Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 12:24:30 +0100 From: Piotr Lukawski <plukawski@googlemail.com> To: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> Cc: andyjhiscock@yahoo.com, herbert langhans <herbert.raimund@gmx.net>, questions@freebsd.org, perryh@pluto.rain.com Subject: Re: freebsd install from floppy Message-ID: <c1c87c5a1003060324g55a5cfbbo4de8cc87cd244816@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4B92265E.5030109@infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <c1c87c5a1003030433g43d2bc3ak3cda4822eb4b2cbd@mail.gmail.com> <d7195cff1003032051ub0bc72fi6c91164b26af08b3@mail.gmail.com> <c1c87c5a1003051051v65a39c53jd80b2095ceb7c246@mail.gmail.com> <4b921fbe.rSW1F2xbdHLIg6/X%perryh@pluto.rain.com> <4B92265E.5030109@infracaninophile.co.uk>
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In many situations, especially for and old or non standard equipment floppies are the best or even the only solution. Actually if I haven't found the solution to use floppy to install FreeBSD, I would be forced to use another system eg. OpenBSD instead, even if I prefer FreeBSD. The decision to make floppies obsolete is very bad, because it is still needed by many people. On 6 March 2010 10:54, Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 06/03/2010 09:26:22, perryh@pluto.rain.com wrote: > > I seem to remember something about the floppy images being dropped > > because few current (or even recent) systems have a floppy drive at > > all, much less a bootable one. > > Yeah, but the floppy disk drive was already obsolete 10 years ago. It's > just taken this long for it to fall down dead. Good riddance to it. > Why would anyone want an unreliable, slow and tiny capacity device when > you can get GiB capacity USB sticks everywhere nowadays? > > Not providing floppy disk installation images doesn't imply dropping > kernel support for floppy drives. My ancient system has a floppy, and > if I blew the dust out of it and could find some media it should work > just fine with FreeBSD 8.0. > > In fact, if you need to support older equipment, free OSes like FreeBSD > are really your only choice. Drivers for old devices tend to stick > around in the source tree for much longer than in any commercial > offering. They might suffer from bit-rot due to lack of developer > access to samples of kit, but if you really need something like that > fixed you probably could get patches. In fact, I think the primary > reason for dropping old device drivers is usually because they don't > receive any attention during the occasional code refactoring that > occurs: no one complains, and the device sits around unusable or needing > special backwards compatibility shims for a while, then gets quietly > deleted. > > > > > - -- > Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard > Flat 3 > PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate > Kent, CT11 9PW > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAkuSJl4ACgkQ8Mjk52CukIxSWACfSkJ6k09ig0sR5lctO7tooF1k > NnUAnRrWUeDMssvWDx7rvzMgPWb3fHSw > =3zRd > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >
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