Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
On 11/4/19 12:06 PM, Holger Levsen wrote: > On Sun, Nov 03, 2019 at 11:27:07PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: >> And I just saw the "argument". The argument was "It's 2018". That's not >> an argument. > > the longer form of the argument is: it's 2018 and except for 100 people > on this planet, noone is using floppies anymore. Yes, and it's 2018 and except for a handful of people, no one is browsing the internet on a PC anymore. I don't see how this is an argument. > "cognitive strain" is another argument. 90% of the people installing a > computer today have no idea what a floppy (disk) is. (for those who > don't know, it's the icon for saving a file.) I don't really see the problem here. And I would like to see a source for that 90% claim. I don't think anyone who is able to install Debian using debian-installer doesn't know what a floppy is. Anyone who is capable of creating a bootable USB flash drive will absolutely know what a floppy is. I really have the impression that some people are trying with all force to smash out support for older architectures and hardware despite people still being there to maintain it. We have one of the most successful Bountysource campaigns for the m68k port [1] due to the still large interest of the community to work with the port. And yet we constantly have this argument about deprecating stuff "because it is too old", it's exhausting really. Debian is certainly not the distribution for Linux beginners so there is really no reason to pretend that such changes make any difference in user-friendlyness. If you really want to make a change that imposes a major roadblock for most users installing it would be including hardware firmware by default. Because that's it what you see people on internet forums complain about when installing Debian. I have never seen anyone claim "Hey, it says floppy here but I don't even have a floppy drive on my PC." Adrian > [1] > https://www.bountysource.com/issues/80706251-m68k-convert-the-backend-to-mode_cc-so-it-can-be-kept-in-future-releases -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
On Sun, Nov 03, 2019 at 11:27:07PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > And I just saw the "argument". The argument was "It's 2018". That's not > an argument. the longer form of the argument is: it's 2018 and except for 100 people on this planet, noone is using floppies anymore. "cognitive strain" is another argument. 90% of the people installing a computer today have no idea what a floppy (disk) is. (for those who don't know, it's the icon for saving a file.) I like (the other) Holger's compromise. -- cheers, Holger --- holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org PGP fingerprint: B8BF 5413 7B09 D35C F026 FE9D 091A B856 069A AA1C signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
Hi, Holger Wansing wrote: > John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > > On 9/8/19 11:43 PM, Holger Wansing wrote: > > > I assume, this bugreport was motivated by bug #880122 by Chris Lamb from > > > 2017, > > > which proposed to remove floppy support from hw-detect package, since > > > floppies appear to no longer be widely used for ages: > > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=880122 > > > > > > > > > The same bugreport made me working on preparations for removing floppy > > > support > > > from debian-installer templates recently: > > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2019/09/msg00057.html > > > > (...) > > > > > With this "Debian Ports" argumentation, we need a discussion on this topic > > > first, as it seems. > > > > The standard floppy driver in the kernel just recently got a new maintainer > > [1] > > and Linus underlined that the floppy driver is still useful for > > virtualization > > environments (I can't find the LKML post at the moment). > > > > It's super easy to create a floppy image with just the dd tool and use it in > > qemu or on servers. > > > > Please do not assume that all users are just on x86 laptops with no optical > > drives or floppy drives. I know that a lot of people don't use optical or > > floppy media anymore, but that doesn't mean there is still a use case for > > it. > > > > Like with serial connections, floppy drives are simple enough that they work > > in basically every environment, so having them as a simple fallback is > > incredibly useful and unless there is a very good reason for removing floppy > > support - i.e. code that is broken or blocks other new code - I'm objecting > > to removing floppy support and would be willing to take care of it. > > Since no new arguments (pro or contra floppy support in d-i) were given, I > suppose it looks like we will keep the status quo and therefore close the > related bugs. To get this to an end, I will: - simplify related templates, to remove the mention of "floppy support" from dialogs, as mentioned in the proposed patches in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=880122#5 and https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=939799#5; - but keep the code unchanged, so that floppy support is still available for those, who still need/use it. This should minimize the chance, that people get irritated/frustrated by reading of "floppy support in 2020", but keep the possibility to use floppy capabilities if needed. I think this is a good compromise, which should satisfy all. Holger -- Holger Wansing PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076
Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
On 11/3/19 11:24 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > I disagree. It's a really weak argument. Are you really saying that people > are getting frustrated because they are reading the word "floppy"? That > doesn't make any sense at all. And I just saw the "argument". The argument was "It's 2018". That's not an argument. Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Bug#880122: Bug#939798: floppy support in d-i
On 11/3/19 11:19 PM, Holger Wansing wrote: >> Since no new arguments (pro or contra floppy support in d-i) were given, I >> suppose it looks like we will keep the status quo and therefore close the >> related bugs. > > To get this to an end, I will: > > - simplify related templates, to remove the mention of "floppy support" from > dialogs, as mentioned in the proposed patches in > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=880122#5 > and > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=939799#5; > - but keep the code unchanged, so that floppy support is still available for > those, who still need/use it. > > This should minimize the chance, that people get irritated/frustrated by > reading of "floppy support in 2020", but keep the possibility to use floppy > capabilities if needed. > > I think this is a good compromise, which should satisfy all. I disagree. It's a really weak argument. Are you really saying that people are getting frustrated because they are reading the word "floppy"? That doesn't make any sense at all. I would understand the argument that the code would create additional maintenance burden but that's not the case, so it seems we are fabricating arguments here just to justify some sort of change. Please do not remove documentation if a feature is still there just for the sake of making a change. And if some people are offended by the word "floppy", so be it. Debian is supposed to be a universal system and that includes universal hardware support. Thanks, Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
