On 11-Aug-98 Ken Hornstein spoke unto us all:
# >     Install via floppy isn't amazingly painful. Once you get
# >enough of the system on (just "base", and you can get by with far
# >less), you can fire up the serial port for a PPP link to finish the
# >job in a lower bandwidth but more autonomous fashion. 
#  
#  Still requires another machine (or a PPP dialup).  I don't mean to say
#  that it's not _possible_ (because we obviously got it working), it's
#  just something that perhaps the reasonably intelligent but non-wizard
#  user isn't willing to do.

I think this is the point.. When bob user picks an OS.. he is going to look
around and say "how hard is this?"

If we tell him "simply install off 50 floppies"  he will not choose us.
If we tell him "boot with -F40 -g960 -lfoo, read this massive doc for what
these values mean"  he probably wont choose us.
If we say "dev ep0 at pci dev 1 irq ?" he will say "what the hell is that
syntax?"

NetBSD is and allways has been the superior OS IMHO..  However getting it on
your box has allways been a nightmare..  While zealots like you or I may be
willing to ferry floppies around and play games with custom kernels, noone is
going to buy our CD if this is what they ultimately have to do.  (except us,
the zealots, who probably run SUP anyhow)

Here's my question.. how the heck does win95 do it?  They must either have some
massive database, or maybe they use something akin to LKM's.. (I'm not actually
up to date with anything past dos5.0 these days..)

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html