On Mon, 2002-05-13 at 21:27, bbennet wrote: > > Hello to mstone. Good to hear from you. > > Here is what I am looking for: > I vote for floppy emulation mode on the first CD of the Debian set. > > If you have a new machine then you may stop reading. > > > The first CD of Debian woody tries to boot with 'no emulation' mode. > The first CD of Debian woody uses isolinux to > try to boot with this 'no emulation' mode. > The isolinux boot is how you try for 'no emulation' mode. > The 'no emulation' mode demands a new machine. > > We now get these threads in debian-cd about isolinux failures. > We get few failures reported with 'floppy emulation' mode. > > The 'floppy emulation' mode is how the CD usually boots in all of your > history with CD booting. > > Our users expect the CD to boot on the good old linux box > just like it always has booted. > > I vote for floppy emulation mode on the first CD of the Debian set. > > Did you read this far Mike:)
So did you have a useful suggestion as to how we address the perceived need to have several alternative boot images on the first CD? OK, I admit that I would prefer it if the first CD failed gracefully on machines that it doesn't boot on, but we have to balance numbers of people disadvantaged by each choice. I don't see that Debian has ever suited people that were incapable of reading the release notes. I would guess that the people that have older hardware are likely to be both the people that have poor Internet links, and the people who are more used to reading a bit to get their machines to do what they want, so they seem the people least likely to be put off by having to boot off CD#2. I think we've concluded that the BIOS miltiboot approach was just too cryptic on most hardware, so that few people would realise they had the choice of floppies, so it's not much better than having a single image. At least one of the complaints about ISOLINUX turned out to be a problem with the burner being used. My gut feel is that more people will be inconvenienced by returning to the single floppy per CD approach, but I'm open to persuasion. Cheers, Phil. -- Say no to software patents! http://petition.eurolinux.org/ |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND
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