Re: SEUL: hardware detection

[Rick Jones <rickya@siservices.net>]

William T Wilson wrote:
> 
> On 18 Jan 1998 john@dhh.gt.org wrote:
> 
> > 1) Space.  The Linux kernel leaves little room on a floppy for anything
> >    else.
> 
> My kernels usually run about 400K.  And that's for a medium-sized
> monolithic kernel.  Besides, the user will be loading a CD or an NFS mount
> anyway (those who suggest we make the distribution floppy-installable are
> catering to a market that would probably rather use Suckware, er,
> Slackware anyway).

Most, if not all, distributions are floppy installable.  Debian is
floppy installable.  You are saying that by insuring a person without a
CDROM or NFS can install the dis' that it makes it a lesser quality? 
Sure, if it is a CDROM version of the dis it should take advantage of
that but floppy installation should be available.  As stated before, if
somebody wants to try the dis' on an old 486 w/out a CDROM or network
connection before putting it on their main machine, they are SOL.  Is
that your point of view?

> > 2) Rawrite. A FreeDOS based install would not require perfect floppies and
> >    could be put on a formatted floppy with ordinary tools.
> 
> I don't know why you are worried about 'perfect' floppies.  I think it is
> reasonable to assume that the user will have floppies without errors on
> them.  If they can't even get error-free floppies they will never manage
> to successfully run linux no matter how simple we make it.  Besides, I
> never found rawrite difficult to use.

Because, as stated in the doc's, Linux is less forgiving of floppy
imperfections than DOS is.  I have seen it myself.  DOS checks the disk
and it's fine but Linux doesn't like it.  I've put Linux on a floppy and
used it and had it later say there are errors, check it in DOS and it
says it's fine.  That's what he means by perfect floppies.

> As long as we are going to have to write our own disk defragger anyway, we
> have little reason to fuss with DOS at all.  But if we are to run Windows
> based programs to "prepare" a DOS based system for use, then we will not
> need boot floppies at all.