I know for a fact, that Live CD versions of distros like Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo Linux, Salix, Ubuntu and on embedded distributions such as the OpenWrt and DD-WRT router firmware use SquashFS. But I was convinced, that optical media is practically bound to ISO9660 or UDF.
I was thinking, that it might be a good idea to use SquashFS for recovery partitions, as it works well on hard drives as well.
Another idea I had was: how about using it on other optical media? Most CD/DVD/BD-R is WORM anyway, so using SquashFS should be a step forward, given the transparent compression and all. I don't know if that would actually work though.
How do those non-UDF/ISO9660 filesystems on optical media work? Does it work anywhere else as well?
Best Answer
You can put any filesystem on any block device you like. ISO9660 or UDF are generally used on optical media because that is what is usually expected. For instance, for the bios to boot from the cd, it must be in iso9660. Last time I tried, Windows ( XP ) wouldn't read UDF except on optical media, even though it seems to be a perfectly good fs to use on flash drives since it has the ability to store linux permissions but can also be recognized by windows ( just not on flash drives ). Rather silly of Microsoft to refuse to read it on flash drives if you ask me.