From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 11 01:20:07 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3680D16A4CE for ; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:20:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.des.no (flood.des.no [217.116.83.31]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBF9E43D3F for ; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:20:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: by smtp.des.no (Pony Express, from userid 666) id C84905327; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:20:03 +0100 (CET) Received: from dwp.des.no (des.no [80.203.228.37]) by smtp.des.no (Pony Express) with ESMTP id 301D9530E; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:19:54 +0100 (CET) Received: by dwp.des.no (Postfix, from userid 2602) id B8FA233C6A; Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:19:53 +0100 (CET) To: Paul Robinson References: <20040108163724.GA26745@lpthe.jussieu.fr> <200401101945.27234.wes@softweyr.com> <400108FC.9010008@iconoplex.co.uk> <200401110048.52747.wes@softweyr.com> <40011237.3000409@iconoplex.co.uk> From: des@des.no (Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?q?Sm=F8rgrav?=) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:19:53 +0100 In-Reply-To: <40011237.3000409@iconoplex.co.uk> (Paul Robinson's message of "Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:07:03 +0000") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.090024 (Oort Gnus v0.24) Emacs/21.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on flood.des.no X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.1 required=5.0 tests=RCVD_IN_SORBS autolearn=no version=2.60 cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 09:20:07 -0000 Paul Robinson writes: > Understood. I just think saying "let's get rid of floppies" is > shooting a dog that happens to be near to hand because you don't like > that dog, to stretch the analogy. I don't think you have any idea how difficult it is (and has been for a couple of years now) just to keep the install floppies alive. The kernel keeps growing, and the amount of "must-have" features (such as acpi) keeps growing, and every time the boot floppies overflow we have to toss out yet another driver that about a dozen people vehemently tell us they can't live without. To rephrase this in terms of your analogy, the dog was hit by a bus two years ago and has been on artificial life support ever since, and it's starting to dawn on us that we can no longer afford the hospital bill. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav - des@des.no