[wellylug] scsi more and less

[Cliff Pratt]

Um, not necessarily. Installing Windows with some SCSI 
devices (eg boot devices) requires the loading of the 
modules, usually from a floppy disk, sometimes from an ATAPI 
CD-ROM, at a very early stage in the install process.

Which is a bummer if the machine doesn't *have* a floppy 
drive. Yes, some drivers, notably for cheap SCSI cards and 
RAID controllers, still need floppies.

Cheers,

Cliff

Pete Black wrote:
> Of course it could have been easier with Windows.
> 
> You're fooling yourself if you think Linux is truly 'ready for the 
> desktop'  in terms of end-user ease of use and being able to simply plug 
> n play every peripheral under the sun (though yes I do agree a SCSI 
> CD-ROM isn't exactly esoteric). And it's only getting worse with the 
> pace and 'cavalier approach' of 2.6 kernel development - witness 
> firewire breakage 2.4->2.6 for example, or the recently introduced 'ub' 
> USB driver thats absolutely useless and crashes the kernel when you 
> attempt to use it (or when it gets autoloaded).
> 
> Distro's don't seem to bother to do the work required to make sure their 
> kernels actually work in all circumstances, so its left to you, the 
> user, to fix these issues.
> 
> This isn't a complaint, or a flame - just a note that you need to be 
> prepared to put in the effort yourself if you aren't paying someone else 
> to do it for you. Thats just how the cookie crumbles. If this is a major 
> problem, then Linux probably isn't the right OS for you.
> 
> I am surprised Mandrake doesnt work with your SCSI CD-ROM, and its 
> possible you have SCSI IDs set incorrectly or something, or some issue 
> with the SCSI card unrelated to the kernel - however, the most likely 
> issue to my mind is that there is no SCSI CD-ROM support in the kernel.
> 
> If this is the case, it should probably  be reported as a bug to the 
> Mandrake maintainers.
>