Thx, useful reply & helpful as always.
*shrugs* I was just curious. Femme > Why? Well the install kernel has to have very special shape to run > framebuffer or VGA for the graphics, detect and install drivers for the > devices (SCSI, some network and so on, and all of this MUST be there > when you boot off a floppy to do a CDROM install, or a hard disk > install, or a network install via NFS or http: or ftp:. So it has to > fit on a floppy. > > Now the kernel has increased in size squeezing drivers off the floppy. > For example, you have to load drivers now for the vintage 1994-95 CD > drives that attached to sound cards, because we have dropped those > drivers from the install image. The point is that ALL the drivers must > be present from the install image that get used in the install or else > supplemental drivers must be loaded by hitting F1 at the splash screen > and typing "expert". > > So, the keyboard and mouse worked fine under the influence of your BIOS, > but as soon as the install kernel took over, it did not have a driver > for them as USB devices (which means you are probably using a USB > interface we thought was superceded by the new USB2 drivers). Now, once > you are up with the full system, with all the modules for the kernel (or > drivers) available on the hard disk, detection and use is a simple matter. > > There are ALREADY some forks in the road. For example, John Rigby would > have benefitted greatly from his reported problems under 8.0 by making a > boot floppy from one of the cdrom.img-BADZxx files in > /images/alternatives and by installing kernel22 and staying strictly > away from Reiser partitions. 8.1 users whose machines reacted badly or > needed older drivers for unupdated Adaptec controllers could boot from > CD2 and use alternate install kernels. Another fork for USB alone is a > lot of work and will not be implemented unless this affects a lot of > machines. If the proliferation of kernel versions gets out of hand, we > won't be able to maintain them all. > > That is how, and the "why" is 1.44Mb. We could support 1.72 Mb, but the > number of drives that can format those is not 100% and data loss is > higher, so we have chosen not to. (In fact some older floppy drives > will physically break trying to format a 1.72Mb floppy, and a lot of > them will fail to format it under windows but do fine under linux.... > And a lot of our users are first-time linux users who start out only > with the other OS. > > Civileme > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
