Hi, Holger Wansing <hwans...@mailbox.org> wrote: > John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote: > > On 9/8/19 11:43 PM, Holger Wansing wrote: > > > I assume, this bugreport was motivated by bug #880122 by Chris Lamb from > > > 2017, > > > which proposed to remove floppy support from hw-detect package, since > > > floppies appear to no longer be widely used for ages: > > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=880122 > > > > > > > > > The same bugreport made me working on preparations for removing floppy > > > support > > > from debian-installer templates recently: > > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2019/09/msg00057.html > > > > (...) > > > > > With this "Debian Ports" argumentation, we need a discussion on this topic > > > first, as it seems. > > > > The standard floppy driver in the kernel just recently got a new maintainer > > [1] > > and Linus underlined that the floppy driver is still useful for > > virtualization > > environments (I can't find the LKML post at the moment). > > > > It's super easy to create a floppy image with just the dd tool and use it in > > qemu or on servers. > > > > Please do not assume that all users are just on x86 laptops with no optical > > drives or floppy drives. I know that a lot of people don't use optical or > > floppy media anymore, but that doesn't mean there is still a use case for > > it. > > > > Like with serial connections, floppy drives are simple enough that they work > > in basically every environment, so having them as a simple fallback is > > incredibly useful and unless there is a very good reason for removing floppy > > support - i.e. code that is broken or blocks other new code - I'm objecting > > to removing floppy support and would be willing to take care of it. > > Since no new arguments (pro or contra floppy support in d-i) were given, I > suppose it looks like we will keep the status quo and therefore close the > related bugs.
To get this to an end, I will: - simplify related templates, to remove the mention of "floppy support" from dialogs, as mentioned in the proposed patches in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=880122#5 and https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=939799#5; - but keep the code unchanged, so that floppy support is still available for those, who still need/use it. This should minimize the chance, that people get irritated/frustrated by reading of "floppy support in 2020", but keep the possibility to use floppy capabilities if needed. I think this is a good compromise, which should satisfy all. Holger -- Holger Wansing <hwans...@mailbox.org> PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076
