Ubuntu

wy dont they compress ubuntu for faster download

Asked by gabriel

ubuntu should be compressed for download it would go a lot faster
like put it in a .rar

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#1

Just a guess but maybe something to do with proprietary formats and wanting to avoid them. Also maybe ease of use. Many people have a hard enough time understanding how to burn an ISO. Having to unrar it first would just add to the confusion. However, for a relatively fast download use the torrent option. I can usually download in about an hour or less.

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Vojtěch Trefný (vojtech.trefny) said : 		#2

I think it is because ISO is also some kind of archive and it is impossible to archive it twice... (but I'm not sure, it is only my idea).

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Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said : 		#3

That's because uncompressing a so large archive requires a lot of CPU and time. A compress algorithm such as rar is very slow! :)

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#4

Just to clarify, an ISO is not an archive. It's an exact copy of a CD (or DVD) image and not compressed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image for more info.

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Gord Allott (gordallott) said : 		#5

the ubuntu live cd employs a compressed filesystem called squashfs, thus compressing an already compressed bit of data doesn't make any sense (and can even increase the filesize)

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