On 03/23/14 20:15, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Incidentally, Ed and others have said that there are many machines which will not boot from USB. But surely there are many more that have no CD/DVD drive? And the proportion of these is surely increasing?
I have no idea about actual numbers and unless one does the research it is pure, as you said, speculation.
I can, however, tell you one thing. I have never run into a desktop system here in Taiwan that hasn't had either a CD or DVD drive installed. The only systems lacking optical drives have been laptops and all of those have been capable of booting from USB.
I feel they way they do desktop selection in the install is just fine. As for partitioning, who knows?
FWIW, 2 of my customers here in Taiwan are "market research" companies. I'm very good friends with the President of one company and a principle in the other. When I mentioned "web inquiry" or "web polls" for gauging customer needs they both just basically start rolling on the floor laughing.
That being said, you may have a good point when it comes to USB support. I have not taken the time to look into it since I've not needed it. But, I recently needed to install Win7 on a laptop whose DVD is dead. MS has a "Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool". I pointed it to the ISO of a Win7 DVD and it created a bootable USB. I didn't read, or need, any documentation. If there isn't such a tool for Fedora, then it would be nice to have one. If there is one, but not documented, then it needs to be...preferably by someone who has a need and experience in using it.