Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:19:27 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> To: Martin Nilsson <martin@gneto.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x Message-ID: <20040110071927.GT25474@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <3FFF23E4.8090803@gneto.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0401091252150.48456-100000@InterJet.elischer.org> <3FFF23E4.8090803@gneto.com>
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On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 10:57:56PM +0100, Martin Nilsson wrote: >This discussion is just like when the i386 support was removed from the >GENERIC kernel, a lot of noise about old systems that wouldn't be able >to run (or benefit) from FreeBSD 5 anyway. There's a big jump between i386 systems and Pentium I/II systems. I agree that any "standard" i386 syystem would be very unlikely to be able to run a generic FreeBSD kernel - the ones that are left are in embedded systems where they need customised install environments already. An old P-I or P-II system is still perfectly adequate to run FreeBSD - and will be for some time yet. They make ideal firewalls, print servers, terminal servers, low-end fileservers etc. (My home firewall is a 486). I agree that you wouldn't want to run OpenOffice or Mozilla on one but that doesn't make them unusable. >I fail to see the difference in required labour between creating two >floppies or a CD-R/RW disc. Most new machines ship with CD-RW drives >today, the only boxes that can't boot from a CD are early Pentium1 class >and frankly why run 5.x or 6.x on those? In a corporate environment, machines are very likely to not include a CD-RW (and might not even include a CD-ROM). As for why run 5.x, how about: 1) because you want some of the features in 5.x - a fileserver could benefit enormously from ACLs, UFS2 and snapshots (to name a few) even if it's only an old P-I. 2) for support. 4.x will probably be officially de-supported sometime in 2005. At that point, I either need to accept the overhead of handling (eg) security fixes myself or migrate to 5.x Peter
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