Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:54:40 -0800 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Glen Barber <glen.j.barber@gmail.com> Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fenestrating the Handbook memstick section Message-ID: <xeiapqqtn5xr.fsf@kobe.laptop> In-Reply-To: <4D34F8B3.1010803@gmail.com> (Glen Barber's message of "Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:19:31 -0500") References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1101171342240.13096@wonkity.com> <4D34F8B3.1010803@gmail.com>
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On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:19:31 -0500, Glen Barber <glen.j.barber@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1/17/11 8:41 PM, Warren Block wrote: >> Currently, the Handbook only shows how to create a FreeBSD install >> memstick by using dd(1). This leaves the Windows crowd unaddressed. >> >> I've done some searching for a Windows utility to write memory sticks >> that is freely available and simple to use. > > Thank you for looking into this, by the way. Indeed, thanks!!! >> There's a dd for Windows (http://www.chrysocome.net/dd), but it's >> difficult to use due to target names that are hard to associate with >> drive letters, and just plain complex. For example, >> \\?\Device\Harddisk5\Partition0. We should aim for user-friendliness, at least if we want to make sure that the Windows crowd doesn't start screaming "Those crazy people with the crazy BSD image stuff", when they hear about the memstick image. So, I'd probably avoid this option. >> There's http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm, which is general-purpose >> and shareware. >> >> Finally, there's https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer, which is >> Image Writer for Windows or win32diskimager depending on how you look. >> Done by the Ubuntu folks. GPLV2. Easy to use. The best option I've >> found so far. > > IMHO, this sounds like the easiest option for the end-user. > >> The questions: >> >> Is there a better Windows utility for writing a memory stick image? >> >> If we recommend Image Writer for Windows, seems like it would be polite >> to ask the project before taking advantage of their download capacity. >> Or would it be better to have a copy hosted on a FreeBSD server? > > I'm curious what the general consensus is on this last question myself. I don't know of a better one. I wouldn't worry too much about the downloads either. It's a public web server, hosting a utility that is supposed to be *useful* to people. The number of FreeBSD users who will download this are going to be a _subset_ of all the users who install FreeBSD, so what sort of user are we looking at? A few thousands every year? I'm guessing pretty much any modern web server can handle that load and not even blink.
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