Adam Williamson wrote:
> It's simply the case that no-one's cared enough about those features to
> rewrite them. A few people have kicked around ideas for how to do it at
> various points, but it's never gone beyond that.
I think the main issue there is that the use cases for live USB media have
changed. In the past, it used to be that the standard way to get live media
was to burn a CD or DVD, and that those who wanted USB wanted it exactly FOR
those extra features (in particular, the persistent overlay). But these
days, more and more people don't have optical drives at all, and so want USB
just to get their live image booting at all, they don't care how. Thus, the
extra features, which used to be the whole point of making live USB sticks,
have suddenly become niche features.
That doesn't mean the demand has disappeared. It is just eclipsed by the
mass of users who were previously burning DVDs or even CDs.
I personally think that wiping all existing data on the USB stick is
extremely user-unfriendly. A non-destructive method that just works would
make everyone happy (both the majority that wants something that just works,
no matter how, and those who want the non-destructive method). It is sad
that liveusb-creator chickened out and implemented the dd option instead of
fixing the issues with the non-destructive method, and that the rewrite is
even destructive only. The wasted space due to the lack of a persistent
overlay is also sad.
It is also not a valid assumption that everyone has USB sticks to spare.
I also don't understand Kamil Paral's point:
> It almost never works for standard users, unless you have a very good
> understanding what a bootloader is and whether you should replace it or
> not.
as we can handle this issue just fine for hard disk installations.
Kevin Kofler
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