Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!rex!uflorida!bikini!bb From: bb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian Bartholomew) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Sys 2.0 on CD-ROM? Message-ID: Date: 14 Jan 91 01:48:01 GMT References: <2199@beguine.UUCP> <16764@cs.utexas.edu> Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU Organization: /cis/lightning0/bb/.organization Lines: 30 In-reply-to: osborn@cs.utexas.edu's message of 11 Jan 91 00:07:29 GMT In article <16764@cs.utexas.edu> osborn@cs.utexas.edu (John Howard Osborn) writes: > I would say that if I had a cd-rom drive I would very MUCH want system > software to be distributed on cd-rom. It clearly makes more sense to > get (or press) a single cd-rom instead of all those floppies. Of course, it would make even more sense to distribute it on floptical; then the user community could get the same benefits from the media that NeXT would. Too bad the flopticals have been a bit dissappointing in reliability and speed. > On the other hand, NeXT could take a clue from Sun. In order to squish > the SunOS 4.1.1 distribution onto 2 tapes, they compressed most of the > operating system files. Doing this would considerably reduce the > number of required floppy disks. On yet another hand, this would make the installation require one more step, and make the floppies even more inscrutable for the naive user. Remember that NeXT is trying to make this easy for said naive user, not necessarily we experienced U*IX users. -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Bartholomew UUCP: ...gatech!uflorida!mathlab.math.ufl.edu!bb University of Florida Internet: bb@math.ufl.edu