On Sunday, December 15, 2019 5:13:22 PM MST Chris Murphy wrote: > I spent about 15 minutes on this and found exactly zero systems with > DVD drives, even as an option, on the Apple and Microsoft stores. None > for System76. And none for HP. I did find DVD drives a custom build > option on Dell's website. But even if there are some ways to dig > around for systems with optical drives, it's not at all persuasive > that it's common or typical or standard on prebuilt systems.
What were you looking at? I don't know about Apple, nor how that's relevant, since installing a new OS on those systems invalidates the hardware warranty, and I didn't even know Microsoft sold hardware. As for System76, I recently purchased a laptop from them, their Darter Pro. It even has an option, when buying the device, to include an external optical drive, because they understand it's a feature that many people still rely on. I just checked for the consumer side, both Walmart and Best Buy's offerings. My findings are expanded in the section below. > Three years ago I did a more involved search when looking for a new > laptop. Zero optical drives in new hardware. Only as external > accessory add-ons. Of course my search was biased in favor of weight. > Whereas your search is biased for workstations. Based on user forums > and bug reports, laptops are a significant portion of the user base, > so to discount them entirely isn't convincing. While some newer laptops will still have the optical drive integrated, in the interest of going to "slim" designs, many manufacturers have started offering external drives with their systems as a way of losing some of that, or moving to weird slit-style drives, where you push the drive into the system, instead of actually opening a drive door. The laptops that still have them integrated are the business class lines, as well as the low end consumer offerings. What's weird, to me, is that the mid to high-end consumer devices don't have them, but the lower-end ones still do. Could be new old stock. > A simple google search on the death of optical drives turns up 51 > million results, the first page includes: > > Death of the Computer Optical Drive > Why most modern PCs don't feature CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drives - 2019, > Lifewire > > Why you might still want an optical drive - 2015, PC Magazine > > The End of Optical Storage? It’s Here - 2012, Network World I've seen these articles as well, but it's just not in line with where we actually are. > Our broad heterogeneous user based probably does have more dependency > on optical drives than recent hardware trends indicate. But I don't > buy the idea at all that optical drives are still in their heyday. They're not really in their heyday anymore, but they are still incredibly common. > > > Practically speaking, I'd say that adding the same warning as is in > > > UNetbootin section in Fedora Docs [0] to the Live CD section [1] would > > > make sense, but this is just an idea and probably out of scope of this > > > thread.> > > > > > > I have no idea why you'd do that, nor why anyone would want to do it. > > That'd be like telling folks installing from DVD images isn't the right > > thing to do, which makes no sense, as it's the standard way to install > > any system, and has been since the mid 2000s. > > > Optical drives are the exception, rather than the rule. Clicking > around on Dell's sight for desktops, I tried to click the middle > option each time, neither high nor low end. I get > > Dell Precision 5280 $1629, six hard drive bays, optical drive not > included, but is available as an option. Windows optical media is not > included. But there is a single option to get it, on USB. It's not an > option to get it on a DVD. > > But you're saying it's standard way to install any system. Gotcha. It has been the standard method of installing an OS since the mid 2000s, and was popularized long before that. It is still the standard method of installing Fedora. -- John M. Harris, Jr. Splentity _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
