How do I burn the Ubuntu ISO to a CD?
This was a decision made some time ago by Canonical, the corporate backers for Ubuntu.
See: OMG! Ubuntu > It’s Official: The Ubuntu LiveCD is Dead
The news came from Canonical’s Kate Stewart on the Ubuntu Mailing list, who wrote:
There is no longer a traditional CD sized image, DVD or alternate image, but >> rather a single 800MB Ubuntu image that can be used from USB or DVD.
I stopped burning a CD (or DVD) for ISO files about 2 years ago.
A cheap 2GB Flash USB drive is 3-4 times faster for installs, and can be repeatedly reused (for later releases).
The ubuntu page mentions that 12.10 can no longer be written on a CD because of its size.
Also, there's no such thing as a "CD iso image", it's just an iso image, so just write it on a DVD and you'll be fine.
There is also a "mini.iso" network install that will burn to CD and will download the needed packages from the internet.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/12.10/
This will not give you a live CD but will give you a way to install Ubuntu with a CD and your internet.
There were many talks about the final size for Ubuntu 12.10. The decision was made that the CD size was not capable of handling the amount of packages and ideas that the developers wanted to put in 12.10, like for example Python3 and all other packages related to it. Additionally, since both DVD and USB are more used than common CD (Not all parts of the world, but most of them), the final decision was then made to start building against the DVD and USB sizes, starting with a size around 800MB, which eventually ended around 700MB but still, a couple of megabytes above the biggest size for a common CD disc (Assuming you are using a 650 or 700 size one).
So for 12.10, you can either use a DVD disc or USB (Pen drive, Flash drive...). This gives you 2 benefits:
- Faster loading than CD (Since reading a DVD or USB is much faster than a CD)
- Faster installation than CD (Same reason as point 1)
Note that this only affects the Desktop version, since the Server version still supports a CD size. Also note that this talk was also mentioned for 12.04 but in that case, they waited for 12.10 instead of applying the size change in 12.04.
In my personal opinion, with the increase in size of many programs, for example games (That even go out to sizes of bluray), and large download installer (Like in steam), or OS updates like the Windows 7 SP1, sizes bigger than 1 GB are more common. So it was just a matter of time before this really needed decision was made, which should help in promote more options for end users (Like me trying to see aptitude implemente again ^^). Hope this answer helps you.