CD and DVD ISO images

[Ed Greshko]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Ed Greshko wrote:
>> John Summerfield wrote:
>>> Todd Zullinger wrote:
>>>> David Boles wrote:
>>>>> The specific person mentioned has no DVD drive to read a DVD of any
>>>>> kind nor does he have Internet access of any kind. So what now?
>>>>
>>>> I didn't know the premise was about the mythical man with no internet.
>>>> For folks without net access or a dvd to boot from, I'd probably give
>>>> them a USB key that had the dvd iso on it.  From that, they could
>>>> extract the boot.iso, boot from that and install from the dvd iso on
>>>> the usb key.
>>>>
>>>> That's just one of many ways such a problem could be handled.  But I
>>>> don't happen to know anyone in such a pickle, so I don't have much
>>>> preference about how they solve their problem. :)
>>>
>>> Mine is a particular case of a more generic problem. I can overcome 
>>> my particular case, but I'm proposing a solution that works for more 
>>> people, including people without great skill.
>>>
>>> in my particular case, I have a system, Athlon XP 2200+ or so, with 
>>> USB1.0 and a CD drive. I _can_ carry it around the place and connect 
>>> it to a good network, but that doesn't solve this kind for everyone.
>>>
>>> I have here a Fedora 8 DVD, it came attached to APC Magazine. If I 
>>> have it, so have a few hundred thousand other Australians, and then 
>>> there are those other magazines such as Linux Format and linux 
>>> Magazine that also attach the latest Fedora (and many other distros 
>>> over the course of the year).
>>>
>>> Here, where I am right now, I have ADSL2+ and can download at 1.2 
>>> Mbytes/sec or so, so downloading is not a problem. At home, though, 
>>> broadband of any speed is not available, and nor is any machine with 
>>> a DVD drive. My wife has a new digital camera, she needs the latest 
>>> excellence in digital photography software.
>>>
>>> So there are two ways I can get a DVD: off a magazine, and by 
>>> downloading.
>>>
>>> If the DVD (and the ISO DVD image) contained CD images, then I could 
>>> easily burn a set of CDs. I could insert the DVD and burn from there. 
>>> Or I could do something like this:
>>> mount -o loop,ro <dvd image> /mnt/cdrom
>>> and proceed as if I had a DVD mounted at /mnt/cdrom.
>>>
>>> APC magazine and the others might include a script just to help burn 
>>> CDs, it's not hard for someone with basic linux skills (IE the person 
>>> downloading or creating a DVD image).
>>
>> Probably a silly question...but considering the problem that your 
>> trying to solve is fedora the best distro choice for the target 
>> community?  I mean fedora tends to be leading/bleeding edge with 
>> frequent updates and a short release cycle.
> 
> It is a silly question:-) It misses the point, which is to make Fedora 
> easier to share and to install on machines which lack DVD drives and 
> good Internet access.

Well, you keep mentioning "Neither helps install sans network" and 
statements that seem to indicate that lack of network is part of the hurdle.

I've never had a problem to install on a system without a DVD drive but a 
good network connection.  I've used the "Live CD" method or downloaded the 
DVD iso and did a network install.

So, I guess whatever solution you're proposing is redundant for me.

>>
>> Wouldn't it be somewhat better to go with something like CentOS which 
>> already has CD ISO images?  A distro such as CentOS is also more 
>> stable...as in less frequent updates.  So, if you don't have internet 
>> access no need to worry about how to get the 47 or so updates that 
>> come out every so often.
>>
> haven't you noticed my description of Fedora?
> http://fcp.surfsite.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=45800&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0 

Doesn't ring a bell....



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		-- Matthew Arnold