Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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....

4 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. 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)

    --
    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)
  2. 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."

    --

    --

    --
    "Insert witty quote here."

  3. (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
    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  4. 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!