DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Is it time to go beyond 50 MB?
I went down to my local CompUSA (and Staples ... and Office Depot ... and Radio Shack) the other day, looking for those nifty 50 MB business card CD-R blanks. Guess what? *None* of these places had any! What they *did* have, in large quantities, was the round 200 MB CD-Rs and CD-RWs. So ... is it time Damn Small Linux moved up to 200 MB? It seems like a lot of us start with the 50 MB DSL and add our own favorite software anyway ... why not have a 200 MB version with the popular stuff like Firefox and AbiWord?
I just got Knoppix 3.4, and I'm planning on seeing just how much of it I can get onto a 200 MB mini-CD in the not-too-distant future. Given that the Knoppix compression ratio is about 2 GBytes to a 700 MByte CD, I'm guessing I should be able to get somewhere between 500 and 600 MBytes on a mini-CD ... that should give me my favorite science codes (R, XMaxima and TexMacs) plus a real browser and possibly Ethereal.
Ed Borasky
http://AlgoCompSynth.com
znmeb@aracnet.com
Nope, DSL will always be a 50MB distro. That is what it is.
With the myDSL system you can put together a custom version at what ever size/flavor you want. The myDSL repository is still in its infancy, I am sure it will be much more extensive in 6 months.
Anyway, this distro will always be a 50MB distro, something small enough to be on a 50MM business card CD, or a 64MB CF card with room to spare. It is a nearly complete desktop, and you are free to use it as a base and get exactly what you want.
There has been a push to increase the size before, but it isn't going to happen.
Also, there are already a lot of 200MB distributions out there, some are quite good.
In reading industry trade magazines, and talking with several of my vendors,
the market for business card CDR media is dwindling, with more custom
die-cut and screen-printed PRESSED cdr shapes in quantity, and made to
order, being more common nowdays.
The thrust of most writable manufacturers has been toward DVD-/+R media.
This is where most of the time and money is being invested.
The margins on selling cdr media nowdays is nowhere close to where
it was even 2 years ago. Adding additional steps to the manufacturing
process, such as die-cutting, pulls down the profit margins even more,
and drives up the cost at market. Many vendors have discontinued 50mm
disks completely, like Imation, and other retail names have stopped distribution.
With 120mm disks being imported at a price point under .09 - .12 / unit,
and manufacturing capacities vastly exceeding demand, there simply isn't
enough profit to continue investment on this technology. Many CD/CDROM
pressing facilities have folded, or shut down, due to overinvestment and
lack of capital/cash flow. Those that have survived are rapidly re-vamping
their equipment for the upcoming but expectedly short lifespan dvd-r market.
The 80mm mini round, commonly used as the stock for 50mm die-cuts, will
probably be here for a while longer, since the steps involved to produce
them mirror 120mm cdr production.
From what I'm reading, most true manufacturers
are pushing on with the 12x DVD-+R and Dual-Layer DVDR's .
Both of these drives are already availiable in stores and online.
Short of supplying audio duplicators with cdr stock, and with dvd drives
dropping in price FAST, CDR's may soon go the way of floppy disks and
zip drives, since the market for larger and faster storage capacities will push
the cdr technology to the "bottom-of-the-barrel", and beyond any profitability.
The cdr market has gone from a thriving business in the late 90's, to what has
become one of the most quickly maturing business models ever in the
history of publicly accepted audio formats.. The dvd-+r market threatens
to do the same at an ever faster pace.
Most all future computers built will not include either a floppy drive, or a
dedicated cdr drive.. As for now, dvd drives continue to be backwards
compatible with cdr technology, but with the upcoming "blue-ray" from Sony,
and the super-density discs being tested by Phillips, "CDR" compatibility
will become less of an issue for manufacturers looking for new markets..
So, it's 50mm/50mb polysubstrate disks today, tomorrow will be a paper
disk 50mm/10gb throwaway, and the near future will soon have 100-200gb
80mm disks that are not only rewritable, but biodegradable.
73
ke4nt
Part of the appeal of DSL is that it is a distribution that will work well on older computers, so I doubt that the new technologies will be a good fit for this philosophy.
I do think that higher capacity disks will be a great benefit to a knoppix-dvd type project.
It is kinda depressing that the BBC disks are no longer sold at CompUSA. I bought a pack of 25 Memorex BBC disks there last year and they were the only local store that stocked them at the time.
The BBC format is a nice fit when you have a PDA like a Palm Pilot that has a leather case with a pouch for papers and business cards.
Lastly, one of the nice features of DSL is the 'toram' feature that works on computers with only 128MB of RAM. This would not work if DSL changed to a 185 or 210MB format.
DSL came in handy (yet again) for me the other day when I needed to restore a hard disk partition that I had saved to CD-R disk.
I use the 'dd' command, combined with the 'gzip' and 'split' commands to back up my partitions over LAN and eventually to CD-R.
In this case, I needed to restore a CD disk backup on my new PC, but a full-blown knoppix would hog my cdrom drive.
I ran DSL in 'toram' mode and freed up my CD drive for retrieval of the data file and I was back up and running in no time.
I don't know what it is but I see this all the time with small distros, it starts out great then people want it bigger, include their favorite browser or office suite or (shudder) games.
I think DSL is just where it should be for size, if I want it bigger, I'll make it bigger, I don't use business cards anyway.
The online repository is one of the best ideas I've seen, it gets everyone involved in building .dsl's and just maybe more people will get into customizing their own DSL instead of waiting for their browser or any favorite app to be included in a 50 Meg distro.
In 6 months there'll be a ton of apps on site.
Stick with it John,
My 2 cents,
roadie
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