5 CD Distros

[navneeth]

The only distro I have installed and used in the past four-five months I've been into Linux is Ubuntu :KS (and Kubuntu, but for only a couple of days). I'd like to try other popular distros, too, such as Mandriva and Fedora, but unlike the former, FC is a 5CD distribution. I'd like to know what makes Fedora (and SUSE) use so many CD's, and if there are any ways to avoid downloading all the CD's.

Now, I don't want you to tell me how great and convinient Ubuntu is with only one (Live)CD. I know that, and also I'm not planning to uninstall it anytime in the near future. :mrgreen:

[PatrickMay16]

I tried Fedora 6 recently. I just did the standard desktop installation (I think. My test machine did not have enough RAM for the installer to run in GUI mode) and it only ever asked me for CDs one and two.

[navneeth]

Hey, thanks for the reply. So what exactly do the first two CDs and the other CD's contain? Could you also tell me what's the minimum storage needed?

[timcredible]

fedora is pretty bad. try pclinuxos and mepis, both livecds, both very good.

[taurus]

Fedora Core gives you everything on those 5 CDs or 1 DVD, including a kitchen sink! If you do a standard default install, it only requires the first 2 CDs, but if you need other stuff like server apps or the development packages, then you need the next 2 or so. Therefore, it's a handy thing to install if your machine is not on the network because almost everything is available on those 5 CDs/1 DVD.

[navneeth]

I'm pretty sure that I do not know what server applications or development packages are for. :D I'll probably use only the standard apps - text editors, browser, media players etc. So can I install FC, with confidence that nothing will go wrong, with only the first 2 CDs?

P.S. Btw, taurus, I love you sig. :D One can actually come up with several meanings for it.

[justin whitaker]

Hey, thanks for the reply. So what exactly do the first two CDs and the other CD's contain? Could you also tell me what's the minimum storage needed?

CD1 and CD2 are the install and application CDs, CD3 has language files I believe, and 4 and 5 are source discs.

[fuscia]

check out the other OS talk forum - http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=147

[aysiu]

check out the other OS talk forum - http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=147
I've moved the thread there.

[navneeth]

Thanks for all the help, guys! :)

[ixus_123]

if you want to try out other Distros Slackware is worth a look (2 CDs last time I used it)

Puppy is also great - very light weight live CD that loads into ram & < 90mb download

also worth a look if you want to see a different type of desktop is the looking glass project & live CD - not sure where this is going now that we have AXGL / compiz stuff

http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details.xml

[navneeth]

Slackware is now on 6 CD's
http://www.slackware.com/getslack/
(although when you visit any one of the mirror links, it says 4)

[Iandefor]

I would hate Fedora less if they had a netinstall option. But, alas, none exists to my knowledge.

In regards to actual CD usage, however, FC7 should be better. For one, Fedora will be merging Core and Extras into one massive packageset called Complete, and they'll offer two separate distributions based off of Fedora Complete (Fedora Desktop and Fedora Server), so the whole 5-CD rigmarole should be turned into something more manageable by early 2007.

In the meantime, though, you really should only need the first two CD's for a basic desktop installation of Core and the rest of Core and Extras are available in online yum repositories.