What is the difference between downloading a 650MB CD ISO, installing, then firing up IPS to download another 1 GIG worth of updates, then another X MB of extra applications; instead of downloading everything you need in one shot?
At the end of the day the total number of bytes transferred is roughly the same. In fact having the DVD ISO *saves* bandwidth if you have multiple machines at your house, no need to download the extra packages for each and every machine. -----Original Message----- From: James Cornell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 6:53 AM To: Abraham Tehrani Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [indiana-discuss] new ISO soon? Abraham Tehrani wrote: > Why are we limiting ourselves to a CD then if we're having so many > issues with bits not being available "out-of-the-box"? Is having a DVD > ISO that large of an issue? Has that limited the usage of SXCE/DE? We > are living in the BITtorrent age where a 1 - 2 GIG download is not that severe. > > _______________________________________________ > indiana-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss > Not exactly good for people with metered connections, like those in Australia, Great Britain, China. US content costs an arm and a leg to transport intercontinentally for international users. Sun is an international company, and must cut costs on distribution. Spinning ISO's alone costs them a good deal, not counting the engineering or the salaries of the developers, and they have to provide massive pipes to keep up with demand, which at the size are still not that reasonably cost effective, even for them. You have to look at the big problem. A FreeBSD model would be better. When I started using FreeBSD in 2003 they did not offer DVD's except at conventions such as SCALE or BSDCan or online at FreeBSD Mall. Sun should offer some sort of cheap automated service to deliver builds. It's a shame they cut SXDE, since Indiana is clearly not ready... if Indiana could be distributed for $5 every 2 builds on a DVD with all legally sanctioned packages allowed to be bundled on media, Sun would recoop for bandwidth costs and distribution costs. In this age the cost to deliver goods exceeds the cost of the product, so not recooping for shipping would be a dumb thing to do. Even pedantic GNU people say it's fine to charge for media, this shouldn't be much different since it is a freely distributed product. There's nothing really saying the public can't copy the DVD version anyway, just distributing it worldwide for no cost or only as a large ISO is not something anyone can swallow. James _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
