Well, actually they *are* compressed. More accurately, the floppy images
contain pieces of gzipped tar files. I've found that compressing them
yields very little. Much of the large size is a result of the fact that
we don't yet have shared libraries...
Of course, you don't need ALL of BLADE. In particular, all you *really*
need to get started is the boot floppy, the root floppy, and the 8 "b"
floppies. In addition, you want the "d" and "k" floppy sets if you're
going to do software development (another 9 disks).
Consult the README file in the BLADE directory for a more detailed
roadmap of what's actually there.
Of course, if you want to make installation much more convenient, order
Yggdrasil's latest "Linux Internet Archives" disks. US$19.95 gets you
a 5-disk set, and a snapshot of the Digital Linux-Alpha archive is
on disk 5. You'll need to make two floppies from the CD (boot & root),
and you'll have to download two floppies from dec.com (cdi1 & cdi2), but
after that you can install the rest directly from CD-ROM.
I believe there's also a European mirror of the Digital gatekeeper
site, but I don't know the URL off the top of my head... if nobody
else speaks up I'll go look it up...
-- Jim Paradis (paradis@amt.tay1.dec.com) "It's not procrastination, Digital Equipment Corporation it's my new Just-In-Time (508)952-4047 Workload Management System!"