Another "which distro" question (install discs... er, disks...)

[ryokimball]

Hey! Sorry for staying away for so long... not that any of you necessarily miss me. I've been busy offline more than anything, though.

Anyways, two questions: "discs" or disks"? I know technically it doesn't matter, but hey, it's pole. Just answer (or don't).

The other: for those "in the know," my room is a Faraday cage (no contact with the outer world...), so the computers (two) that I have in there must be installed without an outside connection. Currently I have Fedora on both machines which covers my technical necessities, but that lacks desired media support and I haven't quite figured out custom repositories for Fedora (if that can be done...). I am considering trying to do that with Arch (I like Arch...) and I am currently looking to download Ubuntu (does it support mp3 out-of-box? Rhetorical question --I'll find out in a few minutes). But what all distros are good for installing from CD/DVD, with no internet connection?

[oz]

Rhetorical question --I'll find out in a few minutes). But what all distros are good for installing from CD/DVD, with no internet connection?

Slackware likes to be installed from CD/DVD.

[questio verum]

Hi Ryokimball!
Good to hear from you again. Whatcha been up to? Aside from spending your time in a Faraday cage? Disc or Disk...? My experience has been that magnetic media are traditionally called disks, whereas optical media are generally called discs. But both terms can be considered correct regardless of media type.

I was surprised to read that disk is actually an American divergence from the British disc, er... sort of. I would have thought it the other way around. Having been beaten severely about the head and shoulders with an English primer for 16-plus years in the US educational system, it's hard to consider any word without also considering it's root. So to me, you can't go wrong with disc, regardless of the media. I think Wikipedia pretty much backs me up on that. Here's what they have to say about it.

As to your second question, I couldn't give you an exhaustive list of distros that include a substantial repository and full install on DVD, but off the top of my head I would list Mandriva, Sabayon, Ubuntu, Debian, and of course, OpenSUSE. Linux Mint is a good choice if you want out-of-the-box mp3 support. I believe Knoppix, Gentoo, and a few others offer an easy roll-your-own-iso option. Perhaps someone more familiar with these distros can speak to that.

qv


p.s. Don't be such a stranger!

[Agent-X]

disk for floppies and other squarish media
disc for circular media

It has to do with the last letter "k" and "c."

Some people use c because it gives the circular appearance of a CD.
A round donut with one bite out of it also looks like a C;
but it is not as good as a cookie.



In all seriousness, I think I saw more of this duality toward the late 1990s when writable CD media were becoming popular. Most people had a cognitive dissonance about using "disc," but I think the mainstream society gained a psychological acceptance of the letter "c" looking somewhat circular, thus using that spelling to describe CD-ROMs. Although there is no agreed-upon spelling, I would most likely consider someone using the term "disc" in reference to some form of optical/circular media.

Oh, what's that? Off-topic?

Puppy Linux.

live-cd lesson!!!
If you jilt the computer like a pinball machine while using a live-CD/DVD you can crash the OS!!!

[Tsarevich]

To the best of my experience:

Disk for Floppies, HDDs, External USB drives
Disc for CD-ROMs, DVDs, all subtypes of CDs and DVDs plus Laser Discs

-------------------------X-------------------------------

Ubuntu will do what you want it to.
No *x distro that I used so far supports MP3 by default instead of *spire. But by installing just XMMS or any MPEG4 layer player, you'd be able to listen to mp3.

Or just Rhythmbox needs MP3 codec (free).

[elija]

Disk is computer related.
Disc for every where else.

How should I vote??

[scrarfussi]

seems like since the advent of computers there are so many new words think the dictionary should ben twice the size it was in the 80s

[cayalee]

lol, maybe the question should be "pole" or "poll"
i dont know why but i always referred to 3 1/2 inch floppys as disks and cds as discs, so considering now the floppy is dead i voted disc.
to answer your other question though i ould definitely recommend suse as they (certainly used to) sell big boxes with instrucion manual/dvds with thousands of packages on so everything you need is on physical media. i hear ubuntu also has a repository disc though "ultimate edition" i believe its called

[techieMoe]

Disk for Floppies, HDDs, External USB drives
Disc for CD-ROMs, DVDs, all subtypes of CDs and DVDs plus Laser Discs

That's the rule of thumb I follow personally.