On 11/19/04 11:13 AM, "Danny Sauer" wrote:

My time's somewhat valuable, whereas DVD readers are cheap. Personally, I'd prefer to just get a modern DVD drive and stick it in my old, outdated computer that can't play most current DVD movies or read the current format of DVD media, rather than waste all night downloading a bunch of packages...

Get a faster internet service :)

I would propose that SuSE provide a link to froogle.com, which lists a new ATAPI DVD drive (which reads double-layer media) for as low as $19. Yes, $19. Sell your old crappy drive on eBay for $5-$10, since there's a new sucker online ever minute, and you've made back 1/2 of the cost to move to a faster drive. Put the DVD drive in a networked machine, NFS export it, and install everywhere from that one, $10 drive. You'll save more than $10 worth of time.

If your time is _that_ valuable, you would not do all this.

--Danny, also noting that all the packages are available at ftp.suse.com a few weeks after the release...

Another reason for a faster ISP. -- Thanks, George Failure is not an option with Microsoft; it's bundled with the software!

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 12:51, Danny Sauer wrote:

george wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] SuSE 9.2 and future packaging' on Fri, Nov 19 at 10:54:

...

On 11/19/04 11:13 AM, "Danny Sauer" wrote:

...

My time's somewhat valuable, whereas DVD readers are cheap. Personally, I'd prefer to just get a modern DVD drive and stick it in my old, outdated computer that can't play most current DVD movies or read the current format of DVD media, rather than waste all night downloading a bunch of packages...

Get a faster internet service :)

I've got a full T1's worth of bandwidth to my house. It's fast (and a bit of an involved story), but it's still not nearly as fast as a DVD drive. At typical sysadmin salaries, $10 buys about 15 minutes of my time. I'll bet I can swap out an optical drive and copy a few packages off of the DVD more than 15 minutes faster than someone on even a "fast" network connection could download any significant number of packages. So in one session (perhaps "at install time") the new drive pays for itself.

...

...

I would propose that SuSE provide a link to froogle.com, which lists a new ATAPI DVD drive (which reads double-layer media) for as low as $19. Yes, $19. Sell your old crappy drive on eBay for $5-$10, since there's a new sucker online ever minute, and you've made back 1/2 of the cost to move to a faster drive. Put the DVD drive in a networked machine, NFS export it, and install everywhere from that one, $10 drive. You'll save more than $10 worth of time.

If your time is _that_ valuable, you would not do all this.

Really? What's a faster method that would conserve my time better? My time's indeed valuable, so I'd much appreciate tips. It takes maybe 5 minutes to create an ad for an old DVD drive, and it's not much work to order a drive + install it. It's not "all this" much work, considering the signifcant time savings. If money's tight, well, someone who can't swing a $20 drive might want to reconsider spending >$50 on software that's available for free in a few weeks, esp when said person can't even use the paid-for media to begin with.

--Danny, who actually mirrors the ftp site locally and installs from that machine, which trades a bit of initial time investment for an overall time savings

Only thing I get out of George's reply was he likes to be rude and -not- offer anything productive to the list. George, If all you have in a reply is being rude take it elsewhere. It is not appreciated here! -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989 SuSE since 1998 * Only reply to the list please*

I think we've had a good discussion. The underlying point that I wanted to make is that SuSE (or any other vendor for that matter) must make decisons. I've always liked the completeness of the SuSE distro. Essentially, there is so much in a distro today that the DVD is getting packed and the majority of people use the DVDs. But, there are some cases where people muct used the CDs. I think that SuSE's choice to leave packages off the CDs was problematical, but necessary. What I am suggesting is a way that those who buy a boxed set have a means to get those packages that are left off the media. Most of the other distributions have done this for years. I don't know the criteria for what packages get dropped, but I would think that it would be those lower used packages. My point is that SuSE should have provided a way for users to obtain the missing packages at the same time they install from CD rather than wait a month. People can still buy an inexpensive DVD reader. -- Jerry Feldman Partner Technology Access Center (contractor) (PTAC-MA) Hewlett-Packard Co. 550 King Street LKG2a-X2 Littleton, Ma. 01460 (978)506-5243

Why not just include one CD with enough to install a base system, get online, and finish the install if they're requiring someone to download some of the stuff anyway? Doesn't everyone have at least a frac T1 at home by now, even though they may not have a modern DVD drive? ;) --Danny Nope lots of people in the world still use dial up. I guess the only thing that can be done is either people have a choice to order and get a DVD, or the CD's with all the packages on them but not both. Olusola

(Ted Harding) wrote:

Certainly not. The best I have is a 4KB/sec (approx) dialup connection with no prospect of better in the foreseeable future and at that rate downloading even 1 CD of bytes would take over 2 days, continuously connected, with the complication that the connection fails randomly (on average about once/hour). Nor are there any DVD readers here!

As others have said, a great thing about SuSE has been the splendid collection of software you got on the CDs. Once you had that box you could forget any difficulties of connecting to the outside and simply read off the CDs in a very satisfying way. I concur that it is a pity that this situation is changing and some of us in the margins will feel even more marginalised.

Best wishes to all, Ted.

I'm quite jealous. My dialup has been hovering around 800B/s (or less) and my ISP ignores my requests to fix the problem. On top of that, my 9.0 Pro #2 CD is foobar and I'm trying to download rpms that it fails on just so I can install things without waiting over half an hour for stuff to time out. Could anyone make a #2 disk and send it to me? I'm seeing DSL in my near future. Jim

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 13:23, Jerry Feldman wrote:

I think we've had a good discussion. The underlying point that I wanted to make is that SuSE (or any other vendor for that matter) must make decisons. I've always liked the completeness of the SuSE distro. Essentially, there is so much in a distro today that the DVD is getting packed and the majority of people use the DVDs. But, there are some cases where people muct used the CDs. I think that SuSE's choice to leave packages off the CDs was problematical, but necessary. What I am suggesting is a way that those who buy a boxed set have a means to get those packages that are left off the media. Most of the other distributions have done this for years. I don't know the criteria for what packages get dropped, but I would think that it would be those lower used packages. My point is that SuSE should have provided a way for users to obtain the missing packages at the same time they install from CD rather than wait a month. People can still buy an inexpensive DVD reader.

-- Jerry Feldman

I would like to ask if many people actually use the sources DVD as opposed to the number of people that could have used the packages that were left off of the CD's. Why not drop the sources DVD and add a sixth CD in its place instead of dropping packages? Just my $.02 -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989 SuSE since 1998 * Only reply to the list please*

On Monday 22 November 2004 09:10 am, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:

FTP access would be a possible solution but some of the world is not like the US of A with its cheap terabit fibreoptics direct to the home.

I want some of that......

Danny Sauer wrote:

I've got a full T1's worth of bandwidth to my house. It's fast (and a bit of an involved story)

Why a DS1 (proper term for T1)? It's only 1.544 Mb/s. My cable modem runs 5 Mb/s down & 800K up. Many DSLs will also give better performance, than a DS1. --James, who never thought he'd see the day, when a DS1 would be considered "slow".

--Anders, who is moving in a week and is praying nightly that the new place will have a nice connection

what you did not check before you commited to moving. I told my wife that broadband was a requirement in considering a new house. hehehehehe im getting 6m dsl down here at work in couple weeks if it turns out to be that fast. with 416k on upload side. we are only about 5000 feet from the central office. about 6 blocks or so. not able to get dsl at home so have to go with cox cable that has a slow 1m on download side. they want up here in tyler to any faster speeds an they have plenty of room to do so. jack

On Friday 19 November 2004 22:48, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Friday 19 November 2004 22:37, Jack Malone wrote:

...

...

--Anders, who is moving in a week and is praying nightly that the new place will have a nice connection

what you did not check before you commited to moving. I told my wife that broadband was a requirement in considering a new house. hehehehehe

That's been my mantra too. But I'm moving abroad (to the Netherlands) and right now I'm sort of in limbo, I don't know where I'll end up, all that is being handled for me. I guess I'll know more when I get there, but right now all I can do is hope for the best.

The people I've talked to from Holland have had pretty good connections though, so I think it'll be fine

A few minutes ago @Home was at ~350 kbyte/s from ftp.gwdg.de, on quiet nights ~500 kbyte/s, my topspeed was 539 kbyte/s for a few (10?) secs. It ain't a CD in 5 min (700 MB/5 min is about 2.3 MB/s), but more like a CD in half an hour if the mood is right (I'm not sure, haven't done that lately). Cheers, Leen

On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 08:52 +0100, Jon Clausen wrote:

On Fri, 19 Nov, 2004 at 22:48:24 +0100, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

A friend of mine is about to get a second generation type DSL, I don't know the exact details (so far I've only seen the ads for it, not the technical stuff) but I'm told it'll be something like 10 or 12 Mbps downlink.

Sounds very interesting. Any links at all? Even just to some ad?

/Jon -- Just say "know!"

Most likely it's aDSL2. We are testing this at work now. /Dee

On Friday 19 November 2004 11:52 pm, Jon Clausen wrote:

On Fri, 19 Nov, 2004 at 22:48:24 +0100, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

A friend of mine is about to get a second generation type DSL, I don't know the exact details (so far I've only seen the ads for it, not the technical stuff) but I'm told it'll be something like 10 or 12 Mbps downlink.

Sounds very interesting. Any links at all? Even just to some ad?

Check out http://www22.verizon.com/FiosForHome/channels/Fios/HighSpeedInternetForHome.asp?promotion_code=&variant= Or just search for Verizon FIOS in google. I have heard that it is optical fiber based technolgy and of course, not available everywhere. I have also heard that it's installation is running into many issues with the other underground infrastructure (such as water, sewage, telephone lines etc.).

/Jon -- Just say "know!"

-- Osho

Jack, On Friday 19 November 2004 13:37, Jack Malone wrote:

...

im getting 6m dsl down here at work in couple weeks if it turns out to be that fast. with 416k on upload side. we are only about 5000 feet from the central office. about 6 blocks or so.

Your situation is very similar to mine. I get a very solid, reliable 6Mb/s inbound and 600Kb/s outbound. I, too, am just a few thousand feet from the CO. If the wiring in your area is good, you should have no problem.

not able to get dsl at home so have to go with cox cable that has a slow 1m on download side. they want up here in tyler to any faster speeds an they have plenty of room to do so.

There are other issues with cable Internet, too. Many service providers disallow servers on cable links and static addressing can be pretty hard to come by. My DSL provider has no such restrictions and offers me up to 8 statically assigned IP addresses at this service level. Both servers and static addressing are necessary for me, since this is a home office and my business partner must be able to access servers at my site.

jack

Randall Schulz

James, On Friday 19 November 2004 14:20, James Knott wrote:

Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

There are other issues with cable Internet, too. Many service providers disallow servers on cable links and static addressing can be pretty hard to come by. My DSL provider has no such restrictions and offers me up to 8 statically assigned IP addresses at this service level. Both servers and static addressing are necessary for me, since this is a home office and my business partner must be able to access servers at my site.

I have dhcp, from my cable ISP. However, it changes so seldom, it's virtually static. I also have a host name, which being derived from my MAC addresses, never changes. So, even if my IP changes, I can still access my network.

Yes, the same is true for many cable subscribers, but there's no guarantee. You may be able to handle this in limited cirsumstances, but you cannot as a business person publicize such addresses, lest they become invalid at the whim of your ISP. And for those poor souls whose ISP uses PPPOE, it's another story alltogether. Their addresses can, and from what I hear, often do, change on every reauthentication, of which there can be several each day. Poor saps... Randall Schulz

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 16:32, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Friday 19 November 2004 22:14, James Knott wrote: Assuming the other side can handle it, I have in the past downloaded CDs at 5 minutes per iso on my current connection. I don't know exactly what that works out to in Mbps, I think the cap was the other side though :)

--Anders, who is moving in a week and is praying nightly that the new place will have a nice connection

Isn't DSL/cable a requirement for a place to be ideal to move to today. I mean -no- DSL/cable I'll look elsewhere. :) -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989 SuSE since 1998 * Only reply to the list please*

On Friday 19 November 2004 4:38 pm, Ken Schneider wrote:

Isn't DSL/cable a requirement for a place to be ideal to move to today. I mean -no- DSL/cable I'll look elsewhere. :) if you have a clear view of the southern sky you can always get DirectWay :) http://hns.getdway.com/

might be cheaper than leasing a Rolls Royce:) I have a cablemodem, from my local cable provider, but I get my TV from DirecTV . go figure:) -- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800

On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 16:14, James Knott wrote:

Danny Sauer wrote:

...

I've got a full T1's worth of bandwidth to my house. It's fast (and a bit of an involved story)

Why a DS1 (proper term for T1)? It's only 1.544 Mb/s. My cable modem runs 5 Mb/s down & 800K up. Many DSLs will also give better performance, than a DS1.

--James, who never thought he'd see the day, when a DS1 would be considered "slow".

And herein lies the fallacy, your download speed does not as much depend on what your ISP provides you but what the ISP of the site you are downloading from provides. Does not matter that you have 5 or 10 Mb/s down if the site you are connected to can only provide 1 Mb/s up. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989 SuSE since 1998 * Only reply to the list please*

On 11/19/04 12:51 PM, "Danny Sauer" wrote:

george wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] SuSE 9.2 and future packaging' on Fri, Nov 19 at 10:54:

...

Get a faster internet service :)

I've got a full T1's worth of bandwidth to my house. It's fast (and a bit of an involved story), but it's still not nearly as fast as a DVD drive. At typical sysadmin salaries, $10 buys about 15 minutes of my time. I'll bet I can swap out an optical drive and copy a few packages off of the DVD more than 15 minutes faster than someone on even a "fast" network connection could download any significant number of packages. So in one session (perhaps "at install time") the new drive pays for itself.

OK You say you have "a full T1's worth of bandwidth". Are you saying you have a T1 or the same amount of bandwidth? If you don't have a T1, you would not understand the difference in what ever you have and a T1. We also have a T1, but we also have two DSL lines that put the T1 to shame for most things for speed and cost much less. I don't know about your location, but here we are at about $600 (and that is cheap for this site) for the total T1- including local loop. DSL's are $40 each. Each one has a place and a situation that suites each better than the other.

...

...

I would propose that SuSE provide a link to froogle.com, which lists a new ATAPI DVD drive (which reads double-layer media) for as low as $19. Yes, $19. Sell your old crappy drive on eBay for $5-$10, since there's a new sucker online ever minute, and you've made back 1/2 of the cost to move to a faster drive. Put the DVD drive in a networked machine, NFS export it, and install everywhere from that one, $10 drive. You'll save more than $10 worth of time.

If your time is _that_ valuable, you would not do all this.

Really? What's a faster method that would conserve my time better? My time's indeed valuable, so I'd much appreciate tips. It takes maybe 5 minutes to create an ad for an old DVD drive, and it's not much work to order a drive + install it. It's not "all this" much work, considering the signifcant time savings. If money's tight, well, someone who can't swing a $20 drive might want to reconsider spending >$50 on software that's available for free in a few weeks, esp when said person can't even use the paid-for media to begin with.

OK, if you are spending the $ on the T1, you must be making it back- so what is the problem? You're not going to be worried about selling the old drive for $5-$10. Based on your figures, you would loose money. What do you bill out your time at? Is it $65 per hour or $160 per hour? I too have done the ebay thing. It does take time... More than you would be saving selling the drive for $10. Making up a listing, catching email questions, packaging, shipping... Now tell me it would not _cost_ you money. Unless it takes less than 5 minutes for everything, trash or donate it. You can still do one NFS export...with the updates, after you download it... Oh wait, you mirror the ftp site so it should be simple for you. Right? Now, do you ftp mirror it from locally off of your T1 or another third party hosting site?

--Danny, who actually mirrors the ftp site locally and installs from that machine, which trades a bit of initial time investment for an overall time savings

Now what about your downloading updates and patches? How would having a newer DVD drive help that? Like I said, get a bigger pipe for downloading. ____________________________________________________ Now, all that said. Lets get back to topic. I agree SuSE did screw up - and should give the same on CD's as DVD's... And why change DVD format w/o informing customers before they buy it? As someone else said, put the packages on the older DVD's or CD's, and if someone wants the source, let them download it. If you need source code, your doing something "important" enough to have more bandwidth at your disposal anyway. (or a good reason to hit your local hotspot for coffee and the sights) -- Thanks, George Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain

On Friday 19 November 2004 19:23, Barry Premeaux wrote:

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:57:35 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

...

Moving forward, we are at a similar point to where CDs were replacing floppies. One of the reasons I have always preferred SuSE over Red Hat, Mandrake and other media distros is that just about everything is included. But, in SuSE 9.2, the system lacks some packages on the CDs and the multi-layered DVD may not be readable on all DVD readers.

Considering the recent price increase, would it have cost that much to add a 6th CD to cover the additional Packages? I think that would be cheaper than putting in a new DVD reader on some of these older machines (like mine).

There are around 1.5GB of packages on the DVD that aren't on the CDs (not counting the x86_64 stuff and sources). I think it would have to be 3 CDs to cover it

Didn't realize it quite that much. Then a cheap DVD reader is a viable option, or at least ftp access to the packages I need. Since I'm stuck with a dial up connection, an ftp installation is not really an option.

Barry

Heh-- For this very problem I found a good use for my WinXP machine -- Install the crippled IIS server it comes with, copy the DVD to the HD, and set an FTP server up to point there... Installs just fine for me. (But, I still maintain my right to bitch about not being able to read the DVD in the machine I bought 9.2 for!)

What brands of DVD are recommended considering 9.2 is on dual layer DVD? ----------=====<<<<<CWSIV>>>>>=====---------- | \ /|\ || |\ / |~~\ /~~\ /~~| //~~\ | \ / | \ || | X |__/| || |( `--. |__ | | \| \_/ / \ | \ \__/ \__| \\__/ ----------===<<>>===----------