cvs commit: src/release/alpha drivers.conf

[Wilko Bulte]

On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 10:28:05PM +0700, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 09:22:49AM +0300, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 08:39:30PM -0700, Jon Mini wrote:
> > > Robert Watson [rwatson at FreeBSD.org] wrote :
> > > > I think they'll be needed for i386 for a while yet, but when it comes to
> > > > the newer 64-bit platforms, I tend to agree.  I don't even know if you can
> > > > buy a sparc64 box with a floppy drive at this point...  It's hard for
> > > > me to imagine anyone shipping an ia64 or amd64 machine with a floppy
> > > > disk drive but without a bootable CDROM...
> > > 
> > > The last time I used a boot floppy was over a year ago when I had
> > > made some changes to the boot code and needed to make sure it still
> > > worked for floppies.
> > > 
> > > I can see the argument for supporting floppies on i386, but future
> > > platforms don't require it. I think that these days it is harder
> > > to find a floppy than a blank CDR, but then maybe that's because I
> > > have an Apple laptop.
> > > 
> > Not everyone has a CD-R/RW burner, you know that?  I'm more
> > in a mood to remove the support for modern drivers from BOOTMFS
> > and driver floppies, assuming that if one has a modern enough
> > hardware she also have a CD-ROM drive.  Killing functionality
> > like this would just decrease the number of potential FreeBSD
> > installations (not to say users).
> 
> I second this.  Floppies are going to be in use for quite a long time
> just yet.  Lots of people prefer to install from FTP while booting from
> floppies to save the disc for something more useful than bootstrap
> platform for one-time installation.

<SIGH!!!>

David refers to the FreeBSD/alpha port. If someone would care to verify
their facts one would know that DEC never even considered floppy as a
distribution medium. For exactly the reasons we see right now. We already
had to axe support for several server models from the bootfloppys.

PLEASE TAKE THIS ${DEITY}forsaken discussion onto -chat, this is of
no use here.

Wilko

-- 
|   / o / /_  _   		wilko at FreeBSD.org
|/|/ / / /(  (_)  Bulte