Re: superformat?
Quoting William T Wilson (fluffy@snurgle.org):
> On 14 Sep 2000, John Hasler wrote:
>
> > > floppy. Just seems a little wierd seeing DOS as the default on a Linux
> > > manpage...
> >
> > FAT16 is a pretty good format for floppies (that's what it was designed
> > for). Ext2 isn't.
>
> ext2 does fine with floppies, it has a little more overhead than DOS, but
> it also has proper filenames. The problem is that hardly anybody uses
> ext2 as a floppy format, everyone uses DOS, so that is the default :}
With respect, that is not the problem. If you want long filenames
on a floppy, you can just mount it vfat instead of msdos.
The problem is that PC drives don't have any protection against
removing the floppy disk. With a DOS format, this does not matter
too much. After a few seconds, you can remove the disk and even
replace it with another one (as long as you then type umount and
mount before using it). That's because when you umount a DOS format,
nothing happens (watch the light).
Now try it with an Ext2 format: remove the disk and then umount.
You'll get a stream of error messages.
> Most
> Linux systems have networking, whereas many DOS systems do not; if a
> network is available, why use a floppy?
Err, I expect there are plenty of people like me who keep a machine
at home in sync with work by using a floppy. (OK, I used to, but now
I uses a zip disk in the same manner.) I'm not going to do this over
the phone even if I own shares in BT!
Cheers,
--
Email: d.wright@open.ac.uk Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
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