons.)

    Reminds me of this one conversation I overheard in a library. A bunch of posers trying to look intellectual were talking about how they "got on the information superhighway by running Netscape. What's it that Netscape is... oh yeah, it's an icon."
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    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

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    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
    Quine "quine?
  12. Re:Could be a boon -- or a curse. by technos · · Score: 2

    I have used SuSe 6.1 to do minimalist installs of under forty megs. (I couldn't live without the libs for Festival and fortune; nothing like starting the car to fortune) Just because the distro has 3,717 packages doesn't mean that it isnt perfectly functional with fewer than 100.

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    .sig: Now legally binding!
  13. Could be a boon -- or a curse. by Stonehand · · Score: 2

    First the curse. SuSE 6.2 is already 6 CDs, and that's a lot of packages (although, thankfully, it seemed decently organized... and the INDEX file means that with grep, it's not a problem figuring out what's where.) However, with all that extra space... is there going to be much reason to allow for minimalist distributions? or encouraging compact packages?

    However, it might be a nifty boost to the multi-distro folks. Imagine a DVD with just the GPL'd versions of multiple distros, and one front-end that asks for which installer to use...

    It'd be nice if they bring back the live filesystem with the main distribution rather than as a separate product.

    Or, say others could package a minimalist distro, a full-featured distro, and a BSD or two onto the same disc. Or a distro plus a Sunsite pub/linux mirror...

    And so forth.

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  14. DVD stands for DVD by redled · · Score: 3
    It's true. Some members of the DVD forum (a group of commercial companies that manufacture DVD devices -the same group responsible for the tricky copy-protection) wanted it to stand for Digital Video Disc, while others wanted it to stand for Digital Versatile Disc. So, officially it stands for absolutely nothing. ONe good thing about this: It makes a fairly good gauge of a salesperson's knowledge. If a salesperson knows that DVD stands for nothing, then he is probably not completely clueless. Unfortunatly, most salsepeople are quite positive that it's "Digital Video Disc."

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  15. Re:How about SCSI DVD-ROM drives? by gilou · · Score: 2
    I'm more of the "give-me-SCSI-or-give-me-death"

    The Pioneer U03S is an excellent SCSI DVD-ROM (6x). A SCSI version of their new 10x DVD-ROM will be (is?) released. The 10x is RPC-2 protected. The 6x is not (As long as you do not remove the RPC jumper).

    Bye
  16. Director's Cut by Mr_Plow · · Score: 2

    That's the letterbox director's cut edition, right? With the free poster and the commentary play-by-play?
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  17. Woohoo by Graymalkin · · Score: 2

    Finally use SuSE users won't be prompted to insert CD-ROM disk #4. DVDs and Linux are a good combonation. Linux distros can more easily package all the components they want to include without a 4 pound box filled with CDs. Especially SuSE, 6.1 had 5 CDs and 6.2 has 6, which means a lot of extra goodies that don't need to be downloaded but that comes at the cost of keeping track of half a dozen CDs.

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    I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  18. (response, getting slightly OT and onto USB) by timothy · · Score: 3
    Pascal Q Porcupine wrote:

    Uhh, what's wrong with the 'hardware' category? It's not like there's going to be a constant flux of non-movie DVD articles or USB articles period... (And it's a category, not an icon. Categories just happen to have icons.)


    Well, you're right: DVD and USB are different things.

    Re: DVD -- there might not be that many non-movie DVD articles here, but in truth it's the movie-related ones I'm interested in mostly. I think it's cool that SuSE will have a DVD distro, though! (Didn't FreeBSD have a DVD distro starting months ago? Or was that strictly a hypothetical?) I like it partly because it will encourage more people to buy DVD drives for their massive storage -- and hopefully then want more from the hardware they've already paid for. The more Free / free OS users with DVD drives, the better as far as I'm concerned. There have been a string of hope-inspiring bits about DVD lately, as the software and hardware under Linux (and hopefully soon for the BSDs) come together. And as that happens (there are several projects working on Linux video already ...) I think it'd be great to have a distinct DVD category to announce major developments, new player front-ends, etc, with an icon, so I can spot it at the top of the Slashdot page -- categories are abstract, icons are nicely visual. (Is my usage correct now?!) ;)

    And as for USB, I disagree that there are no articles dealing with it -- it's been a pretty good topic of conversation, especially when it comes to discussing what will be in upcoming kernels. And there ought to be more! USB devices are handy and no longer a curiosity in either the Mac or Windows worlds ... the more Linux supports USB, the better it will be. Case in point is the Microtech USB SmartMedia / FlashCard / MicroDrive reader I got a few weeks ago: it costs less than a hundred dollars, but provides connection to three types of small, dense storage. I wish it would work under Linux, so I could use it at home as well as at work.

    Thumbing through a magazine ("Digital Camera"? Something like that) at a local bookstore a few hours ago, I also noticed a screen-color calibration device -- with a USB connection. There are all sorts of devices which use USB -- input devices (including bar code readers), storage devices, printes, scanners, blah blah blah ... so far Linux is unfortunately (and I think temporarily) behind the curve in supporting them. I'd be curious to hear from developers why this is; are there inherent coding difficulties with USB? If there are, can they be expressed in layman's terms? From what I understand, the only support so far is for keyboards and mice -- about the only things that I don't care about being USB. :(

    And about the people in the library ... well, to most people using a computer (and as GUI designers strive for, at least in part), an icon effectively *is* the program it represents; the GUI takes away the complexity which would have made a computer otherwise forbidding to (some / many) users. Maybe in a couple years, the people you call posers now won't be. Right?

    Cheers,

    timothy
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    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:(response, getting slightly OT and onto USB) by Goonie · · Score: 2
      USB support is getting to be more extensive, the 2.4 kernel is going to support quite a few devices.

      However, there is a considerable hurdle that needs to be dealt with before USB support is truly seamless. USB devices are designed to be hot-swapped, and there can be 127 of them on the one bus. There are many, many, different types of USB devices. If you located an entry in the /dev directory for every single possible device, there would be literally thousands of entries. In addition (and I'm not a kernel hacker so I'm not exactly clear how this works) each of those entries in the /dev directory is actually a kind of pointer to a "device". Devices are each given a number, and it turns out that USB would probably exhaust the number of permissible devices.

      So what's the solution? Obviously we need some kind of scheme to allocate entries in /dev, and device numbers, dynamically. Such a scheme exists already as a kernel patch called devfs. This hack allocates devices dynamically as required, and according to its backers basically solves the problem.

      However, there are a lot of important kernel hackers who don't like devfs, for reasons I don't understand but these guys presumably wouldn't object just for the hell of it. The debate has raged for a considerable time now, even before the USB problem put more pressure on to find a solution. As I understand it, while Linus hasn't included devfs in the mainstream kernel, he has basically not commented on the flamewars.

      So, what's the solution?
      #define UNINFORMED_SPECULATION
      I guess Linus is either working on a modified devfs or an alternative scheme that will satisfy the naysayers.
      #endif

      Hopefully a solution will arrive before the 2.4 kernel is released.

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      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
      --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  19. Re:DVD Bootability questions not answered by lanner · · Score: 2
    Thank you Eric!

    btw: HUGE DVD information link http://www.unik.no/~robert/hifi/dvd/world.html

  20. Re:I got it by Karrots · · Score: 2

    Don't forget to flip over the DVD after he gets the first side.

  21. multi-distro DVDs by apocalypse_now · · Score: 2

    cheapbytes should offer a DVD which includes SuSe, Red Hat, and Debian on it. Mmmmm.
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    Matt Singerman

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  22. annoying, but almost necessary now by rcw-work · · Score: 2
    Two things are gonna make this a royal pain for people trying to make their own DVD's:
    • Filesize limit on 32-bit linux means it gets tough to create 5GB dvd images. You'll have to do imaging from an Alpha, Sparc64, MIPS64, or Itanium box.
    • Outrageous prices on DVD-burning/pressing equipment

    Also, to answer another poster, the potato freeze is being postponed until at least Nov 7, basically the holdup is the boot floppies - it's a bad idea to go into a freeze without working boot floppies.

  23. Re:could you boot of a DVD? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

    DVD-R copiers are available from Panasonic etc. $5k or so. I don't know about media. But that is not important. Almost all of the disks I have ordered from Cheapbytes have been done by a mass duplication system, not one at a time in a CD-R drive.

  24. Speaking of DVDs as install media .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    .. does anybody have a copy of DVD #8 of Microsoft Office 2000? Mine was eaten by the dog. DVDs #7 and #9 are okay, but number 8 has the paperclip on it and you can't have a complete Office installation without that little bastard.

    please mail me if you have this dvd

  25. Re:Wait, wait! You can't do that! by larien · · Score: 2
    Another type of thing to benefit from this would be games like Baldur's Gate; it came of 5 CD's, prompting a lot of disk changing unless you allocated 3GB of your hard drive to it. I'd been waiting for something to make use of the extra space, and SuSE is definately a prime candidate with their distribution.

    However, I'd hope they continue to use CD-ROM for those who don't yet have DVD.
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  26. Well, I suppose its a good thing by Judg3 · · Score: 2

    I didn't want to buy a DVD ROM for my computer, I thought "Hey, I dont wana see movies on my dinky lil 19" Monitor when I can watch em on my 35" TV". But seeing as we are starting to get some real use out of DVD besides just movies, I may have to splurge for one. I think Ill hold out awhile though before I buy my DVD player for the comp. I'd really like the DVD-RAM, but at 500-600$ for it and 20-40$ for each disks its a little out of my range. But kudos to SuSE for starting to make DVD's more useful. I always loved SuSE, now I know why. =]

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  27. Linux on DIVX. Pay per install! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Special DIVX-ROM with built in modem and user supplied phone connection required! $1.00 per install or "permanently unlock" your Linux distro (on single DIVX-ROM drive only, phone connection still required) for a $30.00 one time fee!

  28. Wait, wait! You can't do that! by extrasolar · · Score: 4
    I just patented:

    Using a storage media greater than 500 megabytes for the storage of many individually compressed software components.


    Pay up! Yep, that means you future mp3 DVD burners too!

    :)

    But seriously, this is great. While the rest of the world is getting excited about DVD movies and mega-games, I think the greatest thing about DVDs are more space! Just think: all the binary packages AND the source on ONE disk.

    Oh yeah!

    ***Beginning*of*Signiture***
    Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!