Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
Hi,
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> wrote:
> John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@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 <hwansing@mailbox.org>
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