Re: X-servers for Win & Mac Re: Introduction

[Rhandeev Singh <rhandeev@comp.nus.edu.sg>]

> Even if they all did have modems and computers at home.  There is still the
> problem that someone has to pay for the phone lines.  They are much more
> expensive than floppies.  I agree that mounting floppies is indeed a real
> problem.

It can be improved with a little configuration.  For example, Macs
mount/unmount floppies too, and people are generally quite happy with
that, except for the few times that MacOS totally ruins the floppy.
(Thankfully that has not happened on Linux.)

I see it as a user interface issue.  The only difference here is that PCs
don't pop diskettes out of the drive like Macs do.

If you're using a GUI, a simple Tcl/Tk `applet' with one button
(mount/unmount floppy as appropriate) will do.  Lemme know if you'd like a
simple Tcl/Tk script that can do this.  It only takes a few lines of code.

Alternatively, try automount with a 1 second timeout, e.g.

In /etc/auto.master:
	/misc                   /etc/auto.misc  --timeout 1

In /etc/auto.misc:
	floppy         -fstype=auto            :/dev/fd0

And in /mnt/floppy:
	lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   11 Sep 19 16:49 floppy -> /misc/floppy

Frankly, though, I don't see why you'd need any of this with mtools
around.

---
Rhandeev Singh                          rhandeev@comp.nus.edu.sg
Linux User Group                        http://linux.comp.nus.edu.sg
School of Computing                     http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg
National University of Singapore