On Friday, October 29, 2004, at 04:53 PM, Brad Boyer wrote:
To support starting from just a Debian CD on all oldworld boxes as well
as install a bootable system, we need to do the following:
1) Write disk drivers for SCSI and IDE (both HD and CD-ROM)
2) License the patches from Apple (or somehow reverse engineer them)
3) Add support to mac-fdisk to install the drivers and patches
4) Fix miboot to be truly free.
5) Add a miboot installer (similar to ybin/mkofboot)
On the other hand, if you only want to use it on floppies, only #4
(and maybe #5) are needed.
Let me see if I've got this right...
The world is divided into three types of people:
0) People with hardware other than OldWorld Powermacs. I will
ignore this group, except to say that, according to the latest
popularity contest results, they constitute over 98% of the users
of Debian software.
1) Of those who have an OldWorld PowerMac (or clone) the large
majority will also have a copy of the MacOS{8.x,9.x} install CD
that came with the machine (or that they bought cheap on e-bay, or
bought expensive from Apple when the world was new and we were all
very young...) and will be willing to use it to install MacOS so
that they can use BootX as their default boot loader.
2) A vocal but tiny minority of absolutists who are unwilling to
have any non-free software (above the level of unavoidable firmware
ROMs) on their machines.
3) Those who are opposed to non-free software or for other reasons
(such as disk space) don't want to have MacOS on their machines,
but are willing to at least have their disks initialized and
partitioned by the Apple Disk Utility software. (Personal opinion:
this group is likely somewhat larger than group 2 but still much
smaller than group 1.)
Group 1 has no problem. They can use BootX to start up the D-I
installer, and they can continue to use BootX as their default
boot-loader. The fact that BootX is not free is not a problem for
these folks. MacOS isn't free either! All they need is good
directions in the manual for how to do it.
Eliminating group 1 leaves us with (as a guess) somewhat less than
0.1% of debian users in groups 2 and 3. Still, this represents
(guess) 5% of Debian OldWorld PowerMac users. And they are a vocal
bunch, for all their small numbers.
As Brad points out, group 3 needs only a clean-room free
implementation of miboot and they are off and running. They can
boot from floppies to run the D-I installer -- either via the
network or via CDs, and use the (proposed) free miboot as their
default boot-loader from disk after installation is complete. That
is: after the initial installation the Apple drivers on their disk
will be enough to allow them to use miboot to boot from that disk.
They will need good clear directions in the manual for how to make
boot floppies and use them to start up D-I.
We're now down to group 2 -- the (at a guess) less than 0.01% of
hard-core absolutists who will not allow *any* non-free software to
touch their machines. These folks have a few alternatives: a) They
can implement their own free boot software, including Apple Boot
ROM compatible disk and CD drivers. b) They can put up with the
vagaries of Open firmware and quik for their particular hardware.
c) They can use the (proposed) free miboot but only from
floppies -- meaning that they must forever boot their machine with
a floppy -- installation and post-install production.
I don't think that alternative (a) is going to happen. There just
isn't the critical mass to get such a project off the ground.
Personally, I think alternative (b) is not viable either -- it's
just too much pain for anyone to put up with long-term -- though
there are undoubtedly folks out there who will try it for a while
before they give up. Fortunately, alternative (c) is a workable
compromise between pain (having to keep and use floppies, and
replace them when they wear out) and living with your principles.
Hope this helps!
Rick
