Oracle Linux 5 Update 2 (first DVD release) The first DVD writable DVD drives and media were Single Layer with a capacity of about 4.7GBīelow is a chart that shows how the x86_64 version of the ISO image has grown over the years:
Eventually, dealing with multiple CDROM images became unwieldy and the DVD image became very common. Oracle Linux 3, 4, and early versions of 5 were distributed with multi-volume CDROM images. Early Linux distributions came on multiple 'floppy' disks! The first convenient common media was the CD-R with a capacity of about 650MB. Recent versions of Oracle Linux contain more packages than older ones.Īs Linux grew it became a challenge to contain the distribution within the boundaries of the commonly used media of the time. Recent versions of Linux are now 64-bit binaries only, and those binaries are bigger than their 32-bit predecessors.
Long gone are the days of installing Linux from floppies! As the OS has matured, it has grown up.
