[Coco] Fedora 6 DVD ISO

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 29 April 2007, Joel Ewy wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 29 April 2007, Manney wrote:
>>> Roger Taylor wrote:
>>>> Gene, I just initiated the download for Fedora 6 i386, so there's just 9
>>>> hours and 45 minutes to go!  :)  Unless a fair use policy kicks in and
>>>> throws me down to dialup speed for a few hours.
>>>>
>>>> I'm sacraficing a day of network bandwidth for this download of Linux.
>>>> Looks like around 3.3 gb, so I hope the ISO contains every stinkin'
>>>> tool, compiler, feature, app, game, and driver, that is known to the
>>>> Fedora gang.  :)
>>>
>>> Yikes! 3.3 Gig? Anyone know any other distro that makes you download a
>>> DVD's worth?
>>>
>>> So far, I'm happy downloading a CD ISO (~700 Meg) for a Debian (Ubuntu
>>> specifically) based install. If something is missing from the install, I
>>> just grab (apt-get) it once the install is finished. Seems the easiest
>>> way to go for me and I get it in 30-45 minutes. :)
>>>
>>> -M.
>>
>> You are aware that the full debian distro is about 28 cd's worth?
>
>But the point is that you don't have to download the full distro just to
>do a basic install.  In fact, if you want to install Debian, all you
>need to download is 2 (maybe 3?) floppy images to boot the installer.
>All the rest will be downloaded during the installation process -- but
>only as much as you actually need.  I've got nothing against RedHat and
>Fedora, and I'm certainly not going to try to warn anybody away from
>using it.  It's a fine distro.  I may even install some future version
>of it again.  But if it's true that you have to download 3.3G just to be
>able to install a basic system -- that's just lunacy.

It can be done with one cd for a basic install, then get the rest from the 
network, which does have the advantage of getting the latest stuff 
automaticly, and the disadvantage of volatile sites or network access.

The kernel and an initrd with all the drivers has not fit on a floppy in 4 or 
5 years, with bare kernels running close to 2 megs these days.  My own custom 
kernel made just for my hardware is 1.49MB, and the initrd (initial ramdisk, 
used only to load drivers from for the hardware it discovers at boot time, 
and which is then thrown away) that goes with it so it can load drivers 
before it actually has a disk filesystem ready to go, is 2.1 megs.  Neither 
of those will fit on a floppy, let alone both on one.  If I turned on the 
build for all the drivers that linux now supports, the pair would handily 
exceed 5 megs.

Either way, you'll probably use 3GB of bandwidth the first month, grabbing the 
devel packages so you get the compiler etc.  For me that isn't a huge deal, I 
have dsl that downloads at about 180kilobytes a second if they put it in the 
pipe that fast on the other end.

Then you need a gui so you can impress the visiting frogs, kde is the best 
IMO, and its at least 500 megs cause its got everything you need except 
firefox.  Their browser can probably be used if you can get it under control, 
but they also use it for a file manager in ways I don't grok.  Best file 
manager is the old, two pane, midnight commander, aka mc.  File Runner is 
also good, but its been stuck at version 2.5.1 since RH6.2 days.  Its 
customizable somewhat along the lines of the old amiga DirWork-2, which I 
liked a lot.

I do like one thing debian/ubuntu has, they have a script called 
build-essentials, which when run, will download and install all the includes 
and compiler toys you'll need to be able to build 99% of their src packages 
and install them, or build your own stuff from a tarball download.  Or write 
and build it from scratch, which I know Roger is quite capable of.

>JCE

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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