Re: [MiNT] 1-18 release - userfriendliness

[Jo Even Skarstein <joska@online.no>]

On Sat, 2012-12-15 at 10:48 +0100, Matthias Arndt wrote:

> Just because most people might have large media, there is no reason to
> limit a distribution to more than the bare necessities. Even with a
> network link, I don't see a point in downloading a 30MB package on my
> Falcon when I only want the basic MinT + XaAES setup which fits in 3Mb
> or approx 2 floppies.

Exactly. While many users probably have CD-ROMs or CF/SD-readers, many
users don't. But everybody has floppydrives.

I have several 8- and 16-bit systems, and bootstrapping them is usually
quite a pain. On the Atari it doesn't have to be like that since you can
switch on an absolutely blank Falcon/TT and it will be able to read
DOS-formatted floppies. So providing archives that are easy to transfer
using floppies would make things easier for the users.

> I think distributing in many seperate small packages that can be used as
> needed is a great idea.

Yes. The current archive can be kept as is, but in addition there should
(IMO) be archives that can simply be unpacked on a Falcon, TT, Milan,
Hades, Afterburner, CT60, FireBee and ARAnyM.

Jo Even