Thoughts on floppy disks

[Bill Davidsen]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I was recently following the advice in the Fedora-13 Installation Guide
> to setup a pxeboot server,
> and it recommended that one should read the syslinux documentation
> in /usr/share/doc/syslinux-3.84/syslinux.txt .
> (Actually, the Guide says syslinux.doc , but that seems to be a typo.)
> 
> In any case, this document, which is dated 1994-2009,
> seems to be entirely concerned with "CREATING A BOOTABLE LINUX FLOPPY".
> 
> There are several other places in the Fedora-13 documentation
> where I have come across mention of floppy disks.
> (And several Linux programs spend time looking for /dev/fd0 .)
> 
> Do floppy disks still exist?
> Are computers with floppy drives still being made?
> 
Yes, and computers are being sold which do BIOS upgrades from magic format 
floppy, not CD.

> It seems to me that as an absolute minimum
> any documentation mentioning floppy drives
> should at least explain how CDs can be used to the same end.
> 
Should we read this as "I am starting a crusade to research the proper solution 
for each program I find, and contribute updated documentation to the 
maintainers?" Or "It would save me some effort if someone else would do this?"

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot