> but DOS is simple enough that it's easy to make additional copies of it (two kernel files, and one shell); in that era, I'd make all my floppies bootable.
Depending on your machines, we may have looped back to that point in the form of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40914761 - 20MB in one file is all it takes to carry around a UEFI bootable Linux system on every USB drive you own.