Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x

[Matt Emmerton]

> On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 02:05:14AM -0700 I heard the voice of
> > Scott Long, and lo! it spake thus:
> > >
> > > For 5.x we already have a 3rd floppy that is dedicated to modules.
> > > Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well as it should because
there
> > > is no way to activate it during the boot sequence; it can only be used
> > > once sysinstall is running.  Also, it too is nearly overflowing.
> >
> > Well, that's why I suggest more.  Have a "network cards" floppy, and a
> > "mass storage devices" floppy, etc.  We should be able to fit the
> > half-dozen most common network cards, the ata drivers, and a half dozen
> > of the more common SCSI drivers on the boot kernel.  That'll get us far
> > enough to be able to load the drivers off the other disks, as well as
> > install with just that on many systems.
> >
> > It won't necessarily be the prettiest process, but I'm in favor of
> > letting the floppies be a bit ugly, or even explicitly moving them to
> > "experienced users only" status.  I just find them far too convenient,
as
> > well as ubiquitous, to see them sent into the Great Bitbucket In The Sky
> > yet.

This is exactly what Debian does.  I was a bit ticked when I found I had to
make 7 floppy images to get a machine installed, but the important part is
that it worked.

> Well, regardless of how you label it, these floppies still require lots of
> care and feeding in order to work.  We currently have no way to support
> multiple floppies in a convenient way.  This can be fixed in a variety
> of ways that range from fragile hacks to wonderful designs, but it still
> requires someone to put forth the effort.  My offer for a 'floppy
> maintainer' is quite sincere; I hope that someone takes an interest and
> steps up to the challenge.

I myself have 4 machines (out of the 6 in front of me) that are Pentium- or
Pentium II-class machines that cannot boot from CD-ROM or PXE, thus floppies
are my only choice.

Thus, I am genuinely interested in the effort to maintain working floppy
images and can help out -- but not to the point of being "maintainer" yet.
However, I have no experience building releases at all, so someone from re@
will have to help me along.

--
Matt Emmerton