[indiana-discuss] Why not a DVD?

[Jonathan Edwards]

On Jan 22, 2009, at 5:45 PM, Dave Miner wrote:

> Shawn Walker wrote:
>> Robert Bauer wrote:
>>> Why used a CD instead of a DVD?
>>
>> This has been asked many times before; the short answer is that a
>> significant number of users still only have CD drives (and many  
>> servers
>> as well).
>>
>> In addition, one of the goals (as I understand it) of the Indiana
>> project is to reduce the size of the base system and move to a model
>> where the core is distributed and users add what they want to that.
>>
>
> While none of this is untrue...
>
> The core reason is that most people will be downloading OpenSolaris to
> try it out.  A CD-size basic distro keeps the up-front investment
> reasonable in terms of time, bandwidth, disk space, etc., and  
> increases
> the likelihood that the initial "transaction" actually completes
> successfully.
>
> We will probably offer other options in the future for those who have
> different constraints, but that's the best compromise for now.

on top of limiting bandwidth, and looking forward i would anticipate  
more things of this nature to be delivered on images that would fit  
nicely and compactly on cheap usb sticks or SD cards with space left  
over for other things .. i would fully expect some people (either in  
present or future generations) to marvel at these shiny spinning disks  
we used to depend on to pass software around in the same way that  
media CD and DVD players are becoming "retro" just like 8-tracks, LPs,  
and polaroids

---
Future Jonathan

ps. - of course the use of heavy compression to shrink images simply  
ends up moving the problem to memory and CPU .. but that's a whole  
other topic