How much room do language packs take?

Question

In order to save space, is it possible to make the CD English-only, and put the other languages only on the DVD?

Answer 1

My rough estimate is that the language data is occupying 600 MB on the DVD.

Not all files are in packages. Many are inside a squashfs as one flat file-system:

• On the DVD they occupy about 300 MB (which becomes 822 MB after extraction).

Packages (~ 300MB):

• Most of it the language related packages are of the "localization" section (195 MB)
• Packages of the section "translations" (55 MB)
• They depend on spelling dictionaries and word lists (29 MB)

Here is how I counted:

wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/dvd/current/maverick-dvd-amd64.iso    
mkdir mnt
sudo mount -o loop ./maverick-dvd-amd64.iso ./mnt

# Flat files from Squashfs
sudo mount -o loop ./mnt/casper/filesystem.squashfs ./mnt-dvd2/
sudo find mnt-dvd2/ -type d -a \( -name '*langpack*' -prune -o -name '*language*' \) > files
du -hsc `cat files` # 822 MB uncompressed
tar czf files.tar.gz `cat files` # Very rough approximation of squashfs compression
ls -lh files.tar.gz # (305 MB)

# Localization section packages (195 MB):
for i in `find ./mnt/ -name *.deb`; do dpkg -I $i | grep -q "Section: localization" && echo $i ; done | xargs du -hsc

# Translations section packages (55 MB):
for i in `find ./mnt/ -name *.deb`; do dpkg -I $i | grep -q "Section: translations" && echo $i ; done | xargs du -hsc

# Spelling Dictionaries and Word Lists packages (29 MB):
for i in `find mnt/ -name *.deb`; do dpkg -I $i | grep Provides | egrep -q '(wordlist)|(dictionary)|(spell-)' && echo $i ; done  | xargs du -hsc

Details are here http://codepad.org/vVfI44gw

Answer 2

Indeed, CDs already do not contain language packs other than English. The language choices you see on CD is just for the translations of the installation process' strings. For the actual language packs of an Ubuntu system other than English to be installed, you should either have a working internet connection during the installation or you should install from a DVD or you should install language packs later.

Its officially stated as below:

DVD downloads

Don't be confused, even though DVDs can hold far more data than the typical Ubuntu CD, the main benefit of the DVD downloads is to get access to all of the available language packs. Most people will be fine with the standard CD installer. There are fewer download locations for the DVD images and this list is updated less frequently than for the CD images.

Answer 3

Yes it'd be possible to make the CD smaller that way. Are you worried that language packs are taking up space on the installed system? Only the language you choose as default is installed by default. Not all of what's on the CD ends up on the system.

Answer 4

My rough estimate is that the language data is occupying 30 MB on the CD.

The CD does not have any .deb packages related to language, everything is in the squashfs filesystem.

Here is how I counted:

wget http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/ubuntu//maverick/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-amd64.iso

mkdir mnt-cd mnt-cd2
sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-10.10-desktop-amd64.iso ./mnt-cd/
sudo mount -o loop mnt-cd/casper/filesystem.squashfs  ./mnt-cd2/
sudo find mnt-cd2/ -type d -a \( -name '*langpack*' -prune -o -name '*language*' \) > files2

du -shc `cat files2`
149K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-en-AU@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
149K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-en-CA@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
149K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-en-GB@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
148K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-en@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
159K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-es-AR@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
163K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-es-CL@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
160K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-es-ES@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
161K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-es-MX@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
159K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-pt-BR@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
160K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-pt-PT@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
148K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions/langpack-xh@firefox-3.6.ubuntu.com
5.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/lib/language-selector
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-en
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-en-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-es
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-es-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-en
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-en-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-es
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-es-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-pt
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-pt-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-xh
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-gnome-xh-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-pt
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-pt-base
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-xh
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-pack-xh-base
14K mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-selector
13K mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-selector-common
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-support-en
1.5K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/doc/language-support-writing-en
25M mnt-cd2/usr/share/gnome/help-langpack
788K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs
63K mnt-cd2/usr/share/language-selector
41K mnt-cd2/usr/share/language-support
54M mnt-cd2/usr/share/locale-langpack
279K    mnt-cd2/usr/share/omf-langpack
81M total

tar czf files2.tar.gz `cat files2`
ls -lh files2.tar.gz # 32 MB