Linux Floppy Install (Re: YATYRD)

[Ethan Dicks]

On 10/1/05, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> For clarity, isn't UMSDOS the code which let you run linux from a FAT
> filesystem - nothing to do with doing an install to an ext2 Linux
> partition and then booting from there.

Ah... right.

> Install from a FAT source was added pretty early on ISTR, with
> UMSDOS coming much later (I've never tried the latter)

Installing from a FAT partition did come early, thankfully.  Nobody
could afford the $5000+ for a CD burner at the time, so it was FAT
partition install, floppy install, or commercial CD install, which was
a pain if you wanted to keep up on the latest developments.

> Partitioning used to be something on an art I recall; I don't think
> there was support for swap files (as opposed to partitions)

There was not... it was swap partition or nothing.  I don't recall
things being too difficult, though.  It was the same thing that we'd
been doing with UNIX for years - take a multiple-hundred meg disk and
slice it up for the root partition, /usr , maybe /var, and so on.

> > I wasn't able to install Linux for about a year, until Slackware added
> > native SCSI support

> Heh... Adaptec 1542 or something?

Yep - Adaptec 1542A (then 1542C, and so on).

> I went the Redhat route for a couple of years (I got lazy!)

I did Slackware at home, Yggdrasil at work (1995), then switched to
RedHat purely because it was what US businesses blessed as an
acceptable distro.  At work now, we are 100% RedHat for Linux (server
and desktop), plus a bit of Mac and (thankfully) very little Windows
(mostly laptops) for the user community.  Ah, Academia!

-ethan