A question about multiple boot options and live boot iso images

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2019 at 00:34, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:

> And, that is designated as a dual boot DVD - Linux Format issue July 2008.

Bret, that is ELEVEN YEARS OLD. It is hopelessly obsolete and you
might as well throw it away.

Ubuntu was 2y old when that came out. It fitted on 1 CD and had tons
of room to spare so all the main apps also had Windows versions
included on the CD so you could get a taste.

Ubuntu is now 15y old and a full download, without any Windows apps
because they no longer fit, is nearly 10× the size.

A DVD is 5GB  or so. Some modern distros, if they offer physical media
at all, come on multiple DVDs.

An 8GB USB key now is now AU$ 3:

https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=8gb+usb+drive&s=price-asc-rank&qid=1572605565&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank

That will hold, oh, maybe 2 distros. 3 small ones.

Why would you bother for $3? Is that a good use of your time?

I *know* it's not a good use of mine.

That is considerably less than the cover price of that magazine, in
the unlikely event that that magazine still exists.

I run Ubuntu at home, SUSE at work. I also keep a Mac bootable key
around as I own 4 Intel Macs these days.

My main laptop runs Ubuntu.
My 2 old low-spec experimental ones run Devuan.
My watching-movies-in-bed spare laptop runs Ubuntu, and I'm
experimenting with Deepin. I might even try Elementary.

I have also evaluated a bunch of other distros recently, as I
regularly do. Fedora, Debian 8/9/10, Void, Alpine, Clear Linux, antiX,
MX Linux. I don't keep any of them around on keys. The ISOs are in my
download folder in case I need them. For experimenting, I load them in
VirtualBox VMs, so most of them never get written to physical media
anyway. Why would I waste my time? They only make it onto media if
they pass Stage 1 eval in a VM, and so far, none of the above have
done that.

It is an illusion that you need access to so many. Linux is basically
Linux. They're all the same OS, with minor, almost trivial
differences. I don't need to booth them all on physical machines, or
install them, to know that.


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