Knoppix in 2004: http://media.lug-marl.de/doc/fsub-edu-knoppix/KNOPPIX/index_...

It had room for "Edutainment", "Emulators", "Toys" and "Development": http://img33.photobucket.com/albums/v98/prodmaster/TONS_OF_A...

Exactly what I was thinking. Did Ubuntu stop shipping their OS's on 700 meg CDs? When did that happen?

A couple of years ago.

If that is true, the message on this page is hilarious:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

I quote: "Warning: This image is oversized (which is a bug) and will not fit onto a standard 703MiB CD. However, you may still test it using a DVD, a USB drive, or a virtual machine."

I guess it's not a high-priority bug then :)

Tangentially, there are still netinstall (mini.iso) and Lubuntu Alternate images (which allow to install a basic command-line system and go from there) with a text-based installer which DO fit on a CD.

I am intrigued too - what's taking up all the space? Hires desktop images or something?

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the space and how it is used.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the increase in scripting language usage and maybe even better debugging support were partially at fault here.

That seems reasonable. If more default apps depend on a full python/ruby install to operate, that would certainly have an impact on the overall size of the image. Also, mono is used in many desktop apps now.

My (total) guess would just be lots of packages, and the packages themselves have grown larger.

This made me wonder how Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux are doing these days:

http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Starte...

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

support for wider range of hardware? backwards compatibility? the former has certainly improved a lot over the last couple of years