Alternative site to osdisc.com (now that it's closed)

[JohnF]

Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc.
But the pop-up message at that link tells us they've now
gone out of business. Is there some other similar source?
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

[Rich]

JohnF <jo...@pls-c-sig-4-email.com> wrote:
> Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
> I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
> bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc. But the
> pop-up message at that link tells us they've now gone out of
> business. Is there some other similar source?

Back when I had DSL, I never cared about the size of a download. I
just started them up in the background (sometimes throttled so as not
to overwhelm the DSL link) and let them run until they were done.
Yeah, they might take a while to complete, but the DSL link was on, and
the PC was on, anyway, so no big deal in my mind.

Such is the beauty of an OS that can do more than one thing at once.

However, a little bit of googling turned up this:

https://www.linuxcollections.com/

No idea if they are/are not in business anymore.

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 10/26/19 8:44 PM, JohnF wrote:
> Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
> I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
> bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc.
> But the pop-up message at that link tells us they've now
> gone out of business. Is there some other similar source?
>

Well If you are able to find a Linux Users Group in your
area you might find a distro librarian (such as myself) willing
to help you out but that is according to your neighborhood.
So I looked at the online searching with DuckDuckGo
and found this right away< <https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/>

But look at those prices. At my UG* I charge a deposit
of $5 for the provision of a distribution on USB Flash Drive
and often give away a copy of Knoppix to new members. If you
bring back the drive you get your $5 back unless you want an
update written to it.
*San Francisco Linux Users group which I found some 15
years ago by using "shudder" Google and searching on "San Francisco
Linux Users Group".

Happy Halloween!
bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

[dillinger]

On 10/27/19 4:44 AM, JohnF wrote:

> Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
> I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
> bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc.
> But the pop-up message at that link tells us they've now
> gone out of business. Is there some other similar source?
>

Have a look at https://thelinuxshop.co.uk/index.php
Not exactly cheap, but at least it has free shipping in the UK.

[JohnF]

Rich <ri...@example.invalid> wrote:
> JohnF <jo...@pls-c-sig-4-email.com> wrote:
>> Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
>> I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
>> bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc. But the
>> pop-up message at that link tells us they've now gone out of
>> business. Is there some other similar source?

Thanks for your replies and info Rich,
and also thanks Bobbie and Dillinger...

> Back when I had DSL, I never cared about the size of a download. I
> just started them up in the background (sometimes throttled so as not
> to overwhelm the DSL link) and let them run until they were done.

Yeah, I recently did an ~8GB download of slackware/current64, which took
a bit over 24hours total (unthrottled). Somewhat of a pain in the elbow.
And that's what prompted me to go looking for osdisc.com alternatives.
So I'll download again if necessary, but would definitely prefer not.

> However, a little bit of googling turned up this:
> https://www.linuxcollections.com/
> No idea if they are/are not in business anymore.

And...
> Bobbie Sellers <bl...@mouse-potato.com>

> So I looked at the online searching with DuckDuckGo and found
> this right away< <https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/>

> dillinger <dill...@invalid.not>

> Have a look at https://thelinuxshop.co.uk/index.php
> Not exactly cheap, but at least it has free shipping in the UK.

Thanks again, guys. So I checked out all three, not really
exhaustively, but for latest releases and comprehensiveness of
distros, and for my overall evaluation of the sites' look-and-feel.
I'd tentatively rate them
https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/ [best]
https://thelinuxshop.co.uk/
https://www.linuxcollections.com/
But will have to actually try them out (i.e., buy something)
to get a firmer idea. (P.S. looks to me like osdisc.com would've
been the best of all four if it were still in business.)

[Anssi Saari]

JohnF <jo...@pls-c-sig-4-email.com> writes:

> Thanks again, guys. So I checked out all three, not really
> exhaustively, but for latest releases and comprehensiveness of
> distros, and for my overall evaluation of the sites' look-and-feel.
> I'd tentatively rate them
> https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/ [best]
> https://thelinuxshop.co.uk/
> https://www.linuxcollections.com/

Thanks for the list. I also noticed recently osdisc.com had gone out of
business. I have a fairly recent SystemRescueCD from them, I think I've
bought a few USB sticks over the years just because they were available
and cheap. Looking at those prices I guess I'll doing my own from now
on, actually did a GRML install on a USB stick recently. None of those
seem to carry GRML, unfortunately.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 29/10/2019 07.01, JohnF wrote:
> Rich <ri...@example.invalid> wrote:
>> JohnF <jo...@pls-c-sig-4-email.com> wrote:
>>> Rather than downloading several(or more)-GB distros over my dsl line,
>>> I've used https://www.osdisc.com/ to very conveniently acquire
>>> bootable media for various distros, for gnu parted, etc. But the
>>> pop-up message at that link tells us they've now gone out of
>>> business. Is there some other similar source?
>
> Thanks for your replies and info Rich,
> and also thanks Bobbie and Dillinger...
>
>> Back when I had DSL, I never cared about the size of a download. I
>> just started them up in the background (sometimes throttled so as not
>> to overwhelm the DSL link) and let them run until they were done.
>
> Yeah, I recently did an ~8GB download of slackware/current64, which took
> a bit over 24hours total (unthrottled). Somewhat of a pain in the elbow.
> And that's what prompted me to go looking for osdisc.com alternatives.
> So I'll download again if necessary, but would definitely prefer not.

When I was on DSL, I would set the computer to download while I was
sleeping. Who cares if it takes three days?

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Bobbie Sellers]

Last GRML 2018.12. Does not seem to be any news since
then. Other concerns may have intruded on the developer's time.
The shops are likely not interested in a distribution which
may not seem to have support.
osdisc went out of business because of the more widespread
use of high speed lines, i believe.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surprised that the OPs DSL is not even cracking 1Mbps. Either he lives
in a third world country or the USA




--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
foolish, and by the rulers as useful.

(Seneca the Younger, 65 AD)

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 10/29/19 11:33 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Surprised that the OPs DSL is not even cracking 1Mbps. Either he lives
> in a third world country or the USA

I live in USA, and I have a fast Internet connection:

Date Download Upload IP Address Test Server Export All Results
10/4/2019 7:45:44 AM 83.98 Mbps 87.33 Mbps 100.35.165.125 New York
City, NY
10/1/2019 5:17:42 PM 83.84 Mbps 66.32 Mbps 100.35.165.125 Seattle, WA
10/1/2019 5:16:50 PM 79.64 Mbps 65.05 Mbps 100.35.165.125 Los Angeles, CA

Yet when I have Microsoft deliver me updates, it usually requires
several hours to get them, and they seldom exceed 1Mbps even though
Verizon usually delivers 75 Mbps and sometimes quite a bit more.

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question;
the answer is NO.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer
/V\ PGP-Key:166D840A 0C610C8B
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 11:45:02 up 4 days, 11:10, 2 users, load average: 4.95, 4.76, 4.81

[Aragorn]

On 29.10.2019 at 15:33, The Natural Philosopher scribbled:

You mean there's a difference? :p

<ducks behind couch>


--
With respect,
= Aragorn =

[Robert Heller]

DSL in most "rural" areas of eastern USA are under the management of Verizon
and Verizon does as little as it can get away with in terms of maintainence.
Verizon's corp. policy is not to replace cables. Many of those cables fill up
with water when it rains and often phone service becomes poor or even
non-existent. DSL is in fact not often even available in much of the "rural"
areas of eastern USA -- *many* people are stuck with dialup. And the phone
lines are in too poor shape to even support 56K -- 33K is often what you get
on a "good" day.

Many third world countries have much better Internet access than is available
in much of the USA (even in the cities).

>
>
>
>

--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services
hel...@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services

[Computer Nerd Kev]

The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Or in a rural area like me in Australia. Also I don't know how
internet plans work in the US, but based on pricing here, if someone
would need to pay for a higher internet data limit in order to
download large distro images, it might easily be cheaper to buy the
discs instead if they only download a small few distros each year.
Though I don't really know that much about the the new "National
Broadband Network" pricing because it's not coming anywhere near me.

I use mobile broadband and gave up on distros requiring GB+
downloads. The signal will likely drop out at some point/s in the
24hr or whatever download time, so after waiting for a day you
may well compare the checksums and find that the disc image is
corrupted.

Also why are distro images not compressed for downloading? I think
I've only ever found one that was. Is there something preventing a
linuxdistro.iso.xz? That might well open the door to a lot more
distros for me (though to be honest if I really wanted them, I'd find
ways).

Some sellers offer distro DVDs on Ebay as well, eg.:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=slackware

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

[Rich]

Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
> Also why are distro images not compressed for downloading?

For a typical distro, almost all of the component files on the disk
image are already compressed themselves.

> I think I've only ever found one that was. Is there something
> preventing a linuxdistro.iso.xz?

Because, typically, compressing already compressed data does not
produce further compression gains.

[Robert Heller]

OTOH, "Images" for Raspberry/Banana/etc. Pi and Beagleboards, etc. are
compressed. These are not "disks" full of .rpm, .tar.gz, or .deb files, but
are in fact fully unpacked and ready-to-run disk images, so compressing them
makes sense and often very effective:

gollum.deepsoft.com% dir -lh
/scratch/beagle/
total 491M
-rw-r--r--. 1 heller users 491M Apr 12 2019 bone-debian-9.5-iot-armhf-2018-10-07-4gb.img.xz

Expands to a 4gig disk image.

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
> At Tue, 29 Oct 2019 22:41:20 -0000 (UTC) Rich <ri...@example.invalid> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
>> > Also why are distro images not compressed for downloading?
>>
>> For a typical distro, almost all of the component files on the disk
>> image are already compressed themselves.
>>
>> > I think I've only ever found one that was. Is there something
>> > preventing a linuxdistro.iso.xz?
>>
>> Because, typically, compressing already compressed data does not
>> produce further compression gains.
>
> OTOH, "Images" for Raspberry/Banana/etc. Pi and Beagleboards, etc. are
> compressed. These are not "disks" full of .rpm, .tar.gz, or .deb files, but
> are in fact fully unpacked and ready-to-run disk images, so compressing them
> makes sense and often very effective:
>
> gollum.deepsoft.com% dir -lh
> /scratch/beagle/
> total 491M
> -rw-r--r--. 1 heller users 491M Apr 12 2019 bone-debian-9.5-iot-armhf-2018-10-07-4gb.img.xz
>
> Expands to a 4gig disk image.

Ah, that makes sense then because I was thinking of a Raspberry Pi
distro as the one that I did find compressed. I guess I knew it
already too because distros can require more space for installation
than the size of the disc image - I just never made that connection
at download time. Thanks.