Subject: Re: Switching i386/amd64 to native CD-based installation?
To: None <tech-install@NetBSD.org, port-i386@NetBSD.org,>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: tech-install
Date: 06/27/2005 12:34:37
[Bang Jun-Young <junyoung@NetBSD.org>]

> Will anybody be unhappy if i386/amd64 distributions are switched to
> native CD-ROM based installation from the current floppy emulation
> based?

Well, it'd mean that I'd have a laptop that I *couldn't* install on
even if I wanted to.  (I don't expect to want to anytime soon.  But the
machine does have a floppy drive but no CD - a CD drive may exist for
the machine, but, as far as I know, I don't have one.)

> I'm strongly skeptical that there are users remaining who want to use
> floppies rather than CD-ROMs for installation on those ports (most
> i386/amd64 machines here in Korea are even shipped without floppy
> drives).

And only new machines matter?  Surely you don't really mean that, but
it seems to be what you're saying.

[Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>]

> And of course some "tiny" floppy images should probably be kept for a
> very long time still, to support "old" machines!

> This shouldn't happen as a "let's drop install floppy support and do
> only CDs now"-switch!

I greatly fear that - as has happened with other code - as soon as CD
is the default, the floopy support will promptly bitrot, and we will
actually lose working floppy installs almost immediately.

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