Use DVD media to speed up installation
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ubuntu |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I had an idea to help speed up installation of Ubuntu. Still have CD media available as an option, however also distribute DVD images that have the actual data at the end of the disk, where the data transfer speed is the fastest because of angular velocity. I noticed that some Playstation 2 games use this technique even though they will fit on a CD-ROM disk.
DVD media and writers are very cheap nowadays, and chances are if the system can read DVDs it can also write them.
To counteract the extra data at the end of the disk, for internet based distribution, compress it in a ZIP file with minimal compression. Enough so that the null data will be compressed down, but not too much so that it will require compression of the package files that are already highly compressed.
Alternatively, distribute a tool to convert the CD images to DVD images.
According to Wikipedia, the transfer rates are:
16x DVD: ~21MB/s
8x DVD: ~10MB/s
4x DVD: ~5MB/s
52x CD: ~8MB/s
32x CD: ~5MB/s
So transfer rates should increase quite a bit, or at worst stay the same. In reality they should be better as that is the average transfer speed.
As far as I know you could just burn the cd image to a dvd?