On Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:17:42 +1100 Lie Ryan <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Booting was one of my least concern (it's a portable external harddisk, > I don't need an OS in there), I use the FAT partition to store NTFS > drivers (source and precompiled) for systems that don't already have > NTFS-3G installed and where internet is scarce or compiler is > unavailable (e.g. Gentoo LiveCD or Macs) since the rest of my external > harddisk is formatted as NTFS. > That's the beauty of Open Source. Commercial development would have killed off FAT because of its low popularity, but Open Source maintains FAT capability because it is something that *should* be available, if only to allow some small group to tinker with ancient systems. Hopefully Gentoo will continue this philosophy of keeping things alive whether or not they represent the mainstream. I sometimes prefer to use older tools. For example, I still use Lilo to boot my machines. Fortunately Lilo is still a part of the portage tree and, IMO, should not be removed simply because Grub is more popular. Once Open Source, and Gentoo, begins to cater exclusively to the latest software fashions, it will, again IMO, no longer be worth using. Frank Peters
