Salut OdyX, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> (2022-07-19): > That brings two sides of the question: > * should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images? > * should it still be offered on the mirrors ? > on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/ > (where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually > moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days) > > (I orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an > official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P) As you know, I've been perfectly happy with staying away from having to know too much about it… (and I'm sorry to have left it on your shoulders). While I have no idea about its relevance versus current Windows versions (I don't have any such systems, and with Secure Boot being supported by Debian, booting Debian directly shouldn't be a huge issue…), or about whether it works there, I'll just mention that it's been useful to salvage at least two computers at my LLUG during the last year: - one wouldn't boot from anything else than its hard drive (a very buggy BIOS was suspected, but the machine was 500+ km away); - one would know how to boot from a CD but nobody had the external CD drive (and cable!) that would make that work. That being said, those are only anecdotes, and for such 10+y, 15+y systems, I wouldn't find it crazy to suggest users to maybe give up on them, or if they insist, use an installation image or the executable from a previous Debian release? (A quick look at http://ftp.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/ suggests it goes back at least to triple-old stable… and given the size of each directory, the cost of keeping some old ones shouldn't be a huge issue.) On the usability side, salvaging old systems like this isn't quite easy anyway, as antique browsers (IE we meet again), libraries (TLS 1.3 anyone), certificate truststores (Let's Encrypt who are you), and similar challenges made it hard to just get to the Debian website, documentation, and actual download. TL;DR: No objections either way. Cheers, -- Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/> D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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