Should Ubuntu Still Be Distributed As A CD ISO?

[ssam]

it would great to have a good infrastructure for addon disks. then alongside the core installer disk there could be, office, graphics studio, developer, games, language etc disks.

this would have made my life easier back when bandwidth was more of a problem. for me i usually had access to bandwidth, but not in the same place as the computers i wanted to install on. i think this is common for people now without broad band. they may not have it at their house, but they can go to a net cafe or get a friend to download some files.

one could take the bootable usb installer, and add which ever addons you wanted on to the usb stick.

you could also distribute updates or large applications in a similar method.

[droidhacker]

Well, the obvious way to answer this question is to analyse their download statistics. If more than 1% of users download the CD images, they may still want them around. If not, then leave it as just DVD.

To make things simple, they *SHOULD* have a full-release installer DVD. Lacking that (if they do lack it) would be a deal breaker for me. I would NOT bother with downloading 5-10 CD images, and I would NOT install a livecd (since there is too much FIXING to do to a livecd before it becomes useful).

For anyone worried about booting/installing from usb sticks... you can use the DVD install image to build a bootable USB. I do that from time to time with the Fedora install DVD image. I just put it on a 4G usb stick.... they go for what... $3 or there abouts?


In summary.... the ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL image to have, is the install DVD image. Everything else is bonus and DOESN'T COST ANYTHING, so it certainly doesn't hurt. If you want to decide whether to bother with the CD images or not, just count how many CD downloads actually happen. If the number is ZERO, then there's no point in it.

[locovaca]

Well, the obvious way to answer this question is to analyse their download statistics. If more than 1% of users download the CD images, they may still want them around. If not, then leave it as just DVD.

The only issue with that is that they do not publicize their DVD image- it's under "alternate downloads" and in fact discourage people from using it.

Don't be confused, even though DVDs can hold far more data than the typical Ubuntu CD, the main benefit of the DVD downloads is to get access to all of the available language packs. Most people will be fine with the standard CD installer. There are fewer download locations for the DVD images and this list is updated less frequently than for the CD images.

[Delgarde]

You download the image. You can install many machines from that one image. But each install then requires you to hit the Internet to grab extra packages that aren't on the image. If they're on the image, you download them once rather than for each install.

Just set up a local repository mirror, and point all the machines at that...

[PreferLinux]

If you don't want the big downloads, then just use something like SUSE Studio, where you can customise the system, then download your custom system.

Ubuntu could do something similar, but much more basic, have it used most of the time for downloads, as well as several presets (which most people would use anyway, but takes you back to the same problem of size, although that sort of system could make it much easier to do CD's without any additional language packs).

[Artemis3]

Just set up a local repository mirror, and point all the machines at that...

In that scenario, i like apt-cacher-ng much more. It's like a squid for packages, you set up a proxy (apt.conf and or synaptic preferences, etc) and its done; doesn't matter how many weird repositories or .deb distros you use. Turn it off? unset the proxy (instead of changing sources.list again).

This way, instead of blindly mirroring the whole thing, only the packages you truly need are cached; which is usually 10% the size compared to mirroring whole architecture, let alone many; and various distros.

[movieman]

In that scenario, i like apt-cacher-ng much more.

Agreed: I use apt-cacher and it's worked pretty well. I even have the netbook and laptop configured to automatically enable and disable the proxy depending on whether I'm at home or traveling.