kallisti5,
To be honest I haven't used anything but the ISOs up to this point. I'm
not knowledgeable on the other two whatsoever. I'm currently running Haiku
A4 and Haiku nightlies (usually update once a month) using VirtualBox until
Haiku gets to B1 and I'll build a DIY PC to run it going forward.
I'm in favor of dropping ISOs but maybe good documentation would be
necessary for folks not familiar with the other two. Most technically
minded folks understand ISOs and how to deal with them, but maybe not the
other two options (at least in my case). I am assuming the other two are
recognizable and can be fooled with on all major OS platforms (hence
Windows, Mac and Linux).
-DCatt
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 4:36 PM, kallisti5 <kallisti5@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good afternoon,
I'd like to drop the Haiku ISO.
Before anyone prepares to fire off angry emails, what I'd really like to
see
happen is the following:
We currently offer 3 image types:
* ISO (containing .iso)
* Anyboot (containing .image)
* VM (containing vm image)
The Anyboot is similar to what most Linux distributions release as
an "iso" now a days.
For example, the Ubuntu "iso" can be burned to a CD / DVD or written raw
to a USB flash drive / hard drive directly via things like dd.
Normal ISO's cannot be directly booted from when dd'ed to a hard disk like
a
USB stick. The Ubuntu iso is bootable like this due to them
post-processing it
with the isohybrid tool after creating a normal ISO image.
This is what I personally would like to see...
* Anyboot (containing .iso)
* VM (containing vm image)
I've heard of reports of anyboot not working on some hardware, however
most of
these reports were on vintage machines and are extreme edge cases.
If you rename the .image from the anyboot to .iso, it can be used like an
iso.
I've successfully:
* Attached the anyboot.iso to a vm in VirtualBox
* Mounted it as a loopback device on linux...
~$ mv haiku-r1alpha4-anyboot.image haiku-r1alpha4-anyboot.iso
~$ sudo mount haiku-r1alpha4-anyboot.iso -o loop /mnt/iso/
~$ ls /mnt/iso/
boot.catalog haiku-boot-floppy.image README.html
* Burned the anyboot.iso to a cd (of course)
* DD'ed the anyboot.iso to a USB stick.
This all seems pretty simple, so why do we bother releasing an iso *and*
an anyboot?
Dropping the iso in favor for an anyboot iso would mean:
* Saving resources
* Needing to mirror less on releases
* Simplifying user experience. (aka, what the hell is an anyboot?)
-- Alex
