[Techtalk] XP with Linux

[Rudy L. Zijlstra]

ed orphan wrote:

>   It's about time Red Hat allowed the installer to
>create a bootable CD during the install, that is,
>for those systems with burners installed.
>
Not only RH, but any distro. Slack mostly excluded, install CD *is* a 
very usable recovery. Hmm, now that i think about this, SuSe also has 
recovery possibilities on the bootable CD.

> Floppies
>are dying off and the Flash/USB have not yet
>replaced them.
>
Correct, Problem here is: You cannot beforehand know where the  bootable 
USB device is to be found (depends on the different USB devices 
connected), and the USB stack would need to be almost fully supported in 
the BIOS. And that is quit a bit of code.

>   The floppy disk drive is suppose to be 'dead',
>but you notice its really the user that 'dies' from
>not having one installed. When you have time,
>take a look at those Flash memory modules
>with the USB connectors as a floppy disk substitute.
>Flash/USB  $150    floppy disk drive  $20
>
Hmm, I repectfully disagree with your prices.... they are too high. And 
you are forgetting Flash/PCMCIA which is for laptops a very good and 
usable substitution. Used it a few days ago on a show. Plug a 
CompactFlash disk into a laptop, put the SW on the flashdisk and copy 
over to the other laptop. With floppies would have been impossible. Or 
rather, rather irritating and quit a hassle because of the number of 
floppies needed.

Side note from other subthread: For USB flash to work you need to have 
usbstorage module installed and correctly configured. I am using USB 
flash readers under Linux and they work great. You can then access them 
via the SCSI layer.

>Guess which one the industry wants to kill off?
>     
>  
>
 Thats a bit hurried. Some empirical data:
- my main desktop (linux only) has no floppy. It does have network and a 
burner. In the >3 months its now in this config, i have never yet needed 
a floppy in it.
- my main experimentation system has a floppy. Very rarely used, and if 
I have no need to maintain old PCs anymore, i could easily live without.
- Laptop has a buildin floppy. Never used yet.
- Many usefull kernel configs do not fit on a floppy.
- Most data you want to copy, does not fit on a floppy.
- Most install disk images no longer fit on a floppy.

OK bluntly said: once I figure out how to make a bootable DOS CD with a 
fresh copy of ghost (or HW config / flash tools) i can drop floppies 
completely.
Ghost I need as recovery after a disk has gone to never never land..... 
(preferably shortly before that).

Cheers,

Rudy