FreeBSD Release 8.0 floppy images

[Royce Williams]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 7:08 PM, pluknet <pluknet at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 May 2010 06:05, Joseph Olatt <joji at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> As for floppies building, it was turned off intentionally starting from 8.0.
> See http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base?view=revision&revision=188437

I'm guessing that this because of resource constraints (getting
everything to fit)?  I assume that if it was just that folks weren't
using them, it would be easy to keep them.  A few data points:

* We have some older Dell DRAC systems that don't support PXE very
well, but do support loading remote floppy images.

* There are still folks in countries where computer hardware doesn't
get refreshed as quickly as in the U.S., and floppies are still a
viable install option.

* When I'm not at $WORK, one of my hobbies is restoring old computers
(Whistle Interjets, Qubes, etc.) the way that some people restore old
cars -- with the twist of using modern OSes.  Of course, they can run
NetBSD :-), but freebsd-update is a killer feature for keeping slower
systems patched.  Of course, some of them don't support floppies,
either.

In practice, once the initial install is done, floppies aren't needed.
 And we can always pop out the drive, and put it in a system that
supports CD booting and install from there.  But it's more work. :-)

Royce