Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x

From: Peter Jeremy (peterjeremy_at_optushome.com.au)
Date: 01/10/04

  • Next message: Garance A Drosihn: "Re: SCM options (was Re: Where is FreeBSD going?)" 
    Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:19:27 +1100
To: Martin Nilsson <martin@gneto.com>

    On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 10:57:56PM +0100, Martin Nilsson wrote:
    >This discussion is just like when the i386 support was removed from the
    >GENERIC kernel, a lot of noise about old systems that wouldn't be able
    >to run (or benefit) from FreeBSD 5 anyway.

    There's a big jump between i386 systems and Pentium I/II systems. I
    agree that any "standard" i386 syystem would be very unlikely to be
    able to run a generic FreeBSD kernel - the ones that are left are in
    embedded systems where they need customised install environments
    already.

    An old P-I or P-II system is still perfectly adequate to run FreeBSD -
    and will be for some time yet. They make ideal firewalls, print
    servers, terminal servers, low-end fileservers etc. (My home firewall
    is a 486). I agree that you wouldn't want to run OpenOffice or
    Mozilla on one but that doesn't make them unusable.

    >I fail to see the difference in required labour between creating two
    >floppies or a CD-R/RW disc. Most new machines ship with CD-RW drives
    >today, the only boxes that can't boot from a CD are early Pentium1 class
    >and frankly why run 5.x or 6.x on those?

    In a corporate environment, machines are very likely to not include a
    CD-RW (and might not even include a CD-ROM). As for why run 5.x, how
    about:
    1) because you want some of the features in 5.x - a fileserver could
       benefit enormously from ACLs, UFS2 and snapshots (to name a few)
       even if it's only an old P-I.
    2) for support. 4.x will probably be officially de-supported sometime
       in 2005. At that point, I either need to accept the overhead of
       handling (eg) security fixes myself or migrate to 5.x
       
    Peter
    _______________________________________________
    freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list
    http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
    To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"

  • Next message: Garance A Drosihn: "Re: SCM options (was Re: Where is FreeBSD going?)"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: System Error (1003) - 0x000000CB
      ... I shall disabled the auto-reboot after bug check and see what, ... This indicates that a driver or the I/O manager failed ... A call to Microsoft Support seems appropriate. ... one of our Terminal Servers randomly reboot itself without ...
      (microsoft.public.windows.terminal_services)
    • Re: System Error (1003) - 0x000000CB
      ... Here's the explanation of STOp error code 0x000000cb: ... This indicates that a driver or the I/O manager failed ... A call to Microsoft Support seems appropriate. ... one of our Terminal Servers randomly reboot itself without ...
      (microsoft.public.windows.terminal_services)
    • Re: Standard sbc and pcm support in GENERIC kernel?
      ... >>GENERIC should support the most common hardware, ... KLD modules are perfectly sufficient for this, ... It would be great to be able to _disable_ sound in rc.conf, ... Is a GENERIC kernel considered harmful on production servers? ...
      (freebsd-stable)
    • Re: Microsoft Cordless Optical Mouse and 5.2
      ... Are you running the GENERIC kernel? ... support for ps2 mouse? ... And Last but not the least, try selecting ur ...
      (freebsd-questions)
    • System Error (1003) - 0x000000CB
      ... Terminal Servers randomly reboot itself without warning, ... memory dumps I find that the faulting application is Outlook.exe but we had ... see Help and Support Center at ...
      (microsoft.public.windows.terminal_services)