[ubuntu-za] Sharing a hdd cross-country

[Wesley Werner]

Hello all,

William, this is related to you asking donating hdd's in DBNLUG for Ubuntu
and repos. I have an idea and am posting it here to reach a more
country-wide group. This is the proposal, I'd like to see what interest
there is.

# The drive share project

It's not easy to get new Operating Systems or software Repositories on
_limited bandwidth_. There are many of us in beautiful South Africa who
would love to receive a disk filled with Free Software, I certainly would!

I have the idea to donate a HDD to be carted around the country in the
spirit of spreading more Free stuff. Everyone likes free stuff! This is
version 1 of the idea, right now I don't know how well this will work so
please give your input.

The base of the disk contents will be GNU / Linux distributions. There will
be a designated directory for user contributed content too.

## Disk

One 500 GB SATA drive, formatted as UDF, with a directory structure
organized for OS's and software.

Why UDF? Even though it is widely used by CD/DVD media the specification
allows for HDD's.

* Because it was designed for information exchange.
* Because it is an open standard.
* Because of 64-bit file size.
* Because of unicode file names.

I'd love to hear criticism of my fs choice, and am open to all suggestions
and alternatives.

I think it would be nice if we can get an enclosure for the disk, it would
certainly help connecting it up to your PC's.

## Transport

Logistics would be the hardest part to coordinate and fund. If I was a
millionaire... I'd buy everyone DSL instead ;)

A courier will cost some monies, and I am uncertain how to spread these
costs. It does come to mind the person receiving pays COD, and if there is
a group of you in a region, split the delivery cost and then shift the disk
between each other. How does this sound?

A quick search shows postnet-to-postnet costs R99 for the first 2kg, there
is the packaging detail too (air tight required?). Thus if its
pay-before-post it works out each person pays for the next delivery. That
means I get to pay the first delivery :)

## Schedule

We need to draw up a list of people who would like the disk, together with
a loose timeline to keep a decent schedule. Is 2 weeks per person enough
time? Listing the schedule to an optimized path is a heck of a good idea
too in reducing transport costs.

That's the basic idea, loves? flames? that is all.


--
Wesley
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