[sf-lug] what (still?) fits on 8cm CD? (was: SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 February 2019)

[Michael Paoli]

What (still?) fits on 8cm CD?

Checking over most of my inventory ...
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:cds_and_images_etc
I find only a handful that fit the 189,000 KiB capacity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM#Capacity

Many/most/all(?) of them being old/obsolete versions, ... however
there may be some distro(s) and the like and/or flavors thereof
(netinstall or similar) that might hint at possibilities where
/maybe/ they still fit the >= 189,000 KiB space requirement.
Anyway, here's what I snagged from my listing:
KiB    |architecture|full descriptor
   9,716|i386     |CentOS-5.5 i386 netinstall
  47,758|i386     |Linuxcare Bootable Toolbox (LBT) 2.0
  58,536|x86      |Gentoo Linux x86 2007.0
116,622|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 102 x86/AMD64
119,362|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 106 x86/AMD64
119,808|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 107 x86/AMD64
122,880|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 108 x86/AMD64
134,144|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 109 x86/AMD64
138,240|x86/AMD64|Finnix version 110 x86/AMD64
163,392|i386     |Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 "Etch" - Official i386  
NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15
173,056|amd64    |Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.5 "Squeeze" - Official amd64  
NETINST Binary-1 20120512-20:40

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 February 2019
> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:33:36 -0800

> Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36 at SDF.ORG):
>
>> Rick M and/or Michael P are welcome to jump in if I'm badly
>> mistaken, but to my admittedly-limited knowledge, there is no
>> "ready-made" "as-is" bootable ISO image of Debian [GNU]/Linux Stable
>> [10] for i386 and amd64 PC architectures that is less than ~290 MiB
>> in size.
>
> Nope.  Spot-on.  The smallest images are the 'netinst' ones.  I have:
>
> Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$ ls -lh *.iso | grep netinst | grep  
> debian | awk '{ print $5 "  " $9 }'
> 326M  debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> 413M  debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-i386-netinst.iso
> Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$
>
> Those are the unofficial images with, as it says on the tin, an
> extensive collection of non-free firmware files added in -- so a bit
> larger than the official ones.  Official Debian's 9.8 netinst ISOs
> appear to be:
>
> 292M  debian-9.8.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> 378M  debian-9.8.0-i386-netinst.iso
>
> ...as seen on
> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/i386/iso-cd/
> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/
>
> (A netinst image contains just the minimal amount of software to start
> the installation and fetch the remaining packages over the Internet from
> the package repos.  It's highly efficient and fast if you have
> broadband; you fetch only what you say to install, getting the current
> versions immediately.)
>
>> Are Debian's downloadable "Tiny CDs, flexible USB sticks, etc."
>> described at the bottom-left of [11] *really* to be considered as
>> already ready-made as-is bootable images that could be directly
>> burned, for example, onto a 210 MiB mini-CD??
>
> Reference at link #11 was to https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst, the
> netinst images -- so no.  I like the netinst images a lot, and they're
> pretty darned small, but are no longer 290MB small.  Though, I must say,
> look like the 64-bit one w/o non-free firmware missed by just a smadge, nei?
>
>> (I'm definitely among those who have some doubts on this latter point :-\)
>>
>> An interesting distro besides the above that "might" be installable
>> or at least usable in some fashion or another via a sub-210 MiB size
>> download and subsequent burn to mini-CD is Alpine Linux [12].
>
>
> Sure.  _That_ is svelte.  And well-respected.  It's kind-of targeted
> as a firewall/router distribution, FWIW, not that it'd be perverse to
> use it for, say, a full-blown server or for embedded systems.  Or
> desktop even, I guess, though it's not a use-case that's likely to be
> wildly popular.
>
>
>> That being said above, since a "Network connection is required" to
>> get started using Alpine Linux Standard as per [13], this required
>> network connection is most likely via wired/Ethernet and _not_ via
>> wireless -- IMO most likely due to all the extra drivers that using
>> wireless adapters and their cumulative diskspace requirements likely
>> entail.
>
> Doing some reading (http://lists.alpinelinux.org/alpine-devel/6008.html),
> looks like the official Alpine Linux ISOs don't include a cache of
> non-free firmware packages, as they wanted the ISOs to be free/libre
> software -- but they have no problem with someone doing a respin to add
> such in.
>
>
>> Which I think would then align with what Bobbie S wrote near
>> the bottom of [14] regarding driver and other updates for using
>> SliTaz Linux 5 in particular, here:
>
> [snip]
>
> Maybe it's just me, but this all seems like a whole lot of difficulty to
> go through, when you could instead put any ISO you like onto a USB flash
> disk and, if you want, unpack any additional non-free firmware files
> you desire into it, to use as needed during installation.
>
> I haven't seen even i386 boxen in long years that cannot boot from USB,
> and suspect any that cannot are _hopelessly_ ancient, but one could
> takes care of that bizarre edge-case by putting Plop Boot Manager on,
> just for giggles, a floppy disk, for purposes of side-booting over to
> USB.
>
> i386 boxen that don't even have USB at all?  Feh.  I'm thinking of the
> Wiley cartoon on the 1st edition of Cheskwick and Bellovin's firewall
> book:  'Must be this tall to storm castle.'
> http://wilyhacker.com/1e/cover.jpg
> http://wilyhacker.com/1e/