On 18/02/10 12:05, Steve Fosdick wrote:

Is this Ubuntu desktop or server? Tuesday evening I was trying installing Ubuntu onto a PC which was to have mirrored disks and with Ubuntu desktop:

1. There didn't seem to be any way to specify any kind of RAID in the

partitioning step.

2. Converting afterwards seemed fraught with difficulty.

It's desktop, but I don't recall how it was set up (it was installed a couple of years ago and this was just an upgrade).

However, from memory, what you want is the "alternate" install CD, which lets you do a lot more to customise partitions during install than the standard desktop install does.

On 18/02/10 18:55, Wayne Stallwood wrote:

The easy way round this is to use the alternate installation image rather than the live cd image...the alt image has the same installer as Ubuntu Server...although I agree it really really should be an option on the GUI installer method.

I've never quite worked out why there isn't a DVD option with a boot menu for all of the disks (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/UNR/Ubuntu Server/Alternate/etc).

Surely there is significant overlap between the different versions of the distro so the total size of the DVD would be much less than the combined size of the CDs. I'm not even sure there'd need to be separate 32 and 64-bit versions - surely a lot is common between those too? (Even if all the application binaries are different, the documentation and other "data" will be common.)

Each release sees me downloading at least 3 of the CD ISOs. I think a DVD would save them some bandwidth (it would for me, anyway, and it would be great as a magazine cover CD).

(It could probably even include Mint, Mythbuntu, and a host of others!)

On 19/02/10 23:58, Wayne Stallwood wrote:

You package a DVD "compilation" of all the distro/installer variants. But due to the way the distro is packaged it would take major effort to separate binaries from man pages from pixmaps etc. So the overall saving would be smaller than you think. (maybe easier/better if CD's supported symlinks)

I assume that what you're saying is that individual .deb files contain a mixture of (executable) binaries and other data so separating them is hard? If so that ought to be addressed for no other reason than that it means that when maintaining .debs for multiple platforms (Intel 32/64 bit, arm, etc) each has its own .deb containing a lot of shared data. In some cases that might make sense but surely it means that when bugs are fixed in code then the updates that people download are bigger than they need to be (even if both binary and other .debs get updated, web caches can't reduce the load where you have 32-bit and 64-bit users downstream). It also makes repositories larger than they'd need to be (although disk space is cheap).

In my experience, large packages are already split between binaries and "data", OOo being a good example that comes to mind.

Re: CD symlinks; this is something Windows has supported for some time so it ought to be possible to achieve under Linux too. MS install disks are frequently "compressed" by having duplicate files share the same physical space on disk (I'd liken this to hard links rather than symlinks though).

However, I had assumed (wrongly?) that the CD is essentially a mini-repository containing loads of .debs that may or may not be needed depending on the install options, so combining Ubuntu and Kubuntu would not require duplicating shared files, just installing from deifferent meta-packages (ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop, I assume).

Then most people only really need one variant or perhaps 2 at best of a particular distro, be that server and desktop or whatever. However many people would take the "safe" option of getting the whole lot even if they had no intention of using half the variants on there so the overall bandwidth requirements of the mirrors would be higher not lower.

A super-ubuntu distro containing stuff like Mint etc (if they do share binaries, I have no idea if they do) would probably be a community project rather than a Canonical one, so the links would be less obvious and they'd probably be torrents, so this would help, but yes I do take your point that a lot of people will just choose the "bigger" disk because it must be "better". I don't know how many people already just download a full set "just in case" anyway, though.

That said a super-ubuntu magazine cover DVD might work. Although do people actually use cover disks now..I just thought they existed to keep the price of the magazine artificially high. :)

I'm definitely one of those who avoids cover disks most of the time, but surely someone uses them?

I have my copy of Ubuntu User in front of me, and that has a 7-buntu disk on it, comprising (U|Ku|Xu|Edu|Lin)buntu, UNR and Ubuntu Studio. If I get a few minutes I'll have a look and see how the disk is put together, but I would expect 7 full install sets to fit onto a single DVD anyway.