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Debian

Debian On DVD 210

Posted by timothy from the more-on-fewer dept.
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.
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Debian On DVD More

Debian On DVD

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  • Im waiting for.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @06:02PM (#2480850) Homepage
    The Widescreen DTS edition of Debian Does Dallas/b?

  • Wow, (Score:2, Funny)

    by Davace ( 250100 )
    That's one big woody!

  • free? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dizzo ( 443720 )
    Seems like an awesome idea. Any idea on cost?
  • Can we get Woody to stable now?

    Don't make me beg.

  • Good! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crashnbur ( 127738 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @06:06PM (#2480873)
    No more messing around with multiple CDs!

    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?

    • I bought Encarta 2002 -- for my wife!!! ;-) -- the other day on DVD. Last version was 5 CDs, this one's 1 DVD. Very nice change for the better. So yes I imagine that most of Microsoft's products that take up more than 1 CD will be available on DVD in their next release.
    • Office 2k and Office XP have both been just one CD for the "important" apps - the extra cds were just for ancillary junk like clipart, MS Publisher, and such.

      Visual Studio is available as a DVD if you get the DVD edition of MSDN, I think.

      The reason for so little DVD-ROM distribution is the relatively low penetration of DVD-ROM drives into the market. Most new machines still do not come with DVD-ROM drives standard, and the prices are still significantly higher than a CD-ROM drive.
      • My work happens to require Publisher. My work with Visual Studio (or was it Virtual? can't remember which) happens to require something from all the disks.

        Otherwise, you're definitely right. I don't even own a DVD-ROM drive in this machine, but I do have a slot just under my CD-RW waiting for a good deal to come along! Until then, I really have no problem loading 2 to 4 CDs for one software suite, but once the DVD becomes the standard, I might complain about going back...

    • I have dedicate some gigs on my machine for a local mirror. So I don't have to bother switching CD's. My other machines update from network.

      That makes life very comfortable :)
      • 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.
    • SuSE linux does this for some time already,,,

      Yoiu get BOTH the cd's and a DVD.

    • I know the MSDN library has come on DVD for a while. I have a DVD drive at home and this was nice, I'd take one home (not the latest, but good enough for home) and it didn't take gobs of drive space. Very nice.
  • I think that Woody is considered the 'testing' distribution now, not 'unstable'. As a big Woody user, I have found it to be plenty stable.

    Huh, huh... big woody user... huh, huh-huh...
    • I think that Woody is considered the 'testing' distribution now, not 'unstable'. As a big Woody user, I have found it to be plenty stable.

      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

      • bzzzzt... WRONG
        Prior to the release of Potato, (the current stable) Potato was testing, Slink was stable, and Sid was unstable - woody hadn't been assigned yet.
        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!
        Also, anyone running Debian in a "mission critical server environment" - Or ANY OTHER operating system - should be subscribed to the appropriate mailing lists.
        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
        • Prior to the release of Potato, potato was frozen and woody was unstable. Since the release of potato, unstable has been given the permanent codename sid and woody currently testing and will be until after its release. Then, stable will be woody and testing will be whatever the next codename is (andy?).
        • Well, you're both wrong. Potato was never "testing" because they only created the testing branch after Potato was released. Prior to this, Sid was for architectures that were not fully supported. Woody was labelled unstable once: between the time that they opened the Woody branch and the time that they opened the unstable branch.
        • 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
        • Prior to the release of Potato, (the current stable) Potato was testing, Slink was stable, and Sid was unstable - woody hadn't been assigned yet.

          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 [debian.org] 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 [debian.org] 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

  • SuSE has done this for a while... (Score:4, Informative)

    by psxndc ( 105904 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @06:11PM (#2480899) Journal
    and installing one DVD is a lot less "sitting in front of the computer changing disks" of a hassle. Only problem is: what if you have multiple machines, some of which only have a CD drive, with others having both? I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both. Call me a SuSE fanboy, but I am.

    psxndc

    • 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?
    • I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both.

      When I bought 7.1, professional was the only way to get a DVD (at least for x86). I've been really happy with it. The only machines I have that don't have DVD drives are so old that I'm doing totally stripped down installs anyway, and everything I need is on the first and second CDs.

      Maybe one of these days I'll get around to setting myself up for network install...

    • Only problem is: what if you have multiple machines, some of which only have a CD drive, with others having both? I know SuSE, at least with Professionl, give you both. Call me a SuSE fanboy, but I am.

      It's debian, if you want 6 cds and 1 dvd, pay for it. If you don't, don't buy the dvd, or don't buy the cds. Debian isn't generally a 'boxed' distro. The developers almost always use the network to set it up, and update themselves... The cdroms/dvds are good for initial install. I havn't done a cdrom install since RedHat 4.0.

      Also, before somebody bashes it, the $50 for a beta copy on DVD would probobly be because they're doing it on DVDR. Call it a guess.
    • Well, call me a SuSE fanboy too....

      However, I only ever use the DVD (a friend and I have a distribtuion sharing arrangement, we get each release, but share the medias) and so I find myself installing over the network a lot.... With SuSE this is dead simple, you even get a choice of FTP/NFS/SMB. That's right, you can use your windows machine as the install media holder...

      I imagine that with Debian this would be fairly easy as well....perhaps not with as many options.

      Now, if you have a lot of machines in disparate locations, well that's another matter :-)
    • There has been discussion of this within the debian developers.
      It was pointed out that this is actually unnecessary, as most people will only need CD1 and/or CD2 when woody is finally released.
      My primary workstation is running woody, and required a TOTAL of 500mb in the way of packages from debian.org - The extras on the other discs are things like alternate daemons (eg, you have your choice of 3+ sendmail replacements, 2 versions of telnetd, etc.) and are not needed for the typical home user.
    • I personally havn't installed Debian in a long time, but I'm pretty sure it includes network installs. So Put the DVD in one computer then share it via ftp. You still need to make bootdisk of course, but no biggie.

  • NOT Debian unstable! (Score:4, Informative)

    by emag ( 4640 ) <slashdot AT gurski DOT org> on Thursday October 25, 2001 @06:11PM (#2480901) Homepage
    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.
    • Highly off topic but what exactly are your problems with IDE?
    • ...since IDE sucks so bad.

      Okay - I'll bite.

      Yes, IDE drives are a little slower than SCSI drives. Yes, IDE is a storage-only protocol.

      But to say "IDE sucks so bad" is basically like saying Honda Accords suck because they can't do 180 mph like a Dodge Viper.

      With a lot of things, you get what you pay for. But with SCSI hard drives in a workstation environment, that's just not true. You pay substantially more for a marginal speed improvement. By buying a faster processor with the money you save on IDE, you can more than compensate for the CPU cycles it wastes.

      Thanks for the entertainment - it's been a while since I've been trolled like that.

      • But by having a slow disk, you end up spending more time paging. The disk I/O is the largest bottleneck on a workstation. Followed by the RAM I/O 1.7GHz is good for most tasks these days. Without addressing the other part of your system, upgrading a processor is going to have a more marginal effect.
        • I acknowledge that IDE is somewhat slower than SCSI. My point is that for most situations (particularly workstations) the cost premium for SCSI just isn't worth it.

          If IDE and SCSI were the same cost, then the previous poster would have a legitimate reason for saying "IDE sucks so bad".

    • What makes IDE suck so bad?
      Its an OK interface, aside for its small number of bits used to represents disk block offsets.. :)
  • the dvd-distro is innovative, but i'd be more interested if there was a change in how the installation process was handled - right now, it feels out-of-date and is rather frustrating.

    no, i'm not complaining about the install system itself; it's not pretty, but it's stable and powerful. i'd *really* like to see support for installing onto HPT370 RAID partitions (and other IDE RAID chipsets on modern motherboards), though. as of 2.4.10, there has been support for these devices, but as of now the only real way to get an install done is to make a custom 2.4.10 boot floppy, mount and bootstrap onto the devices, and go from there.

    rant, rant. lots of love to debian, nonetheless.
  • ...which has 7 of its 9 (heh, 7of9) CDs available on DVD in it's ProSuite Edition - http://www.mandrakeforum.org/article.php?sid=1329 [mandrakeforum.org]

  • On June 29th, FreeBSD Services Ltd. announced release of a bootable DVD containing FreeBSD [slashdot.org]. You can buy the 9GB DVD at http://www.freebsd-services.com/ [freebsd-services.com]. There has also been some discussion of selling a FreeBSD DVD at FreeBSD Mall [openresources.com]. A Japan retailer is offering NetBSD on DVD [plathome.co.jp]. When will OpenBSD follow? I expect there will be difficulties, as Theo copyrighted the CD layout - that's why you won't find it on Linuxiso.org [linuxiso.org]. That's too bad, as an OpenBSD DVD would be quite convenient.
  • http://www.mandrakestore.com/en/storemdkinc-8.1.ph p

    Mandrake 8.1 is (will be?) available on DVD-ROM as well - it's $60 USD - $50 for the DVD, $10 for shipping/handling/contribution to Open Source (that's novel) - and that's instead of 7 CD's.

    If Mandrake releases the Gaming Edition with that WineX wrapper on DVD, that would be really good. You could fit more than the Sims on that :)
  • what happen to the good old days when you can run a decent OS just with a few floppies? Remember how 650 megs was all you even needed? ( at least for a linux distro)? Guess not
    • This only needs to be on a DVD because there ara packages for everything under the sun. The basic default install is still *very* small. http://markybobdeb.sourceforge.net/elf/ Debian rocks...
    • 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".
  • 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?
    • download the 3 floppy disks from the images-1.44/compact directory and install over the internet. All the new kids are doing it. Why do it that old school way of messing with big files and distribution media???

    • Get a disk drive, an ethernet card, and broadband. Go Debian, and don't look back.

      Heck, if you have a DOS partition, you don't even need the disk drive.

      It's very nice.

      --Dan
    • Not necessarily. Remember that the MPAA only gets licence fee on software, I am not aware of the drive itself being covered by anything more than the same sort of hardware patents that probably also cover floppy drives and cd-roms.
      Get an OEM one (many shops will sell 'em) and you get to *not* pay MPAA..

      I could of course sugest then using DECSS, but we wouldn't do that , wouldn't we :)
      • Remember that the MPAA only gets licence fee on software, I am not aware of the drive itself being covered by anything more than the same sort of hardware patents that probably also cover...

        You "are not aware"? "probably"? Translation: you're guessing. I would be very surprised if 1) even a "bare" drive lacked the DVD logo and 2) some fees were not collected for that logo, regardless of whether the drive included any DVD-CSS software.

        I'm with cr0sh here... if you're not sure your money won't go to a prty you don't support, then don't spend it.

        • No seriously man. I'm not guessing. There are hardware patents involved. I'm not disputing that. We can assume to be factual that if there is no software being sold, there hasn't been CSS licence fees being paid. Any company that paid for stuff they didn't have to would be to stupid to contemplate
          The DVD logo will almost certainly belong to the persons who own the patents for either the disks or the players. That is separate from the copy mogrification algorithm.

        • Fees are collected for the use of that logo, by the "DVD Format Logo Licensing Corporation [dvdfllc.co.jp]." According to them,

          The DVD Logo is a mark that symbolizes the legitimacy and better compliance of the DVD product. When used correctly, it shows that the product was manufactured by a Licensee (legitimacy) and that the product passed the Verification test (better compliance).

          Wanna know who these cats are? Again, from their own web site: "[the DVD FLLC] was a mutual effort of the ten companies that originated DVD Format back in 1995... These companies are: Hitachi, Philips, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, JVC, Pioneer, Sony, Thomson, Time Warner and Toshiba." Fascinating, what a thirty-second exercise with Google will get you.

          Whether or not they are worthy recipients of your hard-earned money is left as an exercise to the reader.

    • If you want to try it out and your computer has a perminant fast internet connection, I suggest just downloading the 6 diskette images from their site. Only the packages you install will be downloaded, and you can easily add more through dselect and apt. This DVD is really more for an evironment where you have multiple systems you have to install it on or for a slowly connected server, thus reducing the downloading.
  • 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.
    • It is always appreciated when someone in the community does the work, i.e. the 'netinstall iso. You can also use Disk 1 from Potato, gets you to the same place :)
  • I only need a few things: Open SSH, Apache, Python, PostgreSQL, Exim, Bind. Right now I can't use potato since I seem to be having a socket problem with Python 2.1 on Potato which goes away if I use a new version of RedHat ... so I figure it's the kernel 2.2 or an older glibc... is this good logic?

    • Woody is absolutely not ready for a production server. Especially not one that will actually be connected to the internet or have users. The reason for this is that the security team is not repsonsible for anything to do with woody yet. You have no guarantees of any security fixes reaching your system in a timely manner.

      If you're really good about keeping up with bugtraq and friends, then maybe, but you're on your own.

      noah

  • How about that floppy disk netinstall? It only takes 2 1.44 meg disks, and you can install whichever version you want (stable, testing, or unstable)! We don't need no stinkin' newfangled DVD thingeys!
  • I love Debian and use it on all of my boxes (including laptop), but question the point of buying a DVD snapshot of a testing distribution. Woody is updated on a daily basis and any machine installed from DVD would be obsolete almost immediately. The DVD wouldn't save much time or effort because you'd end up replacing a majority of the packages via internet by the time Woody hits "stable". Better to wait for a stable DVD and then just download the security fixes.
  • 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
  • I just saw @Slashdot that Debian Woody has now a DVD distro in order to avoid cdrom replacement in installation and came to my mind: Wouldn't it be great if the packaging in Linux was similar to FreeBSD ? Do we like to check for dependencies each time we upgrade to a new version of an app we like ? I know I don't and I sure would like more download time if packages came with all dependencies already.
    • That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. What happens when you're on a 56k modem and you have to download copies of the Linux kernel, glibc, X, and GNOME in order to install a 40k utility program? Besides, it's pointless when you already have apt to automatically download and install dependencies.
    • Are you serious? Don't you notice when you type "apt-get install my_daddy" it grabs the dependencies too? When you "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" it'll grab all the new versions of the packages. If anything the package management in Debian is more robust than the package management in FreeBSD. That doesn't neccessarily mean it is a better though! Personally I'm thinking of moving all my servers to FreeBSD due to the slow releases that come from the Debian project. I'd rather track FreeBSD stable via cvs and get up to date software via ports then deal with Apache 1.2.9-patch-29343234 on Debian Stable. Debian has built up a fascinating infrastructure but in my opinion it is all a waste of time if a release can't get out the door on a regular basis. It's a crying shame.
      • then just switch to testing ... at work we run debian testing on our mail/web server. testing is about a month or so behind the real cutting edge (unstable) and is tested enough for me. so far, so good.
        • I did switch to testing a couple months ago. But I still am uncomfortable with the solution because security fixes are low priority on testing and it is testing. I don't care how stable it is (and I know it is stable) - I shouldn't have to run a "testing" release on a server just to get up to date software. I've also found that the prepackaged apache+php4 really doesn't work for me so I'll have to recompile it manually and either use debians tools to create a package or use ports on freebsd. FreeBSD's ports is less work. Obviously it is a rather large choice to switch operating systems but I'm beginning to see a number of advantages to FreeBSD. I'll always run Debian on my laptop but on my servers I'm no longer so sure...

          So I've gone ahead and setup FreeBSD as a test bed (I've already run a FreeBSD server for a couple years but I haven't maintained it in the same manner I maintain Debian with apt in terms of upgrading the OS, etc). The only way I can answer my question is by having experience with both so in a couple months I should have a clear view of which I prefer and find easier to maintain. I'm not trying to start a flame war here but rather find out which works best for me and why.

          One last note - I don't have a problem compiling apache+php4 myself. After all that is how I did it all along until I decided to give Debian a try. But once I have to step outside of the packages that make Debian so easy I start to spend more time using Debian tools to build packages to install software. This strikes me as horribly silly because we've moved from compiling source to packages to compiling soure to build packages. When you always want to compile from source ports is much simplier...

          To keep this on topic - I think Debian on DVD is a wonderful idea but like many of the other people in this thread I'll be using the net install and upgrade method over any other medium (as long as I have my broadband connection!).
  • 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.
    • On pricewatch i found 2 dvd-r drives

      Cheapest is the panasonic.
      It is combo dvd-ram/dvd-r drive.
      It costs $445 for the bare drive (ide)

      The pioneer dvr-a03 is the de-facto.
      It is combo dvd-r/dvd-rw/cd-r/cd-rw.
      It is also what apple uses for the "superdrive"
      It costs $475.

      Here are stats about the DVR-A03:
      8x cd-r
      4x cd-rw
      2x dvd-r
      1x dvd-rw

      1x may sound slow, but, uh, thats 4.7 gigs in an hour or 2.

      I found this link.
      http://www.meritline.com/supa1dvwrit.html
      and this one showing most of the industry offerings.
      http://www.meritline.com/dvddrives.html

      Somebody find a dvd-r howto, or write one.
      And include a part about how to author one that will play movies in standard component dvd players with the use of free tools.

  • I don't want to go deep into history, but not that long ago several floppies installations have been replaced by single CDs.

    Now we are actually doing the same thing with different media. I don't like that, to be honest.

    Network installation is much more interesting idea, IMHO. It's just that one should remove all possibilities of "network unreachable" and increase bandwidth per unit of money :)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • hell.. last time I installed debian i used 2 floppies and copied another 7 floppies worth of stuff off an fat32 partition.. who needs 6 cd's or a dvd or whatever when you got broadband..
  • if hidden somewhere on the DVD was DeCSS, ripper/player software (and maybe DRM removal software...salt+wound, rub).

    Debian is a German Distro, correct... could be possible as a) our legislation does not affect them (I think) and b) DeCSS was originally generated in Germany (remember Jon Johanssen was the "distributor" of sorts, he said (IIRC) it came from a "German IRC" chat/hacker aquaintence of his).

    I've tried an older version (5.x era) of debian and I was impressed.

    Down side to using it was my campus was mainly RedHat. Heh, and I'm a Slackware boy from a while back.

    Two lovely quotes about Slack:
    on /. " Slackware: when you know what you are doing"
    and
    From a "linux shootout" article I read a while back that gave me a chuckle "Slackware is not for everyone, the learning curve is steeper than other Distros, but is best suited for those people who never had enough toys to play with as children" .... Heh, explains a lot about me... (G).

    Unix in general: "Unix is user friendly, it is just pickier about its friends".

    I'll shut up before I stray off topic.

    • you seem to have got it mixed up with SuSE.

      Debian is based just off the coast of Greenland, on average [debian.org] ;-)

      Also, Debian's version is currently 2.2, soon to be 3.0, so I'm not sure where you got 5.x from.
    • 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.)
    • 1) Debian isn't German, it's an international, country-indepenant effort.

      2) The DCMA will screw Germans, Japanese, Canadians, etc, the instant they set foot inside the US, and most people want freedom to travel. There are very few countries I can't go to as a Canadian, I'd like the US not to be one of those.

      3) Do you mean glibc 5.x? 'Cause there ain't no Debian 5.x out there.

      4) Slackware is for people who would rather manage their computers than use them (naah, just kidding; I used to use Slackware too... but then I tried Debian)

      5) Debian: it's what your mother would use if it were twenty times easier (wildly inaccurate I thought, but amusing)

      6) Debian doesn't even have LAME, BladeEnc, etc. in the package lists, because they don't like walking the line. DeCSS would go against every ounce of common sense anyone in the organization has.

      --Dan
  • Is there a good reason debian doesn't fit on one cd? I mean you can tell me its all the included open source, but text files compress really well!What exactly is on these 6 CDs?
    Even bloated evil windows is ONE CD!
    Am I dumb, or what?
  • I heard a rumour from another Debian fanatic that the testing version of the locales package had been broken.

    If true, did it get fixed??
  • apt-get install apt-move

    setup apt-move.conf, and then maintain a package mirron on one box, and keep it updated. Then all your other boxes can reference the local mirror instead of the normal ones in its sources.list

    a full unstable mirror was only about 4 gigs while i was maintaining one myself.
  • Everybody I know installs a base system from CD and then uses apt to bring it up to the latest version.
  • Jim posted [debian.org] details of how he mastered the DVD-Rs under Linux on the debian-cd; however, the interesting part is:

    Burning the DVD-R is another story. schilling@fokus.gmd.de is
    making noises about making cdrecord (pro) a "for-profit" piece
    of software, and has not released the code that
    will actually burn a DVD-R......but that is another story.

    Can anyone else confirm this information?
  • 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.

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