On 2 May 2013 15:15, "John Reiser" <jreiser@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 05/01/2013 06:37 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>
> > Why are we tied to DVD-5, 4.7GB (4.3GiB) at all?
> > Do we distribute DVDs?
>
> Yes. Check with Fedora Ambassadors in EMEA.
>
> > If so couldn't we use a newer DVD standard?
>
> That would reduce coverage significantly.
> The de facto standard (what "customers" have)
> is what was prevalent in the first world 5 to 7 years ago;
> which omits 8.5GB DVD (DVD/DL).
>
> > I can't see any users wanting to burn DVDs
> > rather than using USB sticks etc.
>
> I burn DVDs. I use them. I use USB flash memory, too,
> but DVDs have advantages for some of my uses:
> - DVD can be labeled with a marking pen
> - burning 16X DVD+R is faster than livecd-iso-to-disk to USB flash memory
> - keeping track of 10 DVD (different contents) is not a problem
> - DVD is much less likely to be overwritten (DVD+R "never")
> - DVD is incrementally less expensive (the next 16X DVD+R is $0.25 to $0.40;
> 4X DVD+RW is $0.40 to $0.60; 8GB USB flash memory with >= 5MB/s average
> during an install is $9)
> - DVD is inexpensive to give away
> - DVD collection of releases is useful for archive and support
> - DVD+R lasts >= 10 years; USB flash tends to fail (bit errors)
> in 7 to 8 years.
> - I still support hardware that cannot boot directly from USB.
I think USB sticks will become much more usable when Fedora allows booting from iso images like some other distributions already do. Currently the standard way involves completely overwriting everything on the stick (1 distribution per stick).
Personally I install grub on the stick, extract the contents of the iso into a directory and manually adjust grub to match (so I now have an i686/x86_64, f16-f18, KDE Live/DVD USB sick). Seems to me it should be possible to simplify this a lot (install grub, copy iso, boot) so that USB sticks are usable by the masses without having to dedicate an entire stick to the task.
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