Hi, > On Jan 16, 2022, at 3:34 PM, Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > Something I've wondered is if we really need the USB installer at all. Not as > in "let's get rid of the USB installer for the sake of getting rid of it." I > know that some people do use the USB installer (comes up in questions on > Facebook and YouTube sometimes) but consider this: > > I run Linux, and use Fedora on my PC. When I download a new version of Fedora > Workstation <https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/>, it comes as a > DVD ISO image. But my PC doesn't have a DVD drive (my previous laptop didn't > have an optical drive either) so I write the ISO image to a USB fob drive > using Fedora Media Writer > <https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/04/26/fedora-media-writer-the-fastest-way-to-create-live-usb-boot-media#how_does_it_work__>. > I think you can do the same with Rufus <https://rufus.ie/en/>. It writes the > image and makes the USB fob drive bootable. > > So my question is really: what about using Rufus to write the FreeDOS 1.3 CD > ISO image to a USB fob drive - instead of providing a 32MB "Lite" USB image > and a 512MB "Full" USB image. > > That would seem to be the easiest option, in my mind. It seems like it would > be simpler to provide the LiveCD ISO image and people can write that to a USB > fob drive with a tool like Rufus. > > > Jim
Well, I’ve thought about dropping it as well. As far as I can tell, it seems like most users download the LiveCD and use programs like RUFUS to turn it into a USB stick. It also feels like we have a lot of download choices already and we don’t really need them all. Someone could argue, we should have a many USB options. Like 16mb Base Only, 32MB Base + Free Space, a 512MB Standard, 1gb Everything, 2gb Pre-installed version … and so on. But, all those would really do is make things more confusing. Personally, I don’t really use Windows or Rufus. Mostly, I use macOS desktops and Linux servers. So when it comes to making USB install media, I just use dd to write the image to the flash media. I also have 4 different real machines I run or test FreeDOS. Some will boot from CD, some won’t. The most interesting one is the Acer Netbook. I can boot and install from an attached USB Floppy and/or a USB Thumb Drive. However, prior to RC5 it would not install from CD. The fallback to the El Torito CD driver makes installation possible now. However, post install the drive is not supported. Generally to not waste discs and install faster, I use the 512mb USB stick version. But, I think I’m the exception not the rule. It’s also not like I cannot just make one myself. The same goes for anyone wanting a 2 or 4 Gb version. The RBE makes it easy to create such custom versions. :-) Jerome
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