Will natty be distributed still on a cd?

The plan is to ship Natty on a CD. However, the addition of Unity, GTK3 and Banshee means that other aspects of the CD footprint need to be optimized, so that it can still fit on to a CD.

There is a blueprint which is driving this work: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/performance-desktop-n-install-footprint. Some things which might be removed from the CD include upstream changelogs and Perl

I spoke with Martin Pitt about this specific issue at UDS last week.

Yes, CD's will still be the primary distribution media for Natty. There is already a DVD version with additional software, but the development team considers the CD important. Many users download the distro as an ISO; DVD ISOs take a lot longer to download. Martin also shared his opinion that the space limitation of the CD forces the team to be efficient and selective in what they include, keeping the distro lean and mean.

I've heard proposals rather than a DVD image, to move to a 1G usb stick type of distribution. However, Martin has further ideas on how to cut more fat out of our existing stuff (like dropping changelogs in packages, trimming down what all's included with open office, and so on), so I think until all those ideas are exhausted we won't see ubuntu changing the standard target media type.

(Personally, I favor the idea of having a 'core' cd and an 'applications' cd, but I think I may be alone in this opinion.)