Date: Sun, 05 Feb 1995 21:18:29 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> To: Stephen McKay <syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, Jeremy Chatfield <jdc@crab.xinside.com> Subject: Re: sup: Ok, I'm gonna do it. Message-ID: <4920.792047909@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 05 Feb 95 22:32:03 %2B1000." <199502051232.WAA05005@orion.devetir.qld.gov.au>
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> But, the proposal is to tie our installation mechanism or perhaps our system > adminstration/setup system to VGA hardware. For me, and those like me, who > collect raggedy old scraps, and retired PC's, and test FreeBSD on them, or > build special purpose FreeBSD boxes out of them, this means tossing out > half of them because they have EGA or MONO video cards. Damn shame, and a > total waste. Look, kindness to old hardware is well and good but you need to draw the line somewhere when it comes to retarding progress for it. Just as you can't give `full service' to someone with a very small disk (they're not going to be able to take advantage of your sources, or perhaps X, or the ports, or ... and thus will perceive FreeBSD very differently) so you're not going to be able to support the more advanced features on aging hardware. That's just the breaks. Nobody said that the traditional command-line tools wouldn't be still supported - people with specialized configurations will still be able to type ifconfig, netstat, ping, ... by hand without any advanced tool holding their hand or other suitable appendage. In fact, they'll probably *prefer* to. So saying that a clever system admin/setup front-end can't use X because there are still EGA displays around that can't use it is just silly. They don't *have* to use it, just as a user doesn't need to load the srcdist just to have a usable system. Scale your expectations comeasurately with the hardware you're willing to invest in and everybody will be happy! :-) Jordan
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