WTF?! NO floppy in Lucid or in Meerkat!

[rikona]

Hello Liam,

Friday, September 24, 2010, 8:26:49 AM, Liam wrote:

LP> On 24 September 2010 16:02, ms <devicerandom at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I don't understand how could you insist that they maintain something
>> that they have no hardware to test on.
>>
>> It's sad, I understand, but it's also normal. Technologies come and go.
>> Floppy is a dead technology since years and years.

LP> Floppies are not extinct, are still in common use,

Agreed. Not often, but still important for what they do.

LP> and for quite a number of relatively modern machines that cannot
LP> boot from USB are still the most commonly-available easiest and
LP> cheapest boot media. To burn a CD for one use, such as re-Flashing
LP> a BIOS, and then throw it away is appalling environmental
LP> irresponsibility.

Some S/W or data is on a floppy and is not available in any other
form. A bit difficult to make a CD. :-)

LP> I expect testing on desktop machines and I expect support for fairly
LP> recent legacy hardware.

Agreed. For me, computers are tools, not the latest look-at-this
hobby. I expect my tools to work for a reasonable time - one of the
reasons I chose 10.04.

LP> PS/2 ports, parallel & serial ports, analogue VGA ports &
LP> monitors, CDs as opposed to DVDs, the ISA bus, the parallel PCI
LP> buses, these are all "legacy" technology but still in use.

LP> I still expect such things to work.

Agreed.

LP> No, but I *do* expect it to work on kit that meets the minimum
LP> requirements and kit that is (say) ten to 12 years old if it was
LP> of good specification at the time.

LP> A 1GB P3 from 1998 or 1999, yes.

I tried it on an even newer and more capable box - it would NOT work,
but runs Win just fine...

LP> I am still using live machines less than a decade old that can't
LP> boot from USB. 

Agreed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :-)      

-- 

 rikona