Unless someone can prove to me that DVD drives have become common enough for most Linux users to have them, I think it is quite inconsiderate of certain Linux distributions to put their new releases on DVD. If I hadn't had a DVD-ROM drive in my closet (and I only had it because I bought the wrong drive in a now-abandoned attempt to start making my own DVDs, I couldn't have tried Fedora Core 5. And don't bother bringing up how poor FC5 is, because (a)that's beside the point, and (b)I had to find that out for myself.

For many users, possibly most, multiple CDs would have been better.

Erm, you can get Fedora 5 on CDs.
http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/fedo...e/5/i386//iso/

wow, someone's in a pointlessly annoyed mood...

a dvd/cdrw drive costs aobut £30 these days... what... $50 i guess? common enough for me. personally i don't think you have a leg to stand on.... esp as fedora still comes on seperate cd's' anyway, did you even bother looking?? http://iso.linuxquestions.org/version.php?version=304

and who said there was anythign wrong with fc5?

ahh, found the reason you have such a head on you... http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=Glendale,+AZ i couldn't stand living in a chessboard either.

but then..... you DO have a dvd drive! what on earth are you actually complaining about?

Yeesh. Reminds me of where I live
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&hl...1,0.02708&om=1

I was pootling around there earlier this year, did some work in washington street... that new M8 spur or whatever it was, like 10 storeys high.. christ...

i keep seeing various documentaries on discovery about all these cities ripping out their elevated motorways and doing without, or burying them because they were destroying the community by their very presence, and what is glasgow doing? building even more of the buggers!

Entertaining, but OT. Cut it out or make your own "I'm watching too much Discovery channel" thread.

Hmmmmm: Moderator getting ready to discipline another moderator. Can we watch?...

Wait, I'll look in the script.
...
Nope.

//never mind though, if the script is right the next sketch should be about spam ;-p

Two of you are validating stereotypes of Linux users. The first two messages were valid (so I cheerfully withdraw my remark as made in haste); but then you, acid_kewpie and you, ilikejam decided to be patently childish. I refuse to indulge you by arguing the merits of my hometown, except to say that I should have known that was the likely result of displaying it in the first place. Thanks, unSpawn, for being more professional than your co-moderator. Although, since I don't watch the Discovery Channel (or television) much, I am not sure what you meant with that one post.

calm down, just making a joke... i'm still interested to understand quite why dvd's are so bad... really lost me on that one.

Like it or not, more and more Linux distributions (and other software packages) will be coming out primarily on DVD. One DVD-R media costs less than 20 cents today (at least where I live), and decent DVD burners are getting ridiculously cheap. I got my NEC DVD burner for $35 (US).

Practically speaking, installation is much easier when everything is packed onto one DVD media rather than five CD's.

So, according to Distrowatch, and the "top 10" distros and their media availability
Ubuntu: 1 CD
SuSE: 5 CDs
Fedora: 5 CDs
Mandriva: 3 CDs
MEPIS: 1 CD
Damn Small: a hahahahaha, you're kidding me right?
Debian: 14 CDs (ugh)
KNOPPIX: 1 DVD (v 5.0.1, the others are on CD)
Gentoo: 1 CD
PCLinuxOS: 1 CD

So, your initial rant is ... about Knoppix 5.0.1? I am failing to see the problem where distros are available on either CD or DVD as the individual user prefers!

It's more or less a dead or deflated issue now, but no, I was not referring to Knoppix 5.0.1., since Knoppix is general is my favorite distro. I had Fedora Core 5 in mind.

By the way..er, Acid: you wanted to know what's wrong with FC5. Look at the reviews on this site of FC5. At least nine of the twenty-seven reviews are 5 or lower, and suggest that FC5 took a step back from FC4. My experience corroborates that. It had trouble mounting my CD drive, and completely refused to look in my Windows partition; and I can't even start trying to run my wireless network, because my saved copy of Ndiswrapper was on the Windows partition (that's why I was particularly vexed by its refusing to look there). ...Er, I suppose I could have transferred Ndiswrapper to the FC5 parition via floppy disk, if it would fit, but I didn't think of that. And unlike most distros I've tried, I paid for the copy of FC5! What a waste of money.