Salix OS

... a candidate to replace bashburn. A working package for i486 is available from my repo at people.salixos.org, in case anyone is interested in testing it:

http://people.salixos.org/mimosa/packag ... er/3.2.1.2

Package now submitted at Sourceforge.

I'm really just posting here because gapan asked to be reminded about this

Actually I wonder who still burns data CDs

I do, for two purposes:

1) Salix isos (I must get a spare USB key so I don't need to do this any more);

2) Video and audio (it won't all fit on a hard disk, and anyway, what about backup?)

I recently discovered how to put a cheap hard disk in a case, which might be the solution for 2). What do you do?

1) for installation disks I usually use USB sticks, which I have anyway. Also the cheapest sticks are 2-3 € only.
2) for all data storage I'm using hard disks because they are rewritable and save ages of time compared to optical media.

Which benefits do you have by using CDs/DVDs? I'm just interested.

PS: Of course I still use CDs for CD Audio.

In a broader context (not just Salix typical "home" user),...

_ The price of optical media and USB drives against income varies a lot.

_ Other users might say that audio CDs are useless now with MP3 players, smartphones and other alternatives.

_ Older hardware may easily welcome CD drives and not so much USB drives (although, there are ways to circumvent this limitation too)

_ When you want a "universal" method to save data in such a way that it guarantees that nobody can tamper with it, a write-once optical media will give you a cheap option for several years.

So, it is being used less than before, but it is still being used anyway.

Which benefits do you have by using CDs/DVDs?

Apart from the points raised by Adys, I think maybe none. That is, if I got myself organised and maybe bought a bigger drive, I could have a plugin multimedia library. Maybe I'd keep CD/DVD copies as a backup rather than a third hard disk. In Brazil, DVDs are cheaper per GB for sure, but they scratch.

I quite like having a pile of DVDs on the shelf, but that's just habit. Their cluttered physicality is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. I might lose some (through scratching or just because I'm messy) but most will still be there, whereas if a burglar steals my external HD, that's it.

One thing I'd like to do is RAID, but would need a better motherboard. Also, while it protects against disk failure, it doesn't help with theft or water damage. Indeed I'd add that to Adys's list: some parts of the world are more unstable than others, and that's a reason to favour cheap, simple and distributed options. I'd never buy a smartphone here, for instance.

Adys wrote:_ The price of optical media and USB drives against income varies a lot.

Of course I can only speak for German prices, but here it's like this: 100 CD-R or 100 DVD-R cost about 20 € (without jewel cases, so I still have to spend money for a suitcase or jewel cases). This results in 285 €/TB for CD-R and about 40 €/TB for DVD-R, which is the same I have to spend for hard disks.

_ Other users might say that audio CDs are useless now with MP3 players, smartphones and other alternatives.

That's true. But still my car audio system (2003) wants them and I won't buy a newer system for 2 reasons: it is not integrated in my car and it still won't play all my media files.

_ Older hardware may easily welcome CD drives and not so much USB drives (although, there are ways to circumvent this limitation too)

I think it's hard to find such hardware That must be some Pentium 1 running Windows 95.

_ When you want a "universal" method to save data in such a way that it guarantees that nobody can tamper with it, a write-once optical media will give you a cheap option for several years.

That's a good point. But remember: nowadays cheap, low quality optical mediums cannot be trusted to save data over several years. While my first days high price Verbatim CD-Rs are still readable the cheap ones all have died. I'd even trust a cheap hard drive more. Of course there are also higher quality optical mediums (e.g. I've always made good experiences with Taio Yuden CD-R, but these easily cost the doubled price).

So, it is being used less than before, but it is still being used anyway.

Everybody has other use cases, I just was keen on the reason why nowadays optical media still is used

mimosa wrote:One thing I'd like to do is RAID, but would need a better motherboard. Also, while it protects against disk failure, it doesn't help with theft or water damage. Indeed I'd add that to Adys's list: some parts of the world are more unstable than others, and that's a reason to favour cheap, simple and distributed options. I'd never buy a smartphone here, for instance.

RAID helps avoiding data loss by defect hard drives, but it's also intended to avoid server down times. RAID never replaces a backup! Don't think about theft or water damage here. More than likely it's the user who deletes his data by accident. Let me also tell you a problem with your distributed option: go and find the files you need in case of accident On which media is it? And is it the most recent version? With hard drives you can do backups fast, often, automated and maybe most important you can have several versions one one storage. rsync is your friend here