ISO Image Web Site And CAD Program 89
It's often difficult to find ISO images of Linux distributions to download and burn onto a CD-ROM.
LinuxISO.org is the solution: a Web site of ISO images of all major linuxes, FreeBSD and NetBSD. Another useful link is a Linux/BSD CAD program for architects: Cycas 2.0 which is zero-cost for personal use.
Oh man (Score:2)
I realize that there ARE CAD programs for Linux, but I tried all the free ones I could find and they just weren't up to snuff.
Yeeeeeeeeehawwwwwwwwwwwww....
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grappler
Cycas window manager? (Score:2)
I'm more interested in knowing what window manager they are using in the screenshots for that Cycas 2.0 program. Those windows look really cool and I don't remember seeing that one at themes.org [themes.org].
Can anyone tell me?
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sounds kewl, but... (Score:3)
frozen potatos (Score:2)
Sure, I have the bandwidth and tools to download the trees and burn it myself, perhaps I am too lazy for not wanting to do both?
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Re:Cycas window manager? (Score:1)
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Cheapbytes will NOT be happy, but (Score:1)
Thanks be to the folks behind this site!
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Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Makes sense (Score:1)
Re:sounds kewl, but... (Score:1)
Sengan lives! (Score:1)
If I were a rich man... (Score:1)
and another one dl'ing images,
and an even larger RAID drive just for show,
to show I'm a rich man now...
As it stands, though, downloading 650MB in one fell swoop and burning it to a CD is only for the internet "haves" in the world. (i.e. not me--I have ethernet, but not a CD burner, I guess I could mount it on loopback, but I don't have that much space. Aaggh! New computer, here I come...)
Otherwise, you'll get it in mangled, 657KB segments, copy it to floppies, and wonder why CDs aren't formatted as FAT...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
good idea with a big but... (Score:4)
Actually, I've never had a problem finding the iso, at least of the distros i've used (mandrake, redhat, suse)... but the problem was finding a mirror that was fast enough, espeically when a new version is released (for example, when Mandrake 7.0 was released i never found a site that gave me a transfer rate higher than 14k/s untill about a week later). But given that this site was denying me my anonymous login, which i hope means that the ftp was full, and not that this is a subscription service, really, what good is it? I could see this as beeing a viable and perhaps even profitable (banner ads perhaps) idea, but if the bandwidth isn't there.
What I would suggest (and write the code for, if i weren't so lazy) is a site that keeps track of the mirrors for all the distros, and have a script that will direct a user to the closest/fastest mirror for them. That would be helpful, and I wouldn't even mind looking at banner ads for it.
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ISO's of something OTHER than distros? (Score:4)
E.G. StarOffice (cd for all sorts of platforms)
RedHat contribs?
Games, graphics, X, compos?
It would be really sweet to see some ISO's for apps. For some reason, I always find myself burning a bunch of tarballs onto a stack of CD's and I end up losing everything.
~GoRK
What a useful, wonderful idea... (Score:1)
personally I dont know what the big deal is (Score:1)
OOG LIKE LINUXISO!!! (Score:5)
When I first heard of Linux long ago,
I scoured yon net for an ISO...
But alas, after hours of vanished time
Not one archive could thy find.
Thy CD-R's wouldst be left blank,
Yon Lucifer's curse did thy thank.
How oh how dost thy change distros
When thy soul can't find an ISO?
BSD, Red Hat, and yon Debian...
Trekking through their large sites then,
Was the only way to acquire thy files.
And dear earth be damned, it tooketh a while.
But, lo! One glourious fortnight ago,
My ears didst hear of LinuxISO!
By the cooling warmth of Zepyhr's breeze,
Thine ISO's thy found with ease.
Thy CD-R's were filled and burned,
And never again shall thee be spurned!
And through yon net journeys to and fro,
Thy never enough can praise LinuxISO!
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UUGGGHHH... OOG FEEL STRANGE...
CAD program (Score:1)
Anyone have a suggestion for a similar package that is truely FREE, not just as in beer?
cya, Andrew...
Re:sounds kewl, but... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Cycas Public version features useless (Score:1)
With these limitations, this CAD program is useless for production. Check out LUnix CAD Links [privateweb.at] for the whole gambit. (None free are worthy, yet.)
This is nice, But... (Score:2)
This is nice, but the real beauty will be if they disable anonymous access and use this for mirror sites. With 650MB files, 30 users is ideal, except it wont help that many people. Now, if you use this as a central server, you can have mirror sites, all with the same version. Hopefully, some of the less competitive distros out there can take advantage of this, and standardize their distro versions across the web.
BTW - If you decide that you really like a distro, please buy a version of it (especially some of the BSD's), it will help the coders fund their efforts, and help insure a continuous forward progress.
Re:Sengan lives! (Score:1)
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:1)
I'm wondering, has anyone heard of software that does this sort of thing already? That is, keep track of mirrors, and point users to the best one?
If creating such a piece of software isn't redundant, would anyone want to work on this project with me? I envision writing a piece of software (GPL'd, of course) that would be abstracted to any sort of file, and then a website built around it that would help people download mirrors. The software driving it could be usefull to any large, often downloaded file... where the difference of 10k/sec in transfer rates can be quite a bit.
If anyone has ideas, please post them here. If you are interested in participating in a project to do this, please email me at the address above, just remove the ALLCAPS part.
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SERVICE? WE GOT YOUR SERVICE! (Score:1)
We have been in business for almost 3 full years and can implement the perfect solution for your enterprise with systems from Compaq and software from the leader in quality software, Microsoft.
We also offer a "3 pronged" program for your old legacy Unix systems.
First we remove the equipment from your premises for a nominal fee.
We destroy any data on the storage media.
We physically destroy the legacy system and send it to a scrap metal recycler. We also offer Certificates of Destruction at your request for a minimal fee.
This just goes to show how we can handle your problem. We work with you from start to finish. From implementation of new technology, including custom programming in VisualBASIC and creating stunning webpages in Frontpage, to the destruction and disposal of your old worn out legacy systems you may have. We are truly a one stop shop.
Thank you. We look forward to getting a start on your enterprise class problem today!
powerful CAD programs for Linux? (Score:2)
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
What I'd like would be an ISO for OpenBSD, that's the hard one to find.
Also, there should be more PowerPC distros. That's a platform where we should be able to make some gains in the near future.
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Re:Has Slashdot become a warez site?? (Score:2)
Umm..... (Score:1)
Pirating free software would be an oxymoron.
Well, maybe this post is supposed to be sarcastic. Didn't seem so to me though.
-Wintermute
Re:Oh man (Score:1)
www.microstation.com
too limited (Score:1)
Re:Oh man (Score:1)
QCAD is another one, although I can't comment on how good it is.
Re:Oh man (Score:1)
i mean, it seems nice enough, but free it isn't if you're trying to do almost ANYTHING.
-Andy Martin
Re:Cycas window manager? (Score:1)
Re:Why the hell do they always do that? (Score:1)
Although i don't reccommend it for architectual work. if you're making houses and whatnot, go for a product called datacad -- it's more optimized for such purposes....but i digress...
you can get (or you used to be able to get) a student version of autocad...sure it would put the words "student version" in everything you plotted, but hell, if you're using cad professionally, you should bite the bullet and shell out for the full damn version.
wonderous is the product from autodesk. i cannot rave enough.
-Andy Martin
Re:well thats good, but.. (Score:1)
solution? (Score:2)
Bradford L.
Last post! (Score:1)
errr... not really
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
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Re:Umm..... (Score:1)
Hard to say. If you look at the guys history, he posts a lot of similiar stuff that gets rated 4 or 5: Funny (like The Hubble Telescope VIOLATES ALIENS' PRIVACY and Mozilla Dinosaur icon is THIEVERY). However, he was walking the thin line between Flamebait and Funny with that post (and IMHO he fell on the Flamebait side).
Re:Why the hell do they always do that? (Score:1)
I disagree. AutoCAD is WAY over-priced. It reminds me of the Redmond OS: the only reason anyone buys it is because everyone else already has it. No matter that it takes twice as many keyboard strokes than it should, and crashes at least once a day. Oh, don't forget that all the modules cost at least two grand each and won't be compatible with the next version either.
It's ironic that this subject just came up because I was looking for a Linux CAD program this evening. Do you realize how many architects out there are stuck in Remond'95/NT because no one has an open source CAD package ready to go? I'll be starting at one with 50+ stations in two weeks. And that's about $5k per with the modules. You'd think there would be a group of hackers out there would want a piece of that action by providing the service to one firm with GPL software for the rest.
Nice idea, and with work, can become a Good Thing. (Score:1)
This still needs a bit of work tho. Definitely needs more mirror sites, and better bandwidth all around. Some sort of "load balancing" would also be nice (if it is possible) -- when a user clicks on a download link, some bit of website magic will automatically shoot them to the least "busy" server. But this is definitely a good start.
One thing I would like to praise and thank this site's creators for is the fact that they included the *BSD's as well. With a domain name like "linuxiso.org", it would have been so easy to focus on Linux exclusively, which I think would have been a very big mistake. I, for one, use and love both Linux and FreeBSD, and I know many other people and businesses use a mix of Linux and *BSD as well. Having 'em all accessible from one locale is definitely a nice touch.
To the people behind this site: My sincere and heartfelt thanks.
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If you can, skip the ISO (Score:1)
I realize that some people still have a need for the ISO images, but if you're just looking to do an single install, skip the image and do a network install directly.
I recently did this for Mandrake 7.0, and had a great time. I downloaded a single floppy, booted off of it, told it my essential network numbers, and four hours later, I had a working system. Sweet! Admittedly, I've got a DSL line, which made things tolerable, but you're not going to be happy downloading an ISO image over a 56K modem either.
A very cool feature here (and it may apply to the ISO install too, I don't know) is that if you installed in expert mode, you were asked, "We can install these optional crypto rpm's, which we will download from foreign web sites. Proceed?" Sweet.
I haven't done this, but if I were a sysadmin doing a multiple install across my site, I STILL wouldn't get the ISO image. I'd use wget to mirror one of the Mandrake web sites locally, and do network installs from that.
Re:frozen potatos (Score:1)
Well, I'm not a Debian user, but isn't potato the current devel version? So it's under regular updates, right? Which would mean that someone would have to make a new image every (insert some interval here - every day or week or whatever), which seems like quite a pain the in the ass to me. Though I might guess that frzoen potato is potato getting ready to become a real release, so why not wait for it to become the stable version? Surely Debian provides ISOs for their stable releases?
It's the same problem for me (I'm a Redhat user), with Rawhide. I'd love to be able to order a Rawhide snapshot on CD from Cheapbytes, but no way. It's got all kinds of nice stuff that 6.x is sadly lacking (gcc 2.95.3 snapshots, XFree 4.0 [including 3dfx drivers, nice for this Voodoo3 ownder], very recent GNOME packages, etc). And I won't be getting a DSL line until next fall, at which point I might as well wait for RH 7.
Re:Oh man (Score:1)
Free D/L: One layer, Letter size printing
Basic Edition: $100, Tabloid printing
Pro Edition: $200, Full size plotting
...and the Pro Edition is available to students for $100.
The price isn't bad...if I had a pending need for CAD software, I would be willing to D/L the free edition, run it through it's paces, see if it cores, etc.
If it seemed to work well, I'd consider the purchase.
One thing: I saw nothing about upgrades. I think all non-free s/w should have a fairly liberal upgrade policy.
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
Re:Sengan lives! (Score:2)
Nah.. The last story he posted (going from memory) was "Last All Odd Digit Day For Over 1,000 Years"
Problem was, there was another all odd day only 2 days later. Oops. Plus the fact that the 2 in both 27 and 29 is in fact an even number. Oops again. Never mind that the two ones in November's month number are every bit as odd as the 9 for September. That was a pretty funny article, in retrospect.
The search function says he posted something in January too, but let's ignore that.
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Troubles Finding ISO? (Score:1)
my $(50^-1)
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As for other distros. (Score:2)
I think the site is trying to target newer Linux adoptees with burners and an itch to try out a few different distros. Nothing else makes sense
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Distributed Archives (Score:2)
The way I see it, you would have some program, say 'datp', which would connect to a datp server, and make a file request. the server would return a list of secondary servers which contained the file requested, and the datp client would poll some of these servers, initializing a conection to the fastest of them, and concurently downloading digests of the file (the first X megs from server A, the second X megs from server B, etc.) and reasembling them localy. Add some check suming or hashing, and you could just let anyone that wanted to hook into the archive and provide you with mirrors, all nice and secure.
The concurent aproach sounds weird, but it is really the Right Thing in terms of arbitrary network topography.
Anyway, maybee some day I'll write something like this, or maybee I won't. Why Don't you, and make me happy?
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
30 User limit ? A joke (Score:1)
But frankly, with an apparent 30 user download limit, this site is a joke. These days, where everybody has 20 Gigs of diskpace in his home pc, why don't you build your own iso image from source yourself ?
It is not that complicated - well, at least if you have a decent OS/Distribution, like FreeBSD *eg*
f.
Re:QNX Neutrino OS is going to be free! (OT!) (Score:1)
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"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
It'd be cool (Score:1)
For instance, the BeOS Personal Edition is great, but the downloads from Be are installable files meant for Linux or Windows machines. There is an ISO running around somewhere that lets you do a standalone install of BeOS on it's own drive, but I looked for it tonight and couldn't find it.
Anyways, if they can afford the server space and bandwidth, it'd be really helpful to have an ISO repository for not just Linux and *BSD distros, but some of the other items available to the Open Source community as well. I love the 'net, but sometimes I like to burn disks so I don't have to keep downloading the same 300 MB files each time. =P
Nice work, guys!
Re:OOG LIKE LINUXISO!!! (Score:1)
Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:2)
IMHO there are 3 majorly different Internet users. The homeuser, which we can divide into people who have a cheap connection (they can have a connection open 24/7 without the telephone charge (mainly US & Europeans who have Internet using the cable) and people who are on a dial-up. Then finally you have the corperate users.
The first category doesn't really have to worry about download times so why download 650Mb while you could settle for way less and have the latest version as well. Some friends say that its easier for them so they can quickly do re-installs when they have to but when you're on the net anyway I don't see the difference.
Then the dial-up users face the same problems and they also can benefit from downloading just a small portion instead of the whole ISO. IMHO it would be wiser to focus on making network installations even more easy then they are now.
Re:Offtopic, but... (Score:1)
I think I'll take that as a compliment.
What exactly is rot13 and how do I use it.
It's the basic traditional Caesar cipher. So A is mapped to N, T is mapped to G, etc. It's very commonly including on *nix systems, for example:
[lloyd@chimera lloyd]$ echo "Hello World" |
Uryyb Jbeyq
I was planning on posting a simple C program that does it, but
Alternately you can go to my URL (if I'm online, haven't got a DSL line yet), and get my email addy from there.
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
I think someone ought to put together a disk of their own and make the ISO image freely available. There's not a thing Theo could do to stop that.
There's already somebody else doing so cheaply [cheapbytes.com], so free isn't much of a step beyond that.
As far as supporting the project; it's supposed to be open source. Linux and FreeBSD manage to exist without doing anything that asinine; is OpenBSD so unwanted that it can't work the same way?
Perhaps BSDi will bankroll a more complete security audit for FreeBSD, and make the whole question moot.
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Re:Troubles Finding ISO? (Score:1)
Just tested it on sunsite.uio.no. I got a transfer rate of 380kb(yte)/s.
They have iso images of Corel, LinuxPPC, Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, Trustix (don't know that one) and debian.
(Sunsite is one of my favorite ftp sites, because of good speed).
Re:Distributed Archives (Score:1)
why? (Score:1)
If you want to burn a bunch of apps to CD, download them in nice happy
mkisofs is your friend.
Re:Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:2)
I think it's all to do with the package management side of things. Your average (modal) distro is RPM-based and comes in box-sets for some strange reason (t-shirts, I gather, feature in it) and appeals to.. er.. the sort of person who buys box-sets; you've rightly spotted there's a 'hole' in who this kind of person actually is.
I'm in Europe and have an unmetered connection at 56k at home, and multi-T1 at work. I use CDs at work to get things like Stormix down because it represents a good block of useful stuff to kick-off a machine; however the box at home has long-since been dist-upgraded to run Debian 'unstable' via another initial CD and thereafter, it runs its own local mirror - because it can.
With Debian I can maintain mirrors with standard apps for the purpose (apt-move) on the machines both at work and home, and use them to save the massive download times at home.
There's another use for an ISO image - if the distribution doesn't mirror easily, you can grab the whole ISO at a stroke and mount it (-o loop) and use it for a network install in your own LAN if you want. But I think a more flexible package system (with operations like "get things from here, here and there" and "update what's available where" and "install this and all dependencies from the nearest source") is the answer. And that's why I like Debian.
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
~Tim
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Noone remembers Free ISO project? (Score:1)
Dated September 21st, 1999.
Especially seems to have some of the less well-known Distro's, but I also see SuSE, RedHat, Debian (2.1), and a variety of BSD's.
Re:Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:1)
however the box at home has long-since been dist-upgraded to run Debian 'unstable' via another initial CD and thereafter
But is this initial CD one you bought or an ISO? I'm running 2 distro's at home; RedHat on my workstation (I started out with RH some years ago) and Debian on my BBS. My Debian installation went completely from the net through my RedHat (masq) box, even when being on 56k. Thats another reason which based my idea; even despite the 56k factor it didn't take me that long to setup the whole system using dselect. Now I do have to admit that my BBS system isn't running major stuff like X and such (its merely a fido based mailserver which also features all the handy tools of your regular intranet server (mail, web, sql, etc.) but still.. Its functional and it didn't took that much download time.
There's another use for an ISO image - if the distribution doesn't mirror easily, you can grab the whole ISO at a stroke and mount it (-o loop)
This is something on which I don't have much experience but still... I think it can be easier to locate another (faster?) mirror then to download 650Mb of stuff while there is a vast change that you could settle for 300Mb (for example).
But your remark on the Stormix is indeed a good one. Guess I'm forming my ideas while I'm looking a bit to much toward Debian as well :)
Re:Distributed Archives (Score:1)
Re:Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:2)
Actually, I used ISOs for stormix so I had a nice consistent lump with everything-stormix I could ever want on it, to take home at the end of the day.
Similarly I had a local mirror of 'unstable' ("woody" as is the new name) on the machine at work, which also became a CD...
When I got home, install stormix: no problem. Insert 'unstable' CD, tell apt (one of the package-management toys in debian) that the local CD is a source, as is somewhere on mirror.ac.uk, and then update "what's available where", do an apt-get dist-upgrade and hey presto, one very uptodate installation, which I've kept uptodate daily (except when on holiday) since.
This answers the problem of "I only want 300M of the CD" - and if you have more than 1 machine on the LAN to install/upgrade, you sure don't want to be getting "that 300M" over and over again over the 56k link, like the 'install over 'net' options will; that's why I go for the local mirrors
~Tim
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CAD for schematic capture and pcb layout (Score:2)
They even have a freeware version which is ok for weekend projects.
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ [cadsoftusa.com] or http://www.cadsoft.de/ [cadsoft.de]
This software is not a toy, it is one of the best pcb design packages available on any platform, and it is reasonably priced. Life is good to us electronics engineers !
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:1)
Yeah, but that wouldn't make Theo burn in his gut enough. How about creating a new one, just as you said, but GPLing it? :)
Go easy on him guys... it's a new site!!! (Score:1)
Anyway, he (and I) hang out in #linuxnewbie on EFNet, and I just chatted with him... he said they're planning on adding more pipes soon (he's kinda busy with work right now. Priorities, I guess... =P), and the poor guy didn't even know he was on Slashdot.
So, in conclusion, quit bitching about his 30 user limit. For all _you_ know, the guy may be hosting this thing on a 486 in his living room...
Now gimme my Phantom Menace DVD
M
Re:OOG LIKE LINUXISO!!! (Score:2)
Funny, last time I saw an OOG post it was moderated down to 0 or something. I'm telling you, OOG is a Hank-the-Angry-Drunken-Dwarf protege.
Mirror tracking and redirection (Score:2)
I think there are a few requirements/design issues to be thought about:
- how to encode which mirror sites are available - XML encoding within a normal web page seems to be an obvious way to go, so that the same page can be human readable as well as making sense to the software.
- how automatic should this be? Sometimes highly automated systems are a pain (e.g. Perl's CPAN always used to redirect me to demon.co.uk, which was hugely overloaded - fortunately they provided a manual override).
- how can different types of client software or proxy software make use of this sort of 'mirror list' information? XML is probably the best common approach since modern browsers support this, making it possible perhaps to do it all in JavaScript, and there are many XML development tools available.
It would be great as a first step if the user could be shown a 'choose a mirror' page when going to a popular website such as samba.org, freebsd.org.
Then, the next step is to estimate closeness in some way (either statically, e.g. country TLD, or dynamically through measurements, e.g. ping times). The closer this is done to the client, the better, but moving this closer to the core of the network will avoid redundant measurement traffic.
Finally, the client (whether a browser, FTP client, or proxy cache) needs to use the closeness metric to automatically (or with confirmation if it's an interactive client) to choose a site and attempt to download the file.
Unfortunately the download will often fail (e.g. ftp site won't accept new logins, or the download takes too long). It's important that the system can notice this fact and switch to another mirror.
One interesting issue is working out which are the closest sites - should you use geography (same top-level country domain), topology (number of router hops or equivalent), latency (ping times), path bandwidth (using pchar/pathchar to work out slowest link), server load, or some combination?
There is some prior art in this area - distributed load balancing devices (e.g. Cisco's Distributed Director, and I think also RADware) do something quite similar. These types of tool use routing protocols and/or ping measurements to the local host (or whatever DNS server serves the client hostname) in order to work out the closest client to each server (using BGP in the Cisco product, which may not be very useful), or dynamic measurements in RADware (controversial because the client-local DNS server may view this as an intrusion attempt!).
There are also many client-side software tools that attempt to do this - e.g. GetRight for Windows, which pings a list of hosts and downloads from one of them.
Some proxy networks, e.g. Akamai, probably do something similar, though they are much more tightly integrated than this could be.
I think the best place to start would be defining a mirror-description language in XML, including optional 'closeness metric' attributes for future use; then develop a simple client in your tool of choice, maybe Perl or Python, for use in manually finding the best mirror to use (e.g. using country codes or similar); then try to integrate this into browsers and/or proxy caches.
I thought about this stuff a while back and sent an Ask Slashdot submission but it didn't get posted. Back then I was thinking in terms of using web proxy software plus some addon modules (maybe Apache + mod_rewrite + custom module, with web caching as an option for even faster downloads).
Re:powerful CAD programs for Linux? (Score:1)
Anyway, the question naturally came up about when CATIA would be available on linux, and there were many subtle hints flying about Dassault working with SGI on a linux version of version 5.
BTW, if you haven't used CATIA v5, it basically kicks the ass of any other high-end CAD program. I don't consider AutoCAD high-end, but it definitely kicks AutoCAD's butt, too. It is way more powerful and easy to use than any other CAD package out there.
This still doesn't make me happy (Score:1)
Re:frozen potatos (Score:1)
An up to date kernel would be nice, too -- has this been covered with 2.1r4, or is Debian still installing Kernel 2.0?
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I like ISO Images (Score:1)
Alt platforms (Score:1)
I palindrome I - TMBG
Re:frozen potatos (Score:2)
Re:Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:1)
The solution that I chose for all that is to get a second scrap PC for non-firewall related stuff. I could also wedge PPPoE onto it long enough to bootstrap the firewall if I had to. (Say, total disk failure without backup. Or buggy package manager.) But not everyone has space, money, or the LAN lying around necessary to do that.
Maybe there should be something smaller than the normal "everything that fits" ISO image. Most users could probably get by with a bootable image that can build a new kernel and install from the 'net. (It's lots of fun dealing with the fact that you can't get on the 'net until you download new kernel sources and some support programs.... I love monopolies!)
Re:Offtopic, but... (Score:1)
No need for that. just whip up a text file, call it rot13, give it 755 permissions, and poof, instant rot13 filter.
Here's what you put in it:
tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m
I hope you have tr...
Re:Why the hell do they always do that? (Score:1)
-Andy Martin
Re:Why bother with an ISO anyway? (Score:1)
I really don't see the need for ISO images for distibutions anymore
I think ISO images of distributions are quite useful. I only have a dial-up connection at home, but there's a T1 at work. Even though I don't pay for connect time on my home phone line, I still don't want to spend several hours whenever I want to set up or upgrade a machine. Even on machines at work, where there IS a fast net connection, I find it faster to do the initial install off of CD, and then do an 'apt-get upgrade' to bring all the packages up to the latest version.
Last week I installed a bunch of Debian-based servers at work. They're new machines with 3COM 3c905C NICs, a card which wasn't supported with the Debian driver floppy I was using. It's hard to do a network install without a working network interface. I did a CD install, rebuilt the kernel with the newer drivers, and had the machines in production in less than fifteen minutes.
The ISO images also make a great promotional tool for Linux/BSD. When I put a strain on someone's server to the tune of 650MB, I try to return the favor by making as many copies of the CD as possible, to keep a few on hand at work and at the office, to share with potentially interested people. At work, I've talked with sales reps or short-term contractors when the subject of Linux has come up, and they've said something like "it sounds interesting, but I haven't had a chance to check it out". It's a nice feeling to be able to reach into a desk drawer and give them a recent copy of the CD to try out.
I agree with you that network installs are a great thing, but even with a fast connection, they can still take longer from scratch than doing the basic install from CD. And servers still time out or move around. When you've got a CD in your hand, you have a much better idea of what to expect.
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:1)
Cheap OpenBSD on German Magazine (Score:2)
A lot cheaper than shelling out for the full OpenBSD CD and a lot easier than finding a spare 650 MB on my laptop so I can download it at work. Unfortunately the CheapBytes OpenBSD CD can't be exported for some reason - probably not necessary, now that the US has relaxed its crypto export laws.
It's a shame that OpenBSD relies so much on CD sales to fund the project - I bought a 2.5 CD a while back but buying a new CD every few months seems a bit excessive considering I'm only using it at home.
Are ISOs not compressable or something? (Score:1)
To clarify, I don't mess with ISO files very much, but I don't really see what's so special about them that nobody wants to compress them. Can anyone explain?
Re:Why the hell do they always do that? (Score:1)
But back to the issue: are there any Free Linux CAD software packages out there that are mostly worthy, at least in 2D?
Re:architect schmarchitect (Score:1)
AutoCAD clone (litterally) for free (Score:1)
Iambic pentameter on slashdot? (Score:1)
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
Actually, this isn't entirely correct.
The layout of their official CD is indeed copyright, and indeed proprietary and closed and just generally anti-open.
However, there is nothing stopping you from downloading the files, making your own ISO, and doing anything at all that you please with it.
They just don't make that very clear in their FAQ.
It's no wonder it's confusing. I'm trying to convince one of them (privately, I will not name names, except to say it's not Theo) to either change the FAQ, or let me change it. We'll see what happens.
I'm not confused, but lots of folks are. See the FAQ at LinuxISO.org [linuxiso.org] for a perfect example; billy thinks it's the OpenBSD team's wishes that you don't create ISOs and distribute them, but that's neither my understanding from a careful reading of the OpenBSD FAQ [openbsd.org], nor is it the view of the person with whom I'm corresponding.
It's just an unfortunate side effect of an elitist attitude that isn't at all uncommon in this segment of our industry.
It's the same attitude you see in the various arguments against improved Linux GUIs, user-friendly distributions, etc.
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OS CAD/CAE Software Distros (Score:1)
The market isn't the ~500-600 Million OS users, who do word processing and/or spreadsheets. Its working Engineers/Architechs of the world, who might reach 500K world wide.
To produce sofware for this market a company needs to employ MSs and PHDs with knowledge of the field they are writing software for. Ok, anyone can kick out software for this app, but to have the UI be anywhere near reliavant for the application there is a need for specific knowledge of the subject matter. The basic Math/Physics knowledge required is only earned through years of experience with the subject matter.
I know, and I am one, people who would like to put together a CAD package for OS distribution, but we do have to pay for the schooling we worked for, and worked hard for.
AFAIK, Bently Systems not only ported MicroStation to OS/2, but to get there ported ACIS to OS/2 and had zero return on the investment. But that was at least 5 years ago.
Porting, ACIS flat out sucks. Mostly because ACIS just plain sucks and is very platform dependent. SolidWorks isn't far behind in the sucks category, and UG's 'solution' not only sucks but is FORTRAN based (including wonderful functions like CSTN3C (Convert Spline To Nurbs with 3 degress of Continuity).
Thats only the CAD world. Now add in about 10x more complexities when FEM stuff is involved. And the basic math behind FEA is easily thrice that of the basic geometry.
A basic CAD package, using ACIS, will take ~5 man years to develop. Adding analysis capabilities is yet another 5 man years.
Having said all that. NLIB is pseudo-public. and Harmony [harmonyware.com] is a for profit extension of NLIB.
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:1)
Hello,
I'm mailing you about the thread on /. about the lack of an OpenBSD ISO.
Let me first refer you to the FAQ, which I'll extend later tonight if I have time.
FACTS:
1. ISO's are a waste of time. OpenBSD has a great one floppy network install, so if you can afford to download two bloated 650 MB files, you'll have no problem with selective downloading only what you need during the install (look, only 80 MB).
Under some circumstances, what you say is true, but open your mind to other possibilities. The "internet" (connectivity, various servers, etc.) is not always up. So, yes I could successfully install on some occasion, but what if I want to add a package later but at that moment I can't get to it? I'd be screwed. I've got T3's at work: if I download the ISO and take it home, I won't have to install at 56K, and I'll have the pieces I need when I need them, no matter what.
There are many reasons to prefer to have the whole distro locally. So why grab the ISO instead of mirroring the tree? A number of small reasons, but essentially, if I look at the ISO on my filesystem, I know whether I have it or not. I don't need to diff the ls-lF. Many tools know how to quickly pick up where they left off on the download. Microsoft Windows machines have no trouble storing and burning ISOs, so I can do it from my boss's desk as easily as mine.
And the bandwidth wastage ... in computer science terms, N bytes and 2N bytes are both O(N), and it's computer time, not human time, so it's less important to me than my other concerns. (read on before objecting, please)
2. There is currently no room and money to be spend on providing diskspace and bandwidth for this ISO. That's why there is no such thing on the FTP server or the mirror sites.
That is a good reason. In financial terms, 2N is double N. But, there are dozens of places to download Linux ISOs from, so where do they get the money? They get the money from being flexible and attempting to give people what the people want. BSDers keep trying to give people what the BSDers want. There's no shame in not having the resources, but there's no shame in thinking about why, either.
3. Everybody is free do whatever they want with the OpenBSD system. You have all the source *and* all the build tools. That is FREE and open. Even Open, whatever you understand by that. The fact that OpenBSD does not publish any ISO, is purely for sanity reasons: they are a waste of time.
I know of an OpenBSD ISO that is published and it's copyrighted with no license granted. So, reword your statement to accurately include that fact and you'll see what people are annoyed at. Oh, I forgot, you don't care what annoys other people, it's all about you :)
Everybody is free and yet nobody has done it so far. It's not difficult to download the 80 MB worth of i386 files and make your own ISO. Yet nobody is putting that ISO up on their FTP server. It seems 99% of the wellconnected OpenBSD people like the FTP install over ISO's.
Yep, but it's 99% of a small number of people. If you want more people to use OpenBSD, give the people what they want. You're like a restauranteur who keeps saying "eat off of these plates, they're beautiful china! 99% of our customers want them", to which I respond, "but, I want my food to go... are you going to force me to dine elsewhere?"
None of this is to dis the distro/download/build system that the BSDs have created. I think it's a great system. I wish RedHat had it... in addition to the other things that RedHat has, not as a replacement.
And yes, the ISOs Theo makes have his Copyright, I don't see a problem in that. All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.
I don't have a problem with him copyrighting them either. The BSD license allows that. It also allows GPLing, so I assume you have no problem with that. It's all about doing what each of us wants and getting what each of us wants. But, if you want more people to adopt more of your views about important things (like all the good things about OpenBSD), then swallow your tired opinions about what kind of medium I prefer. I don't want to get my distros via Morse code :) I don't care how much you like it.
Think about how many people have adopted Linux. Think about how many people have adopted FreeBSD. And now, with that corner of the mind still unoccupied, think about how many have adopted OpenBSD. Think there's a relationship? Think about that, this way: If you fulfill the needs people tell you about, you might discover they'll appreciate many of the other benefits of your system.
Oh, and one final point of clarification: I am expressing disdain of a number of your ideas, but not of you, and not of all of your ideas. I'm showing my respect for you by going to all this trouble to write. Keep up the good work that you've been doing, for sure. I'd just like to see more people benefit from it.
Re:good idea with a big but... (Score:2)
All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.
Actually, one company [cheapbytes.com] has, and charges $4.99 for it.
They instituted it due to popular demand.
If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?
I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org [linuxiso.org] the day it made it to their site.
The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.
One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.
Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.
Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org [openbsd.or] on it.
Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.
Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.
McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools [fatbrain.com] and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools [fatbrain.com]. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?
Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls [fatbrain.com]?
Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?
I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.
But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.
Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's [linuxiso.org] site:
4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy
See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) [openbsd.org] to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.
They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."
Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."
That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)
"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."
In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:
If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.
Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:
1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.
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