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

William Grim wgrim at siue.edu
Sun Jan 11 11:13:11 PST 2004


Marco van de Voort wrote:

>>I also don't think it's the issue that needs to be dealt with - 
>>distribution is much, much, MUCH bigger an issue than "shall we get rid 
>>of floppies"? I sent this to the list before, but it got ignored, so 
>>I'll send it again, where Jordan points out we have bigger issues to 
>>deal with when discussing the "floppy disk problem" whilst discussing 
>>libh:- (http://rtp1.slowblink.com/~libh/sysinstall2/improvements.html):
>>
>>"As I mentioned in Section 2.3, one of the more annoying problems with
>>FreeBSD's current distribution format is the dividing line between
>>distributions and packages. There should really only be one type of
>>"distribution format" and, of course, it should be the package (There Can
>>Be Only One). Achieving this means we're first going to have to grapple
>>with several problems, however:
>>
>>First, eliminating the distribution format means either teaching the
>>package tools how to deal with a split archive format (they currently do
>>not) or divorcing ourselves forever from floppies as a distribution
>>medium. This is an issue which would seem an easy one to decide but
>>invariably becomes Highly Religious(tm) every time it's brought up. In
>>some dark corner of the world, there always seems to be somebody still
>>installing FreeBSD via floppies and even some of the fortune 500 folks can
>>cite FreeBSD success stories where they resurrected some old 386 box (with
>>only a floppy drive and no networking/CD/...) and turned it into the star
>>of the office/saved the company/etc etc. That's not to say we can't still
>>bite that particular bullet, just that it's not a decision which will go
>>down easily with everyone and should be well thought-out."
>>
>>And I have to say, I agree. If abondoning floppies is part of some
>>well-thought-out and well-planned package management strategy, I'm all for
>>it. Otherwise, let sleeping dogs lie?
>>    
>>
>
>It isn't as far as I can understand from that link. JKH is talking about
>doing floppy only install
>
>(....some old 386 box (with only a floppy drive and no networking/CD/...) and
>turned it into the star of the office/saved the company/etc etc...)
>
>not loading an installation kernel and /stand from floppy and then transfer to
>network/cd later.
>
>This because when then base/packages need to fit on floppy. This isn't necessary
>for the current two-flop, then CD install which is discussed now. 
>
>P.s. for the record, I prefer Slackware's approach to floppy booting.
>Multiple cut down bootsets (SCSI, NET etc) with the ability to simply
>extract extra kernel modules from CD to a floppy (on a separate machine) and
>load them from floppy while still in the initial system ramdisk (before
>mounting CD). The loading/mounting etc must be done by hand, no extra
>new functionality required.
>
>Maybe the basic idea should be to forget the equivalence of floppy and cd
>boot, and deliver a set of kernel modules on CD, and a few basic boot/root
>floppies, and for the rest let users create their own custom driver discs,
>and do some extra work to keep their floppy boot running.
>
>That ends the one boot/root for all idea, but is maybe more flexible, ( didn't
>have to make something with custom kernel to install my Proliant 1500, but
>only select the right kernel disc and copy some extra kernel moduless to an empty
>flop) and at the same time decrease release engineering on the floppies.
>
>I think this is a good compromise:  Keep floppy option open, but shift some
>burden to the users.
>
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>  
>
This idea dawned on me a few moments ago:

If it's really such a big deal to get rid of floppy support, how about 
we get rid of it and make sure an older version of FreeBSD 4.x/5.x is 
always available for download?  This way, floppy users could install an 
older version of the OS and cvsup to the latest version they want.

I see the above as a decent compromise.  This way, we no longer have to 
support newer floppy editions, but we leave people with floppy drives an 
option to perform the installation.

What do you think?

-- 
William Michael Grim
Student, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Unix Network Administrator, SIUE, Computer Science dept.
Phone: (217) 341-6552
Email: wgrim at siue.edu




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