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Announcements Operating Systems BSD

FreeBSD on DVD 108

Posted by AilleCat from the all-that-on-only-one-disk dept.
FreeBSD Services Ltd. has announced their intention to distribute FreeBSD on (bootable) DVD, including packages, ports distfiles, the CVS repository, and a technical documentation set. I managed to get one of the promotional DVD's here at USENIX and I can't wait to get home and check out what's on it. Ultimately it will be offered as a subscription based service and documentation will be kept up-to-date.
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FreeBSD Services UK to offer FreeBSD DVD More

FreeBSD Services UK to offer FreeBSD DVD

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  • BSD (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't it funny how we make a devil out of M$ when they plan a subscription-based service, and a holy icon of a devil when he plans to release a subscription based service?

  • Never underestimate... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...the bandwidth of a UPS truck full of DVDs!



    Sorry... had to be said.

  • Re:*BSD is dying -- Kevin, give it a rest! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Kevin,

    I wish you would stop posting this crap and just move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to press charges against you for theft. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

    Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just silly. We move more CDs now than when you left. No one is calling and cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

    I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and press charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the company laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records. They still have printouts of the ads you put up on eBay (with your phone number) for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array.

    Tim

    P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

  • "DVD's"? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:42AM (#119023)
    http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif [angryflower.com]

    Spread it around.

  • DVD-ROM != DVD-Video (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2001 @01:11PM (#119024)

    It would be a good idea not to use the catch-all 'DVD' to describe a specific kind of DVD disc. There is DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-Video, and DVD-Audio. A DVD-ROM is just another type of media to store data. DVD-Video is a subset of DVD-ROM; it is a special kind of DVD-ROM with a particular file system layout and a specification for the format of the files. Don't confuse the two

    Note that all DVD-Video discs do not have encrypted content.

    DVD-ROM will eventually replace CD-ROM, it is good to see FreeBSD looking ahead. The price of DVD duplication is getting down to where it can economically replace multi-CD-ROM datasets.

  • No, DVD-RAM similar to an a competitor to DVD-RW (analogous to a CD-RW). Here "RAM" is used to indicate that random access (reads/writes) is supporter, as opposed to DVD-ROM which only supports reads.
  • I've long said this [freshmeat.net]. Subscriptions are the way to go. I'm up for the FreeBSD one ;-). BTW. Mandrake is offering subscriptions of sorts now also with FREQ [mandrakeforum.com] stuff, you can get a FREQ Subscription. [mandrakestore.com]
  • THIS LINK [freshmeat.net] is the correct one for the first time I mentioned Subscriptions in public... Sorry, the other link was wrong (Friday, worked to long, first beer of the night... brain shuttiiing down... SYSTEM HALTED)
  • one single

    Actually they plan on doing two DVD sets, including a CVS source tree, and all the tarballs for the ports (neither seems to be on the existing DVD, I checked).

    So surely Linux would need more then two DVDs :-)

  • I've only heard of a few software titles that are released on DVD. And I don't even know what they are.

    Well not only are DVD-ROM drives somewhat more rare then CD-ROMs, but the media is more expensive too. I don't know what a mass pressing CD costs, but if one-offs are $0.10 for the media, I don't imagine mass pressing would be more then $0.25 (including pressing costs in quantity). A mass pressed duel layer DVD is about $3 each.

    So you don't break even until you go over 12 CDs! Well, assuming packaging is free. Even with (cheep!) packaging you should be able to have a fair number of CDs before it would have been cheaper to do a single DVD...

  • No one is calling and cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

    Not only that, but "BSD is dying posts on slashdot up 75%" was listed as a growth point at the FreeBSD BOF last night, much to the amusement of the gathered masses (other points were x% more commiters, N more platforms, y% more drivers...)

  • MS will NEVER totally move to a subscription-based system. EVER. No matter how much flame food it gives you to say otherwise, you're wrong. The majority of Microsoft's customers (I believe it is around 70%) are OEMs. There is no OEM in the world that is going to get away with saying "Here.. buy our PC but you have to also subscribe to Windows". People would scorn them out of business. It simply doesnt fit their business model to move totally away from sales.

  • However, DVD as a term is perfectly good to describe the media used to distribute software. Aren't DVD-RW and DVD-RAM different physical media using different encoding from DVD-ROM? The filesystem can be the same, though.

    While DVD-Video and -Audio discs are physically the same as DVD-ROM and use the same encoding, able to fit same amount of data, the difference lies in how the encoded data is interpreted. You can read DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs using DVD-ROM, and they actually contain the same filesystem as standard DVD-ROM. It's just that they have specific files in specific directories, even some files in specific physical locations.

  • It's bootable. We used one of the DVDs at Usenix to boot someone's laptop who wanted to get away from Linux.

    Of course, you still need BIOS support in order to boot from the DVD in the first place.

    N

  • Probably because it's been tried, but DVD drives weren't quite ubiquitous enough yet to make the few software titles on which they tried it worthwhile. They were more expensive to make and burn than the same thing on CDs, and thus tended to be more expensive to consumers than the same thing on CDs, and not offer any additional content they couldn't also obtain that way. They were a big flop, and interest in DVD-ROM software faded.

    Of course, now that it's a few years later, and more people have DVD-ROMs, and the discs are getting more inexpensive to make, maybe it's just about time for them to try again.
    --

  • Cool... (Score:5)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:37AM (#119035)
    Now with this DVD with there be:

    Developers commentary channel?
    Option to view deleted code?
    See previews for other OS's?
    Multi-Language stero channel. FreeBSD Code in spanish!
    Making of FreeBSD?
    Multi-Angle FreeBSD coding?

    I look forward to watching this puppy.


    --

  • Another word for you . . . (Score:3)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @01:46PM (#119036) Homepage
    . . . choice.

    FreeBSD (and most of the alternative open operating systems for that matter) will allow you to choose the model you'd prefer.

    Although I honestly don't understand how a subscription model that forces you to upgrade using time limited software can be more "efficient" than a subscription service that provides upgrades that aren't required, only requested, as the software is yours to run as long as you like once you've initially installed it.

  • One word makes the difference . . . (Score:4)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:36AM (#119037) Homepage
    . . . and that word is "forced".

    With the oft mentioned Microsoft subscription model, it truely is a forced upgrade. Even if you're happy with your system and apps after a particular upgrade, you're out of luck when the time limit expires.

    There's no forced upgrades being done with the FreeBSD subscription. Once you've installed it, you can either not upgrade, upgrade through the regular means (buying a new CD/DVD, downloading from the internet, etc), or subscribe and have new DVD's mailed to you on a regular basis.

    The subscription model FreeBSD is proposing is one of convenience for the customers. What Microsoft is proposing is convenient for Microsoft.

  • UDF filesystem.
  • Was aware of that, just that UDF is more widely used.
  • Uhh... yeah... BIG difference.

    One model, you have to have a subscription to the software to keep *using* it. (i.e. the software expires if you do not continue the subscription)

    On the other model, the subscription is merely to have the convenience of new versions sent to you periodically rather than downloading it off of the net for free.

    Now... which do you think is which? :P
  • Yup, I tend to agree. But...

    Not everyone has a fast connection to the internet. And not everyone wants to spend time compiling the ports. Prebuilt packages all in one place (CD or DVD) is very convenient to a lot of people.
  • All of the Sun servers I buy lately (E250/450s) come with DVD drives. I haven't seen any software released on DVD for Sun yet though. I seriously doubt they're in there to watch movies, as the machines don't have graphics cards. :)
  • <sarcasm>Wouldn't the RIAA have a problem with this? If there are any binaries on the DVD, and you accidentally determine where the source files are, wouldn't that be decrypting an encoded document and therefore violate the DMCA?</sarcasm>

    ---
  • Longer than that actually. I remember there was a DVD version of 6.4 and I think 6.3 was available on DVD as well. Unfortunately, they were separate boxes so you could only get one or the other. I believe 7.0 started including both, but I'm not sure because I skipped that one. I generally buy every 2nd release of whatever distro I'm using.

    The DVD rocks though. Switching disks can get annoying and now that it's 7 disks It's getting pretty crazy.

    Luckily, my laptop has a DVD drive so I can quickly set up an ad hoc network and do an NFS install.

    Interestingly enough, I just bought a bunch of new Loki games and it appears that the CDROM drive on my desktop is on the way out. I'm getting read errors like crazy. I bought that drive in 1995 for the sole purpose of installing Slackware without having to insert 60-something floppy disks. Now I think I'm going to buy a DVD drive for a similar reason...

    I'm finding that kind of funny. I wonder what new drive I'll be buying in 6 years when SuSE grows to 7 DVDs and has to include some newer format...
  • How about behind-the-scenes videos of the making of the software...

    Programmers sitting around, surfing the web, belching, farting, viewing porn, drinking coffee..
  • When I first played Riven, I was particular bothered by the way you constantly had to swap the CD-ROMs every time you changed worlds. In fact, it bothered me so much that I stopped playing.

    A friend told me a year or so ago that they made a version of Riven that runs on a single DVD disk. I thought that it was a great idea -- That would have made everything fine. I also wondered why more multiple CD-ROM software wasn't released in DVD format.

  • Fsck the MPAA! (Score:4)

    by tosderg ( 44011 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:15AM (#119047) Homepage
    Down with DVD! Distribute DeCSS on tshirts, televisions, and toilet tissue!

    BOYCOTT AMAZON.COM!

    BURN DOWN THE PATENT OFFICE!

    FREE KEVIN MITNICK!

    Wa.. wait a minute.

    FreeB... oh. Nevermind.


  • Forgive my ignorance of all things DVD, but is DVD-RAM what it sounds like it is? What's it used for? (Is it cheaper than RAMBUS?)

    If you're using your DVD for RAM, I'd hate to see what you're using for swap...


  • Ah, okay, I understand now. Thanks!

  • FreeBSD has been available on DVD for _quite_ some time. Specifically, it has been available since at least 2.2.6 (circa 1997/8). I know this because FreeBSD was the first ever (FREE) *NIX distro I ever bought, and I knew jack about UNIX at the time, so I also bought Greg Lehey's excellent "The Complete FreeBSD" along with it.

    And right there it the back of the book is a rip-out order form for FreeBSD on DVD. Granted, it was $100 at the time (the four-CD distro was only $40), but it was still available.

    It's taken /. _quite_ a long time to cover this story :)

  • fucking clever? Who is Clever?

    He/She is right, tho. I was just going for karma.
    AND, it worked!!!!

  • Straight to DVD (Score:3)

    by blazerw11 ( 68928 ) <blazerw@b i g f o o t .com> on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:19AM (#119052) Homepage
    Straight to DVD, that's a bummer. I would have loved to see it in the theaters!

  • It's a subscription-only service, and you'll be provided a binder with a little documentation with each (roughly quarterly) DVD. So, if worse comes to worse and you lose one, you either have the last one, or you just have to wait a maximum of three months for the next!
    ---
  • The "registering" is submitting your name to be notified once they start selling the subscription service, so to my knowledge, the price isn't yet announced.
    ---

  • Ah, but with MSDN you have the right to legally use the software you receive for purposes of development only, plus I have a feeling that the FreeBSD subscription is going to be somewhat cheaper than an MSDN subscription.

  • SuSE has been available on DVD since version 7.0, nearly a year ago.

    --

  • I don't believe that's entirely accurate.

    Preorders for a FreeBSD distro on DVD were solicited at one point, but according to the FreeBSD mailing lists I have seen, no one actually took them up on it, so it was not done.

    The problem was that they were charging 3 times the going rate without any particular proposed added value (the fact that you didn't have to swap the CDs wasn't worth triple the money).

    I believe, now, that this is being addressed either by reducing the price or adding value. I am not exactly sure which. But if they're not doing either of these, then they're not any more likely to succeed as the last time it was tried, IMHO.

  • (for both the consumer and business) and the FreeBSD service changes into that one?

    Then, duh, everyone goes back to buy CDs from whoever, or downloading ISOs off the net. Or buying DVDs from someone else. Unless you're actually suggesting that FreeBSD might become closed source. Which wouldn't make any sense. Especially because this company doesn't have any special rights to FreeBSD (AFAIK).

  • legal DVD playback works fine (assuming you have an unencrypted disk). However, what sucks is that there is no UDF support. Xine takes car of this and access the raw device and provides its own UDF support. You just cant mount them :(
  • I'll answer this. I actually was wondering if OpendBSD had a subscription model because I'd like to give them the $ on a regular basis without the half hour hike to the store (yes, I'm lazy. So sue me). If anyone knows that they do, please point me to the link because I couldn't find it

    Anyway: MS has a nasty habit of making changes to the OS that I don't particularly care for or want but it makes it shiny and happy for grandma and grandpa "I don't know how to use a computer". BSD and linux tend to add good functionality to their new releases for a resonable price. Do I want the latest kernel? Yup. The latest security fixes? Yup (that's even why I use WindowsUpdate frequently). Do I want to pay a couple hundred dollars to upgrade Win98 to win2K (not really a fair comparison I know) or XP? No. Win98 sucks but I keep it running for games becuase it works. I don't want/need the functionality that MS tries to shove down my throat by its subscription model. I'll rip my mp3s at whatever bitrate I want, thankyouverymuch

    psxndc

  • Except of course that random access isnt supported - DVD being a linear device type thing with seek times like any other. Read/write is another thing.

  • a good route for linux to go. With the massive amounts of data that a DVD can hold, you can present a typical desktop user with one single 'cd' they just pop in their drive, and give them a whole linux distro, a X desktop suite of your choice (gnome or whatever, not trying to start a religious war), and a full suite of applications (staroffice, mozilla, etc etc.).
    They can take it for a spin as long or as little as they like, and if they want to, install it on next boot. Keep their settings and everything in a UMSDOS (sp?) partition or something, or some sort of big fat file that sits on their windows drive....
    i really should keep these ideas to myself...

    Check out www.demolinux.com for a distro that does just what you are saying...too bad it hasn't been updated in over a year.

    mr.

  • This kicks ass! (Score:3)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:57AM (#119064)
    I've been wondering why, with the increasing ubiquity of dvd drives, people don't start putting software on DVD. Hell, I think it'd be a brilliant way of encouraging people to buy the commercial version of Linux distros. Don't want to burn 4 cds? (okay, right now most distros are at 3, but the 4th can't be far behind) Buy one DVD! Sure, they'll provide DVD images for download, but not many people have DVD burners. I'd love to be able to hit the install button, walk away, and not have to come back to change CD's midway through.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
  • SuSE 7.2 comes on 7 CD's, and includes 1 DVD, which can be used instead of the CDs.

    --
  • using only my DVD remote control.


    .... yes, that was a joke.

  • Re:why FreeBSD? (Score:3)

    by jbarnett ( 127033 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @07:13PM (#119067) Homepage

    *sigh* this is probably a troll, but...

    My facts are not completly right on this, but closer than the post above. Correct any details I get wrong.

    BSD was "born" from AT&T's Unix (forget which version). After a messy legal battle, BSD 4.2 was released into public domain.

    FreeBSD and NetBSD both where orginally built from this code. Some time after that OpenBSD split off the NetBSD code base due to political differances.

    They are all orgianlly from the same place, but years of hacking on each makes them a little differant. Although they should support binaries (in emualation) from the others quite easly. Compiling user land apps from one *BSD to another should also be fairly easy. I do not have information about kernel land stuff/drivers at this time.

    FreeBSD goals are to create a Free mainstream Unix that is optimised for the x86 proc (support for alpha also though).

    NetBSD goals are to be portable as possiable. They run on more archs than almost any other OS out there. IIRC they are number #1 in number of archs they will run on (if they are not #1, they are very very close to being).

    OpenBSD goals are to be #1 in security (if not already) for unix/unix-like systems.

    It is pretty amazing that 2 out of 3 BSD's hold "number 1" spots (or very close to number 1 spots). I bet FreeBSD has a "#1" spot, but can think of it now :)

    They all have BSD or like licenses.

    Also:
    Quake will run on FreeBSD (x86) with Linux emulation support compiled into the kernel (if not in the generic kernel).

    BSD networking (sockets) is concerned "standard". (Since a standard was never defined). *BSD use this of course, as also Linux and Win32 (possiably solaris, etc). When I say "standard", I don't mean an offical standard, but a standard though it being so popular (in differant degrees) on numerous other platforms.

    If you are intresting in Unix any way, it worth you time to checkout and play with all 3 BSD atleast a couple times. They are all really well done and all differant goals which makes for a lot of playing you can do. ;) They all are very clean systems that pay attenation to detail.

    If you just want to see how a REAL OS works, check out any 3 of the *BSD and you will see clearly ;) All 3 BSD flavors are extermely strong and well done Unix systems.

    I hope I didn't feed a troll. :/


  • Having a fully functional system on a disk is extremely handy. I've been using DemoLinux [demolinux.org] for a while, and having a reasonably full linux system on a bootable CDROM has been darn handy on a number of occasions.

    It would be nice to have a DVD version - it would be nice to have the space to install more applications - but on the other hand, there are a lot more systems out today that can boot from a standard CD than from a DVD.
  • Looking at the site, it doesn't say anything about being bootable that I could quickly find. Did the original poster mean bootable as a system, ala DemoLinux [demolinux.org], or bootable for installation?

    If bootable as a system, that would be something worth checking out!

  • Re:*BSD is dying (Score:3)

    by Ziest ( 143204 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @01:02PM (#119070) Homepage
    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Once again this loser posts this crap. *BSD is not dead. I run the BSD Counter Page [bsdcounter.org]. By our count we currently have 43,028 verified FreeBSD users. This page is not very well advertised and is in the process of being revamped. All you *BSD users out there come and register on this site and fuck this loser.

  • Which 7.1 has it?

    It is the "Professional Server" package... and yes, there is nothing (that I can find) on the RedHat site about the DVD being in the box... I was suprised to find it there myself. It pretty much contains everything that's on the individual CDs.

  • Re:Been waiting for Linux Dist to Do this... (Score:3)

    by stu_coates ( 156061 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @12:43PM (#119072)
    RedHat have done this with RH7.1... you get the DVD in the box with the regular CDs. The DVD contains:
    • RH Linux 7.1 Binary CD 1 & 2
    • Source Code
    • EMEA Documentation CD
    • Server Application CD
    • Workstation Applications CD
    • PowerTools
    • StarOffice
    • DMA
    ...and it's bootable. The install on my Vaio went like a dream.

  • Yes All of those fetures will be avalible along with:

    Documentation subtitles
    Stunning menus (themes.org [themes.org])
    Boot with the original aspect ratio!
    scene selections (install/reinstall/compiling the kernel/...)
    The alternate ending (NetBSD?)
    Retouched Technicolor (Amber terminals never looked so bright)
    A special introduction by Ken Thompson
    The Open Source Boxed set edition (including FreeBSD Debian and RedHat with bonus SuSe)
    And, in addition to the Developers commentary channel, the Users commentary channel
    and act now and you'll recive a beasty plush toy!

    all this for a total of 145 min of FreeBSD fun

  • Ummmm why bother explaining all the other things you have when all that needs to be said is cost:

    Microsoft: 50+ for a FORCED copy of the said software
    FreeBSD: 0+ you can download it for free

    hence one reason Linux sells... it doesn't... no cost.

  • Noone OWNS FreeBSD... and Benchmarking tests never proove anything (why because I say so... and becuase they never seem to reflect anything specific... they come back however you want them to)... it looks like this guy just cuts and pastes the same post on every BSD article... get a life you AC, if BSD is dead then go flame elsewhere and leave my Distro alone... or suffer the wrath of the burning hells (which I might add BSD owns... or at least the logo would lead us to believe that)... nuff said
  • Isn't the open-source OS distribution virtually a subscription? What I mean is you definitely will be able to upgrade to the latest version of the OS you are using. There are several channels, some of which are free (downloading over the Internet) and some you have to pay (CD or in the future, DVD). I also believe that the FreeBSD folks have been doing subscription for quite a while (i.e. you subscribe and will receive updates in CD form during the period of your subscription). The difference with Microsoft's model is the options available, and the forcing issue, as another reader pointed out. What Microsoft will do basically, is give you no option but to upgrade your copy of software, regardless of whether you need it or not, and you pay for that through the subscription.
  • Nah, forget about the DVD. A suggestion to sell more of your distribution? Put it on CD-RW. It's about the same price anyways for those virgin CDs. So, when the life span of those softwares is over, we can re-use the CD too.

    I have two piles of software CDs, from the floor to the ceiling, not counting the few boxen of MSDN. And I can't recycle those CDs, what a shame.

  • suse linux used to (may still) ship their 6 cd distro on a single dvd. i thought it was cool back then.

    .brad
    Drink more tea
    organicgreenteas.com [organicgreenteas.com]
  • ...but it doesn't tell us how much these "subscriptions" will cost. anyone know?

    .brad
    Drink more tea
    organicgreenteas.com [organicgreenteas.com]
  • That when the word subscription is mentiond with another company, with 9 letters, begining with M, most of /. bitches quite furiously.
    Why is it that this would be different than "forced upgrading"? I don't get why this is being hailed, while MS subscriptions get shit on every time they are announced on /.
    Can someone explain?

    The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit:
    Pissing off coffee drinking /.'ers since Spring 2001.

  • It's a different kind of subscription model genius.

    This is more akin to the MSDN subscription model. You sign up and they send you the software periodically. Once you receive the software, it's yours.

    MS's latest model however, is you sign up, and they let you use the software. And, I don't think I've seen anybody call it an unfair business practice, just a stupid business practice and one not many people are going to be comfortable with.

  • You are correct, "Sound of Silence".

    However, its "Spirit of Radio", no "the".

  • I can get "Battlefield Earth" on DVD too.

    :)

  • What else does it come with... (Score:4)

    by Ian Wolf ( 171633 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:06AM (#119084) Homepage
    "Devil's Advocate"?
  • Because subscription DVD will not be the only way to get FreeBSD, MS is in the process of moving to a subscription only system. You can still legally download FreeBSD, I can't say the same about windows.

    -Compenguin
  • This is exactly what SuSE as been doing... for more then a year.. Whats all the fuzz about ?

    Sure its a good thing... but its not really new.

  • Ok If I had moderator right now I would mod you up just for the kickass Rush reference!
    We believe in the power of Email, NMS gone but not totally forgotten.
  • DUH! NO Shit Sherlock
  • Geosync, that worked at Systemsoft once upon a time?
  • BSD Licence Dumbass
  • Actually in order to be a Rush reference it would have to say "The words of the PROFITS", which is what it actually was in "Spirit of the Radio". "The words of the Prophets are written on the subway walls" was from a 60s song, Simon and Garfunkle I think.
  • Does this include the live image, or just the installer? There's certainly plenty of room on a DVD for a live image...
  • Finally a good resource that I can store in one place. And if I loose it it is gone forever. Hundreds of IBM CDs eventually turn up, a single one won't. But nevertheless, congratulations to put more than the minimal stuff on a distribution and I am sure it will be a success out there.
  • Eh... it's repeat.
  • actually, DVD stands for nothing [faqs.org].
  • This is probably an amusing fake. Note how the author of this post is also anonymous. Further:

    A) The BSD is dying posts don't really discredit anything but the authors anyhow.

    B) I've seen some of the posts that weren't anonymous

  • SuSE [suse.com] has been doing this for some time now...

    --
  • BSD on DVD...and yet...you can't get DVD on BSD. (legally...)

  • FreeBSD distributes all of its versions. M$ doesn't. Try going to M$ and saying you want DOS 5.0. Watch them laugh. :)

    I run FreeBSD 3.4 on two machines here. It's not the latest release. So what? I still got it from them, no problem.

  • FreeBSD's not the only BSD. It's best to consider FreeBSD as being a part of the *BSD tree, which consists of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.

    NetBSD is sorta like Linux, in that there are an ungodly number of ports of it. Its kernel was designed for portability, and it probably is running on a toaster somewhere. :)

    OpenBSD is a security fanatic's port of FreeBSD. I'm not sure of the details of the story, but it's mostly used as a firewall.

    FreeBSD has less software specifically designed for it than Linux. However, it's a *BSD kernel, which Linux isn't, so that means that it runs a lot of mainstream Unix applications that require tweaking for Linux. This is particularly significant in the area of networking. However, Quake won't run on FreeBSD. :)

    I don't know too much about the technical insides of Linux, so I can't comment. FreeBSD has an intensely customizable kernel, however. Normally, all devices are directly supported by the kernel, and you recompile the kernel to remove the devices you don't need. This gives you some pretty amazing memory efficiencies.

    I like /stand/sysinstall a lot too. Okay, I learned to hack in the eighties. sue me. :) But I find it an elegant interface.

    However, if you have a broadband connection, get a $100 machine and download the FreeBSD installer. all you need is a machine with ethernet-based FTP access, and a couple floppies. Check it out. OK, or PPP if you don't mind leaving it overnight. :)

  • What are you watching? (Score:4)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:08AM (#119101) Homepage Journal
    "A movie, I think it's called 'cron'."
    "Interesting special effects."

    --
    All your .sig are belong to us!

  • Let's hope people start adopting DVDs for data storage like this. I remember back in 1997 I was building a new computer and wondering if I should get a CD-ROM drive or wait for DVD-ROM drives to come out. I was worried I wouldn't be able to read data discs. Ha! Four years later, I finally have a DVD-ROM drive, but all I use it for is watching movies - and I don't even do that much, because my roommate has a nice TV and DVD player.

    I've only heard of a few software titles that are released on DVD. And I don't even know what they are.

    CDs stored more than my hard drive not too long ago. Even DVDs today are small in comparison, but we need to start using them. Otherwise, I sure wasted money on that drive.

  • Only installable if you agree to the click though banner saying...

    "If I represent the MPAA in any legal capacity, I shall now be required to distribute the source for CSS and all keys under the BSD license."

    Otherwise... CSS encoded.

  • Re:Cost? (Score:4)

    by Darth RadaR ( 221648 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:19AM (#119104) Journal
    Though it might change, the current subscription price is US$25 [daemonnews.org] per release according to Daemonnews.org [daemonnews.org].

    BSD subscriptions in a nutshell: They send you the DVD or CDs when the latest version is released and bill you instead of having to order it every time there's a new release.

    Since it's cheaper to ship 1 DVD as opposed to 10 or so CDs, I can't imagine it getting any more expensive.

  • This gave me an interesting idea. On the subject of porting BSD to everything but the kitchen sink, would it be possible to port an OS to the interactive portion of DVD-Video, or is the processor non-standard, and the computational part of the player only accessable from a high level language?

    just a thought...
    twb

  • well looks like we gotta find some legal use for all our DVD drives!

  • this could be... (Score:3)

    by xtermz ( 234073 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @11:06AM (#119107) Homepage Journal
    a good route for linux to go. With the massive amounts of data that a DVD can hold, you can present a typical desktop user with one single 'cd' they just pop in their drive, and give them a whole linux distro, a X desktop suite of your choice (gnome or whatever, not trying to start a religious war), and a full suite of applications (staroffice, mozilla, etc etc.).

    They can take it for a spin as long or as little as they like, and if they want to, install it on next boot. Keep their settings and everything in a UMSDOS (sp?) partition or something, or some sort of big fat file that sits on their windows drive....

    i really should keep these ideas to myself...

    "Pussy: You spend 9 months trying to get out of it, and the rest of your life trying to get back in..."
  • I fell in love with FreeBSD when I had to learn it for my job. I was using linux at home and kept on mainly for convenience sake, because a respectable install came with most of the day to day stuff that make it a reasonable desktop. I relied heavily at work on the ports collection to make it a machine that I truly enjoyed to use for all things. Which was not a big inconvenience as I am blessed with a firehose for an internet connection at work. However at home, back when I had a plain old dial up, I was not willing to try and download that much via a standard dial up. When I was blessed with dsl the first thing that I did was get FreeBSD up and running.

    Having said this however, if I still had a modem, I would buy their subscription service.

    Yes, I am aware that the standard subscription service has some of this stuff available, but at the time did not consider it a viable option. This set does seem to be a little more promising if they fulfill all of their claims.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • FreeBSD in full Digital Dolby Surround Sound with THX!!!!!!!!!

  • It does stand for Digital Versatile Disc.
    Art At Home [artathome.org]
  • you just saw that episode of M*A*S*H, didn't you...

    and, really, the "offending" post really wasn't all that unfunny. perhaps you need a fresh outlook on life.

  • As a long time FreeBSD subscriber ala Walnut Creek, its good to note another distribution option given Windrivers really lackluster "assurances" that they are going to continue to support it.

    I just haven't seen anything in the PR from them that gives me any kind of "warm fuzzy"

  • Yep, still do. In fact, now you don't have to choose between the DVD and the CD-Rom distros, they're both packaged together, at least in the Professional version of the distro.
  • I was getting excited about the prospect of a real hacker movie. Even if it was straight to video...
  • You sign up and they send you the software periodically. Once you receive the software, it's yours.

    Not hardly. The software belongs to the whole GNU universe.

    Oh, and BTW, they were selling 'Subscriptions' to Yggdrasil 'Plug and Play Linux' (they called it LGX in the first release) back as early as 1993. I remember that at the time you could even order a copy of Yggdrasil Linux bundled with a Mitsumi 1x CD-ROM drive, at what was an almost attractive price at the time (a few hundred bucks).
  • Okay. The sofware belongs to the Whole ____ Universe.

  • FreeBSD + Broadband != Need for DVD Distro (Score:3)

    by Helevius ( 456392 ) on Friday June 29, 2001 @07:20PM (#119123) Homepage
    While I won't argue strongly against pro-FreeBSD developments, I don't think FreeBSD and DVDs make a lot of sense. I like to install the base OS, then immediately update the ports tree with the latest and greatest via cable modem.

    I don't see the point of dropping a lot of soon-to-be-dated software on a whopping DVD-ROM, when broadband offers access to the latest and greatest. I'm a big fan of the ports system, since it will go to the Internet to resolve dependencies while compiling a new app. I installed the entire Gnome 1.4 distro from scratch this way.

    Helevius

  • Since Mandrake/RH have expanded to multiple CDs, I've been waiting for one of them to start making the distribution available on DVD.

    This would actually provide some value over just downloading and burning the CDs, you wouldn't have to switch CDs in the middle, and could probably put a few more things on it since the current distributions almost completely fill the two CDs, and they are cutting things to avoid overflowing to a 3rd CD. I would consider purchasing a single DVD instead of downloading, if the price was right...

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