[Sugar-devel] easier installation of soas

[pgf at laptop.org]

eben wrote:
 > On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Sascha Silbe
 > <sascha-ml-ui-sugar-devel at silbe.org> wrote:
 > > On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 01:58:30PM -0500, Eben Eliason wrote:
 > >
 > >> As I understand it, this cannot be so simple because it needs to be a
 > >> bootable image, and not just a set of files.
 > >
 > > What about raw disk images that could be written with dd? No need for any
 > > fancy GUI stuff, a single command line invocation suffices (dd is included
 > > by default on most distros), no need to install potential harmful
 > > third-party software.
 > 
 > This assumption, however, excludes the Windows-using majority.  Also,
 > single-line or not, many are uncomfortable with the command line in
 > principle (though that's significantly less true, obviously, among
 > Linux users).

commandline discomfort aside, i recall that in the early days of
linux distribution, the problem was exactly analogous to what's
being discussed here, except the target was floppies.  at the
time, there was a dos/windows utility called "rawrite.exe" which
was used to transfer the initial boot image to a floppy.  i have
no idea how that worked, whether it would still work on modern
windows, nor whether it could be made to work with USB or SD.  it
might be worth somebody doing the investigation, however.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org