Max Power wrote:
> A Unix / Linux / BSD fix I would like to see in the next 6 months:
> universal support for installing to USB drives (Live CDs / DVDs) ...

Well, both Debian and FreeBSD can easily be installed onto a usb drive,
I have a FreeBSD system here on a usb drive, no hassle at all. This
facility has been available for some time, it is really just down to
what your pc will boot from.

>
> 1. The preference for installing to USB should be paramount. The risk of
> wiping one's XP or Vista drive for most users is not worth it. Most of
> the user interfaces practically force wiping your HD by default. It
> should take several prompts (where you have to agree) to do this. There
> are not enough prompts around for this dangerous operation.

If you install Debian, you will get gparted (a fairly sophisticated
partition editor) which will offer to shrink your existing drive in the
way you wish.
Though I might add from my POV the elimination of a Vista drive can only
be a good thing. I have assisted a number of people to put debian onto
existing windows machines, the standard is to install grub, which
automatically detects the windows system and makes dual booting very simple.


>
> 2. Flash drives only come in select sizes, making them easier to spot
> -- 64, 128, 256, 1024, 2048 ... mb
> -- To optimally install the OS to Flash, some logic will be needed to
> choose the best sector sizes for FAT32 systems, and similar code could
> be reused for NTFS.
> -- Setting the Flash disk to bootable should be handled by the installer
> program as well. Partition Commander etc ... should not be required.
> -- Most CD-ROM and DVD-ROM "ISO" disk image programs on Windows, Mac
> need to make this fix also -- but the "Unix-like" OSes need to make it
> first.

You should have either a good google or a nose aroung the archives of
linux.debian.user for links as to how to install to a flash drive, a lot
of people are doing it these days.



--
Martin