Nobody knows Linux

You gotta appreciate their

You gotta appreciate their pricing logic though. It is the way it should be, right? More CDs make it more expensive to burn the thing. They are not really valuing the software itself there as much as the actual medium which carries it. So basically software is just a commodity of equal value.

The irony in all that, as the story shows, is that Microsoft for being always on one CD combined with a rather primitive view that making more money must mean making better software too, wins the game, which is quite sad. I agree with the authors call for an Africa-wide initiative for promoting Free Software.

But one thing must finally be gotten straight for the GNU/Linux distribution projects: make it available on ONE CD. It is more than a convenience to us westerns who don't like waiting to download a multiple of CDs, apparently. Just look at what it's doing in Africa. Who would have thought huh?

Fortunately, Fedora finally saw the light. It's available as a Live DVD (for 64bit) and Live CD (for 32bit). Now Debian must be next. They do have installable one-cds, but they don't advertise it at all. You have to find it on their mirrors, and that's bad.

One CD installs make a distro easier to spread which would help whichever campaign for Free Software. I think we can at learn as much from Ubuntu.

Fedora live CDs

By the way, there are two Fedora 7 live CDs, one with GNOME and one with KDE.

Yep, I know. They really

Yep, I know. They really done it this time, which is great.

Linux does indeed come on

Linux does indeed come on more CDs, and charging by CD makes sense in this world of unlicensed software. But I wonder how many CDs would have to be bought for someone who wants Windows + Office + Photoshop, in comparison to Ubuntu, where the equivalents all come with the OS.

Well, Ubuntu is really a

Well, Ubuntu is really a good example for what should be done. It is one of the first popular distros which were on only one livecd. Debian, however, by default still probably beats even Windows/Office/Photoshop/others combinations though in terms of number of CDs.

To be fair, however, you can install Debian from only two or three CDs and there are also one CD options for Xfce and KDE, as mentioned, but they should be promoted more as otherwise it's that big bunch that gets to people rather than friendly one-cd installs.

Total ignorance, but is

Total ignorance, but is compression not being used on distros?

On live CDs compression is

On live CDs compression is used, iirc Knoppix stuffs about 2GB onto a normal CD. Though I don't know about other forms of distro install CD, many of the packages are binary and thus take up less space than the source code (though I'm not sure if some distro's include the source code too).