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Yggdrasil ships Linux Open Source DVD 102

Posted by CmdrTaco from the all-the-code-you-can-eat dept.
JWhitlock writes " ZDNet reports that Yggdrasil Computing has released a Linux DVD Archive. It's a DVD9-ROM with the FTP archives of Metalab.org and GNU.org. It's all freeware source, no binaries, 8.3GB compressed, over 23 GB uncompressed. It has no distributions on it, so you have to have Linux first. From the website: "...you must be running Linux kernel 2.2.14, 2.3.28 or later in order to access files located more than four gigabytes into the DVD. Aside from that, your standard CD-ROM and iso9660 ("isofs") filesystem support that you use for accessing CD's will be sufficient to access this DVD. " You can only get it direct from their website" Remember the old infomagic set? That thing blew me away thinking "A whole gig!", but thats nothing compared to this stuff.
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Yggdrasil ships Linux Open Source DVD More

Yggdrasil ships Linux Open Source DVD

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  • I can't wait to rip this with DeCSS.. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:21AM (#765736)
    Oh wait. Never mind.
  • What would that have been like 10 regular CD's ? Talk about a nice compact copy of a lot of code..

  • Dirty words (Score:5)

    by SClitheroe ( 132403 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:21AM (#765738) Homepage
    Now we can finally figure out how many dirty words are in the majority of Open Source software... I wonder how long it'll take to grep 23 gigs :)

  • CD-ROM (Score:2)

    by QuMa ( 19440 )
    Your standard CD-ROM? Wouldn't you need a DVD drive?

  • It also includes DVD-mastering software (Score:4)

    by ethereal ( 13958 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:25AM (#765740) Journal

    The really neat thing seems to be that Yggdrasil is also releasing the software they used to create the DVD to the community, according to the press release. They compare it to the past release of mkisofs and cdwrite that led to the move of Linux distros onto CDs; can anybody who remembers back that far comment? Was it really impossible to burn DVDs under Linux prior to this?

  • Don't know, but I have an Infomagic collection from end 1996 that contains 6 CD's, or about 4 Gigabytes. And that's talking back in 1996! When kernel 2.0 was just out.

    Aah, back then it also ran with 4 MB RAM, which can't be said of most distro's nowadays (not that I blame them :)
  • Yggdrasil Computing... holy crap. I thought those guys were out of buisness long ago. Their web pages hadn't been updated in what seemed like years. Anyone know what they've been doing (other than the DVD archive) since their last dist. release?
  • The blurb also says Yggdrasil is releasing the software they used to master the DVD.. How would such a beast differ from mkisofs+cdwrite/cdrecord?
  • Sure, I think they meant software-wise.
  • Wow. I thought they had died off years ago. I see they are selling the few remaining copies of their 1995 Plug-and-play Linux. It looks like they have given up on the OS side of linux and are concentrating on the software and code side. It is cool that they are still hanging around and it will be interesting to see what they do from here.
  • Two sets of Infomagic CD's, March 1995 - 4 CD's and November 1995 - 5 CD's.

    I have to keep them, because it's the only place left to find "Abuse" since crack.com went the way of the bit-bucket.

    Best Linux Game EVER!! I wonder how useful this DVD could be! ;-)

  • ghost site (Score:3)

    by banky ( 9941 ) <gregg@neur[ ]shing.com ['oba' in gap]> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:29AM (#765747) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me, or is their site a candidate for entry to Ghost Sites? I mean, they have their 1995 distro on display, without a touch of irony. Maybe I am missing something...

  • Included items. (Score:4)

    by len(*jameson); ( 202702 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:31AM (#765748)
    From the CD contents:

    2 GB of hello kitty trash can icons.
    A 3.8 GB collection from the "best of swap space 1998" awards.
    11 GB of lazer sounds.
    1.2 GB of the most realistic surround sound fart ever recorded.
    120k text file explaining why you should get a high speed internet connection so that this shit isn't out of date as soon as you put the disc in your drive.

  • Yggdrasil (Score:2)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    Now that's a blast from the past. They had one of the earliest, if not *the* earliest, commercial distributions of Linux.

    Their claim to fame was their live filesystem. You could mount the CD as the basis for a full Linux system. Add a bit of actual disk space for tmp and home, and you were in business.
  • Well I am all for DVD but I have many machines that aren't equiped to deal with DVD do they have CDs for these?

  • Re:It also includes DVD-mastering software (Score:5)

    by mvw ( 2916 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:40AM (#765751) Journal
    Was it really impossible to burn DVDs under Linux prior to this?

    It might depend on the access method. What we have here is a giant ISO 9660 file system (the format common CD-ROMs use) to access the DVD. This seems indeed not to have been possible due to a kernel limitation in Linux.

    They describe the making of the DVD here [yggdrasil.com], the really interesting link BTW.

    The natural format for such a large optical disc would be UDF of course. I am not sure if this is also on that DVD (or if dual ISO 9660 / UDF discs are possible at all).

  • they havent include sourceforges stuff which is a LOT. metalab and gnu dont have everything. it would be kewl to have a DVD pack with metalab+gnu+sourceforge+freshmeat.
  • If someone released such a beast, I'd rip two nipple sized holes in my shirt from the excitement.
  • Writable DVDs are single layer- meaning only 4 Gb.

    Production DVDs are double layer and the pressing houses want the data fed to them in a just-so format on a DLT. What Yggdrasil has done is make a program to master that tape for you without needing a Windows box and expensive commercial software. For a DVD writer, I suspect that the traditional tools work just fine.

  • Okay, here's the question... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    WTF this is good for ?
    I can leech any source I want from
    metalab any time.
    Why would I need 20 gigs of source most of
    which I will never use.

    ( yes I didn't think too much before posting, but hey, this is slashdot, why would I )
  • This DVD better be a weekly subscription or i'm going to have a backup of ever out of date software.

    Open Source moves faster then anything out there. Getting a copy of win98 might last you 4 years, a copy of Gnome is only good for about 4 weeks.

    -Jon
  • 1)Maybe because many new computers come with DVD's 2)Many people still dual boot and use their DVD player 3)Many people buy DVD players in anticipation they can use them at some point and are cheap enough to justify this. 4)because they want to...... Anything else ?

  • There's a little misunderstanding... (Score:4)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @09:51AM (#765758) Homepage
    You're talking about mastering and burning a DVD recordable disk. Those are single layer affairs and can only hold 4Gb- end of story. This is a production double layer disk produced by a pressing house. The pressing houses only accept DLTs with a special formatting of the data- previously, you needed expensive, proprietary applications (that ran on Windows, for the most part, from what I understand) to master the tape for pressing. The Yggdrasil app does the tape mastering for you.
  • The problem with Freshmeat and Sourceforge is that They're not Archives. Freshmeat especially. It's just a gateway site, pointing to other archives. Sourceforge isn't an archive, because of the organization.

    All in all, tho, I'm going to buy that DVD, even if it DOES mean buying a dvd-rom. ;)

  • Man, those were the days - they even had the first bootable CD-ROM's, so you could try Linux out without having to screw up your PC's hard disk ...

    My first distro was Yggdrasil's first public Linux release - still got it, too! Damned good days...

    I should boot it up on my 700mhz PC now, see just how usable it is with a processor that's about 200x faster than the old 486 I used to use ...

  • Posted by polar_bear:

    The first Linux book that I bought was Yggdrasil's Linux Bible - I'm glad to see Yggdrasil back on the map.
  • Yggdrasil is back again and fills the whole that SuSE opened by stopping to sell their Linux Snapshot CDs.
  • Wow. Yggdrasil is back, after a long hiatus of apparent inactivity.

    By the way, if you look carefully at the DVD page, [yggdrasil.com] you'll see that there is actually a way to get the DVD "for free," assuming that either:

    • You are a longsuffering Plug'n'Pray subscriber who has been waiting for five years for the next release, or
    • You are the author of some of the software sitting on the DVD.

    (Does anyone else remember the bad old days when, rather than the relatively modern thing of arguing about whether Slackware was about to set up horrendous and rapacious licensing, or the newbie thing of arguing over the same thing for Red Hat, that the flame wars were over the peculiar way Yggdrasil had created for pulling programs automagically off CD on demand so that you'd only have the stuff you actually used on your hard drive? Boy, there were flame wars back then...)

  • As of SuSE 6.4, I know it's still included in the commercial section of their distribution. So you can always pick it up that way. I imagine "Abuse" is around somewhere.

    In fact it looks like Debian [debian.org] has a page for it. [debian.org]
  • As cool as this is, it has a pretty limited use. With a few well-publicized exceptions like the linux kernel, you'll still want to check the sites for new releases rather than pulling them straight off your (possibly outdated) DVD. Of course, it will help for hugeass files that you don't want to pull over a slow connection.

    Too bad it's not bootable, or this would be the ultimate rescue disk.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • DVD drives are only about a hundred bucks. (Score:3)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:01AM (#765766) Homepage
    I saw a stack of 10X DVD drives at CompUSA a few days ago for about that. It also works as some ridiculous multiplier CD drive, too. Heck, they might even be cheaper than that (I got one on sale for about $110 nearly a year ago.)

    Go get one.

    You don't have to run MPAA movie DVDs on the thing if you don't want to. (Er, actually you can't very easily, can you?) But you can then access all the stuff that's becoming availale on DVD-ROM, like this Yggdrasil basket of goodies, or SuSE's now-up-to-6-or-7-CDs-or-1-DVD distro. (And maybe even stuff like Brittanica's DVD encyclopedia if it doesn't require some wierd proprietary Windows-only reader software.)

    (Now, if only the price of DVD writers (and blanks) would come down so that I can afford to back up all those gigabytes of cheap hard drive I have.)

    No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
    It ain't ME you're looking for.
  • I for one changed over from WinBlowze to Linux and happen to have a DVD player in my box. Also, many people do actually dual boot or have someone on their network that has a DVD player, so I for one am glad that SOMEONE is using this format in Linux. Not that I see a lot of Windows uses for DVD besides movies yet, but I think its great that we start using this tech.

    I for one do not find this irrelevant and just because it contains certain keywords does not make it unworthy.

    As for the comments about CmdrTaco..... you can keep him, I'm not a big fan either.
  • I read several places that you could either get suse as 6 cds or a dvd.
    Does anyone know how they made it (pay a company or made it themselves?)

  • Re:CD-ROM (Score:2)

    by nd ( 20186 )
    Who moderated this as interesting?

    Re-read what it said:

    your standard CD-ROM and iso9660 ("isofs") filesystem support that you use for accessing CD's will be sufficient to access this DVD

    The DVD uses the ISO9660 file system, which is commonly used on CDs. There's no reason (to my knowledge) why you can't use iso9660 on DVDs (then again, there's that UFS thing or whatever, but i don't know much about that)
  • Only when you're using arcahic distribution systems.

    People out there who aren't yet using either CVS or CVSup or CTM or even rsync, you're missing out.

    The Linux kernel is an example of a popular project that is using very old technology for distribution.

  • Re:DVD drives are only about a hundred bucks. (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:13AM (#765771)
    The MPAA gets $15 for every CSS enabled DVD drive sold, you are indirectly funding the MPAA's DVD lawsuits.
  • That would be much cheaper and better for many of my machines around here.
  • You should re-read what it said. I don't know of any reason why iso9660 can't be used on a DVD, but I do at least know why you can't read a DVD on a standard CD-ROM

    HH
  • There is a reason why Yggdrasil's Linux distro has failed.

    Anyone who tried to pronounce "Yggdrasil" chocked to death.
  • That name just rolls right off the tongue. Catchy and easy to remember - both very good for company names - and to think those bastards in California gave them a hard time about that. Good thing I'm part Norweigian to fully appriciate it - lord knows that you only want your name to make sense to about 4% of the people visiting you site... less is better, but not everyone is perfect.
    ---------------------------------------- ----------
  • I was part-shopping for a new machine, and found a Creative Labs 6X on pricewatch for $67. Unfortunately, I think that DVD hardware makers are still required to pay the DVD-CCA. Which sucks. The best way to go (and the way I chose) was to hit ebay, and buy a used DVD drive that is old enough to not have the new RPC-2 region controls in it. (check out www.dvdutils.com for a list of which drive models are region free) With a used model, none of your money will go to support more lawsuits to kill your fair-use rights.

    I spent less than $50, got a DVD-ROM, and didn't pay "the man" a cent. Sounds good to me!
  • The sentence is a bit difficult to parse... read it as: "your standard (CD-ROM and iso9660 filesystem) support"... In other words, you only need the standard CD-ROM kernel options.
  • >Of course, it will help for hugeass files that
    >you don't want to pull over a slow connection.

    Precisely; this is great for those folks who want/need the source, don't particularly care if it's *the* latest & greatest, and don't mind downloading much smaller patches over said small connection.

    I like places like cheap*bytes for this reason; I can, if I'm way behind on something, get a CD with the source I want and just run a couple of (hopefully small) patches. But that's just me. :^)
  • wow...news from 1995. woohoo!!!. were these guys in frozen storage for a couple of years?

    "sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."

  • Obligatory rewrite of troll's post: (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:31AM (#765780)
    my opinion is the only one that matters i mean i dont care so why should anyone else i install everything by rpm and downloading patch and installing patches is for nerds and besides ive got adsl so who cares about the poor fuckers with the slow modem connections that might possibly want the source code all i know is that i dont want it so no one else could possibly want it either by the way im 13.
  • How would a bootable disk with no Linux distributions and no binaries be the 'ultimate rescue disk'?

    HH

  • SuSE has their professional [suse.com] version (7.0), at newly updated RH like prices, available with 6 CDs & the contents of the CDs on one DVD.

    They have personal [suse.com] edition available as well, for what used to be the pr ice [digitalriver.com] as the whole thing.

    Lastly they have an update [suse.com] version which will save you a couple bucks but you lose the manuals.

    A comparison [suse.com] is here.

  • CmdrTaco, with all due respect to you position at Slashdot, your choice to put this article under "News" and not under "Linux" is typical of your posting style. It seems anything that legitimizes Linux in some form or another is NEWS. Quite frankly, it's not. It's no more news than some company releasing a DVD title for Windows (which if you cared about Windows, it would go in the Windows section). Interesting, maybe. News, no.

    It is becoming more and more transparent, your reasoning for putting such Linux related articles in the news section is no more than an agenda of making Linux look good and doing it as publicly as you can in your little space on the web. Slashdot gives users the CHOICE not to see Linux articles, you CmdrTaco, do not.

    Slashdot, may have a bias, that is well known, but there is also a thing called ediquette. It dictates that Linux articles do NOT go in the news section, but in the Linux section. This is so those who for some reason on another, don't want to see every Linux related release can skip over it and read about thier favorite Corporate conspiracy theory, or whatever they are interested in. CmdrTaco, you should respect Slashdot's own posting sections, rather than push your personal agenda.

    Oh yeah, I willing to bet some "moderator" will moderate this DOWN as a troll, just like they did with my last (albiet, not as coherent and well written) post [slashdot.org].

  • DaVinci's Adam with his genitals airbrushed, so as not to offend the parents of young aspiring geeks.

    Thus, it is the first book about UNIX with a picture of one on the cover.

    Axel

  • Re:Dirty words (Score:3)

    by Precision ( 1410 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:41AM (#765785) Homepage
    Accually part of sourceforge is a huge archive of everything that's ever been released on sourceforge, we also mirror about every major open source repository also. You can check it out at download.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
  • Saying it's a "DVD" implies it has the format of a DVD. Which is VERY different from that of the CDROM.
    For instance, a single DVD can be 2-sided and have 2 layers per side. CDROM's aren't made this way, and therefore can't read ANY DVD.

  • Problem with this is I am a Mac user whose LinuxBox is NOTHING more than a toy. I don't find Linux especially usefull, It's just a good way to learn how Unix is put togethor.
  • I agree wholeheartedly. (Wow, nice long post eh) And I do think it will get moderated down.. almost everything that isn't funny, or pushing linux does these days.
  • Yup, Yggrasil was my introduction to Linux. It was the leading edge in "friendly" Linux distros at the time. It's par for the course now, but I remember my jaw hitting the floor when I just stuck the floppy and the cd in my patched-together-odds-'n-ends PC, and it gracefully detected and supported all my hardware. Plug and play indeed.

    I didn't spring for the massive compendium of paper documentation that was sold alongside it though...

  • Because it's cool?
  • I can smell that pun al the way over here...

  • Re:Less than $70, actually.... *BUT* (Score:5)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:55AM (#765792) Homepage
    old enough to not have the new RPC-2 region controls

    Well, there is that. Mine predates those (it was what, anything manufactured after January or February of this year?) but yes, the newer ones will probably have them (or not be able to play DVD movies at all).

    Hmm, now if some off-shore DVD manufacturer were to incorporate, say, DeCSS-derived firmware rather than a CCA-licensed version, they'd save the CCA tax and be able to undercut competition. CCA of course would probably try to get the things halted at the borders, it'd make for an interesting court case.

    No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
    It ain't ME you're looking for.
  • Redmond, 20 september 2000

    Today Microsoft released Windows 2000 Third Millenium Edition (W2K3ME for short). It features all kinds of interesting software, and takes up only 23 Gigabytes of disk space. However, users have complained of suddenly getting filesystems unaccesible to others Micro$oft OSes, and are reporting strange phenomena, such as files called "vmlinuz" and the explorer renamed "Gnome". Microsoft has not yet responded.
  • Damn, I remember when you could get that whole set for $17.95. I still have 6 of their box sets in my closet somewhere. Ah... memories.

    hypo

    i write bad music
    www.distortedsound.com

  • Yggdrasil's DVD is the first dvd-9 (9 gigabyte double layer DVD) with this kind of content. There are some single layer (4.7 GB) DVD's around and SuSe's might be one of them. Those are easier to make.
  • Nobody has made a DVD-9 full of free software before. The mastering software didn't exist. But it does now, and it's free.

  • OT:Backups (Score:3)

    by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <RealityMaster101@gmail. c o m> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @11:05AM (#765797) Homepage Journal

    (Now, if only the price of DVD writers (and blanks) would come down so that I can afford to back up all those gigabytes of cheap hard drive I have.)

    Speaking of backups, I found a great service the other day that's finally allowed me to back up lots of storage. Connected.com [connected.com] allows unlimited online storage ... for only $15/month. I think it's only Windows only, but I upload a tar/gz from my Linux box periodically. It does specifically say that it's not intended to be abused by huge amounts of multimedia content. :)

    It also does a good job of comparing the contents of files, so if you have a database or a mail file, it will only upload the blocks of the file that actually change.

    Highly recommended. My mother-in-law is even using it over a dial-up modem, and it works great.


    --

  • How do I set the SCSI ID on my $100 DVD drive? Oh wait, I can't, the $100 drives are IDE...
  • Heh, I've always wondered about the original region controls on the older models, there's basically a jumper which reads "do not remove or the drive will lock to region of the first disc it reads." Did the MPAA demand that OEMs set the drive region using this, or is it just for crazy masochists who *enjoy* being locked in to such things. Anyways, I got a Pioneer DVD-302 from hitechcafe [hitechcafe.com] for $45 a little while ago. It's only 2.6x DVD, but its Ultra-SCSI and slot load, and it rips damn well and quick. The combination of the unlocked drive (some can be unlocked with new firmare) and cinemaster+dvd genie (here [cjb.net]) allow you complete freedom, at least in windows.
  • Everyone has a memory of their first Linux distro, and its installation.

    Mine was the original Yggdrasil release (and how can you not like a company with a name straight out of the same mythos that spawned Thor, Odin, Asgard, Loki, etc?). It installed reasonably painlessly (had to rebuild the kernel to get the old sound blaster working right, but that was just one of those i/o address things IIRC). It worked *great* after that and the kernel rebuild was a neat experience. Gave me a bulletproof (mostly) multi-tasking OS with support for sound. I even got an earlier X version working on it, though at the time I was a command line maniac. It even read my FAT drives from DOS.

    And the installation was quick and mostly painless, unlike OS/2 2.1, which never could install even with hours of help from IBM in Florida. Unlike Windoze 3.1 which installed but ran like a dead sloth and often blue screened.

    The Yggdrasil distro was good for its time. And their was a gal at their tech support, handle of manx@yggdrasil.com IIRC, who was one of the friendliest, perkiest and most helpful tech support people I ever dealt with.

    Only one time did that distro ever freak me out... when I saw (for the first time, never having heard of one before) the words "kernel panic" come across my screen late one a.m. after doing some rather obnoxious things with some registers I shouldn't have touched. Even this was a valuable learning experience that opened up new doors for me.

    I'm glad to see they aren't dead. As somebody said, compared to these guys, the latecomers that dominate the market today are "newbies".

    ------------------------------------------------ --
    "VIsual editor? *THAT'S* what it stands for? Were they on drugs?"
  • How would a bootable disk with no Linux distributions and no binaries be the 'ultimate rescue disk'?

    I meant to imply that it might boot into something useable, at least a stripped linux distro, an appropriate compiler, and access to the hard drives' file systems.

    Granted, that would introduce platform dependence, but it would still be nice to have.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • I saw a current Infomagic set the other day at Fry's... Looks a lot different - no ELFOS on the cover, different layout, etc. The contents were basically the same type of stuff that was on those older ones - a few distros, archives, etc. I remember that the Infomagic set was the first place I got Linux back in '95.
  • iirc, SLS was the first linux distro. i can't find much about it anymore, but it came on an old (1994-5) infomagic cd set i used to have. slackware was based on SLS.

    [sunsite|metalab].unc.edu [unc.edu] has reference to MCC Linux 2.0+, circa 1996. i recall it also being onr of the earliest distros.
    --
  • Actually, that would be Michelangelo's Adam :)
  • That was my first distro! 1.2.13; took fscking hours to install, 'cause after each (common) reboot in the install process, it would laboriously chug through all my the io offsets looking for the cdrom. Once I got the hint that adding cdrom=hdd to the boot line, life was sweeter.

    fun fun.
  • Ah, 'the good old days':P

    Downloading the A series through a "Free" shell account 1500 miles away. Only to be retrieved by a 1200 baud overnight.

    I took me ~3 weeks to get all the SLS disk sets, and about $300 in phone charges.

    Regardless, I thought it was the best thing ever.

    FREE *NIX AT LASTS

  • CmdrTaco, with all due respect to you position at Slashdot, your choice to put this article under "News" and not under "Linux" is typical of your posting style.
    Er... the software is all in source form. Pop it into your NetBSD box, compile it, and it works. So how is this specific to Linux?

  • So? It's a bit on the trivial side, and not exactly "news" that's relevant to everyone outside of the Linux world. So, I'd say it belongs in the Linux section. To a Linux user it's news.
  • (See? I keep the subjects clean! :) It's half-surprising it's taken this long for a Linux bundle on DVD.. Just remember them crazy Germans at SuSE [suse.com] did it first. (I can't wait to get the 7.0 upgrade; new kernel and more apps on the DVD than on the 6 CD's!) (Guess I need an RPC-I DVD drive now... :) ps: fyi: if you get a new dvd drive, make sure it's rpc-i. rpc-ii drives have the region coding firmwired into the drive itseld, and you can only change region 5 times. (maybe a new zealander can assist The Cause(tm)...)
  • "Er... the software is all in source form. Pop it into your NetBSD box, compile it, and it works. So how is this specific to Linux?"

    to quote the origional post,

    "ZDNet reports that Yggdrasil Computing has released a Linux DVD Archive."

    It belongs in the Linux section.

  • With all due respect to his "position" my ass. slashdot is, and always has been, CmdrTaco's baby. It took me a long time to realize this. slashdot isn't journalism, it's just impressions of some individuals. If the way things are categorized disturbs you, then go to an objective news source. slashdot is not objective, nor does it try to be.
    I personally no longer consider this a bad thing, but slashdot *is* CmdrTaco's "personal agenda" as you put it. It's only by his choice to have other editors that it has become something more.
    You're not necessarily being a troll. Just realize that bitching isn't necessarily the best way to change things, perhaps taking the site a little less seriously would be.
  • Yggdrasil was my first Linux distro from about 4 (5?) years ago. It came with a VHS tape to show you how to get running....I still have it. Its a action packed tape ;-) All in all, that was a pretty kickin distro for the time.
  • When this site became property of a company it no longer was his baby. If you think this is true, then you've never sold part of anything you worked on to anyone else.

    The fact of the matter is, cmdrtaco, is prolly the worse of the editors next to Hemos. they both remind me of Bob Costas.

    ---
    Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...

  • Re:CD-ROM (Score:2)

    by nd ( 20186 )
    Umm, I never said you can read a DVD on a standard CD-ROM.

    I am not wrong, I am not an idiot. It's all in how you interpret the quote I posted.

    Think of it like this:

    "(CD-ROM and iso9660) ("isofs") filesystem support", not (CD-ROM) and (iso9660 filesystem support).

    Not difficult, though I can see how it wouldn't make sense if you interpret it wrong.
  • Oh please, who doesn't know CD-ROMs can't read DVDs? Sheesh, I realize Slashdot isn't as "elite" as it used to be, but that's common sense.

    Read my reply to the previous post. I appreciate your attempt at being helpful/informative (possibly karma whoring), but it's misguided.

    Sorry if this sounded hostile, but I just get so frustrated with Slashdot nowadays.
  • I respect peoples right to make their own esicsions, but don't most of the newer Linux folk simply download packaged binaries [or packged source] thse days?

    Personally, I do. I even keep a text file called `unclean' which lists things that aren't packaged. There's RPMs everywhere [and utils like RPMFind, Helix Update, and autoRPM to help you get them]. While DEBs are a little less popular, most Debian folk I know would prefer to apt-get software than compile it.

    I generally use tarballs in an emergency, of when there's something [typically pre 1.0] I really want that nobodies packaged yet [which hasn't been for eight months].

    Having a database of exactly what's installed on my system makes upgrades and finding packages off the net extremely handy. The pre and post install scripts of nearly all RPMS sort out libraries and other stuff. Security stuff is also much easier when you have a list of what's on your system, anhd can upgrade without breaking something else.

    So why do other people prefer to use tarballed source? The vast majority of newer Linux users don't know C41, and why this isn't necessary to hack a makefile or type `./configure', tarballs are still very complicated. Especially when they don't compile.

    This isn't a troll - its a query.
  • Yig-dra-sil. Not difficult at all.

    They were my favourite distro until they stopped being a distro. Too bad, they always did neat stuff.

  • Pardon my spelling. But nobodies been `innovative' enough to correct dab typing yet.

    I respect peoples right to make their own decisions, but don't most of the newer Linux folk simply download packaged binaries [or packaged
    source] thse days?

    Personally, I do. I even keep a text file called `unclean' which lists things that aren't packaged. There's RPMs everywhere [and utils like RPMFind, Helix Update, and autoRPM to help you get them]. While DEBs are a little less popular, most Debian folk I know would prefer to apt-get software than compile it.

    I generally use tarballs in an emergency, of when there's something [typically pre 1.0] I really want that nobodies packaged yet [which hasn't
    been for eight months].

    Having a database of exactly what's installed on my system makes upgrades and finding packages off the net extremely handy. The pre and post install scripts of nearly all RPMS sort out libraries and other stuff. Security stuff is also much easier when you have a list of what's on your system, and can upgrade without breaking something else.

    So why do other people prefer to use tarballed source? The vast majority of newer Linux users don't know a language, and while this isn't necessary to hack a makefile or type `./configure', tarballs are still very complicated. Especially when they don't compile correctly.

    This isn't a troll - its a query.
  • Yes, SLS was the first distro, but Ygg was the first commercial one I think. It was included with a book or something.

    I never ran Ygg. I started with kernel 0.97pl4 way back, and I think I scratched most of that system together myself. On a 2400 baud modem. Uphill, both ways.
  • Bravo! Exactly what I've been thinking. Perhaps a better solution would be to allow an article to belong to more than one category, that way it could be Linux and News. If I choose to hide one of those categories, it will go away.
  • * The disc isn't patches, its full source.

    * They're marketing this not at hackers / developers, but at Linux users per se. There's an interesting schism developing between those running the OS for quite some time who enjoy the hacking aspect opposed to more recent converts, who prefer `Software that Doesn't suck' and just want a stable, easy to use operating system for their workplace or home. Yes, both contribute - personally, I run and help out at installfests, give talks and be treasurer to my local LUG.

    * The point this raises is that Yggdrasil are looking at Linux as it was in 1995, not now. The reason for the initial interest in Linux is its freeness, the long term rise in poularity comes from its stability, and the increased accessibility of more modern distributions. Red Hat's packaging system [which may not be superiour to debians, but was earlier] accounts for its now massive market share.

    * By the way, kiss my ass :)
  • They've been quietly chugging away, working consulting gigs up until recently. I think they might have thought that their distribution was more work than it was making them money and discontinued the releases except for subscription users.
  • Yggdrasil is still alive and kicking in the old area they used to operate from. (Yeah, I know...)

    Yggdrasil produced a DVD disk of everything on the Linux and GNU software repositories- while you can pull it off of the 'net, and with xDSL and Cable, it's easy to do so, it's nice to have a DVD or CD of a static image for when you've not got a networked situation.

    Yggdrasil handed us an application that allows you to make that magic DLT formatting that a pressing house will only accept to make production DVDs.
  • Yeah, all of you JUST SHUT UP; I am trying to listen to my new DVD on my CD-ROM drive and can't hear anything over all this incessant babbling.
  • Not that I see a lot of Windows uses for DVD besides movies yet,

    Baldur's Gate! Also relevant for people who dual-boot for games. But yeah, there aren't too many.
    ___

  • I didn't use the term "elite" as in 31337, I used it as it was originally meant to.. meaning more exclusive and fewer people. Obviously at this time, the signal to noise ratio was better and the average slashdotter knew more. It's a simple fact, not riding the tendency to believe the past is better.
  • So let me get this straight, everyone should stop producing DVDs of any sort until your demand for a DVD set of all the distributions is fulfilled? Not only that but you want only precompiled binaries? You sound like a windows man to me... don't waste everyones time pretending to dabble in linux.

  • Odd, apache 1.1.1 is in there, but not 1.3.12? mysql-3.20.13-beta.tar.gz? It seems like alot of old stuff... is it just me? am I being blind tonight? I do that sometimes..

  • Ah, yes. I believe I first saw this in Knightmer's .sig:

    <\\swing> and if we're playing old distributions... whatever happened to
    Yggdrasil? :)
    <joost> \\swing: everybody who tried to pronounce it got their tongue in a
    knot and choked
    &nbsp -- #debian


    --Phil (And you should see the source file for my .sig quotes...)
  • The natural format for such a large optical disc would be UDF of course. I am not sure if this is also on that DVD (or if dual ISO 9660 / UDF discs are possible at all).
    I'm not sure about the partiucular DVD in question, but the ISO-9660/UDF combination is very common. The DVD-Video standard requires this exact format (UDF Bridge).
  • (Score: -1, Disagrees with Moderator)

    Umm... correct me if I'm wrong. (And I probably am.)

    If I recall correctly, Andover gave CmdrTaco & Co. full artistic freedom when it comes to /... and that means if Taco wants this story on the front page, Taco gets the story on the front page. If you don't like that policy, don't read it.

    Besides, I like Taco's style. And I like Hemos, and CowboyNeal, and all the other editors we all like to pick on, too. Maybe even JonKatz.

    Lighten up!
  • Ultra SCSI is important because standard SCSI-2 devices knock down the whole chain to 20MB/s Max. This is why all Ultra boards have a non-Ultra connector for legacy devices.

    With an Ultra SCSI DVD drive, the other 13 Ultra160 disks you have can continue to chug away at full speed.
  • SuSE 7.0 is already the third release of SuSE available on DVD. SuSE 6.3 and 6.4 shipped either as "CD Edition" (6 CD-Roms) or "DVD Edition". In SuSE 7.0 only the professional version contains the DVD, but it also includes the CDs (no longer either DVD or CDs). I don't have SuSE 7.0 yet, but tried both the SuSE 6.3 and 6.4 DVD Editions. Both the 6.3 and the 6.4 DVD were single layer DVDs. The advantage of the single layer DVD format is that it can be mastered on DVD-R drives for quality assurance purposes before stamping 1000s of them. Nevertheless the 6.3 DVD had some kind of mastering/manufacturing defect that made it incompatible with some DVD drives (including all DVD-Ram drives based on Matsushita hardware, e.g. Panasonic LF-D100 series and AOpen DVD520S). The 6.4 DVD worked fine in every drive I used. It's definitely more convenient than swapping CDs.

  • No. The pronunciation is:
    ig-dre-sil
    where the `e' in the middle syllable should be a `schwa' that I can't type right now...

    It's the tree of life, a giant ash (æsc) that joins the home of men to the home of the gods.

    KR.

  • If you bother to scan the kernel archives, you'll see a lot of stuff from @yggdrasil.com.

    So, no, they've not been completely in limbo.
    --

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