Running gOS Linux - Page 6

Bassey · 03-09-2008, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waveydavey

Just out of interest why are you moving away from Vista?

It's not Vista. Just windows and MS software in general. I've got fed up with it starting off fine, then gradually crawling to a halt and having to spend days rebuilding it again and re-installing all the new software.

Linux comes with all the software I need for Day-to-day work. Even at the first attempt I was able to get a fully-working Linux system in 2 hours from scratch. And that was including dealing with all the obstacles MS throws in your way by making sure none of it's systems will talk to anyone elses. Getting the email, calendar and contacts out of Outlook is impossible without paying for a hosted Exchange service, and even then it's bloomin' difficult.

Once everything is out of that restrictive environment, it all becomes a lot easier.

I still have to maintain a Vista environment for Visual Studio development work and two applications for which there is no Linux alternative (that I know of) - that's Tideplotter and Memory Map. Even on the development side I'm looking at the new Sun Java IDE. Deployment of Microsoft Applications is becoming a nightmare. .NET frameworks, WPF, silverlight etc. Having said that, from the brief look I've had I don't think Java is much better.

I'm just fed up with the poor performance of Microsoft products and being locked in. And that is from someone who thinks Office 2007 is fantastic and loves many of the new bits of Vista.

bruisah · 03-09-2008, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bassey

It's not Vista. Just windows and MS software in general.
[...]
I'm just fed up with the poor performance of Microsoft products and being locked in. And that is from someone who thinks Office 2007 is fantastic and loves many of the new bits of Vista.

I couldn't agree more. Add to that the fact that Open Source is free and it's a difficult argument to beat (other than compatibility issues, but that is part of the lock-in problem).

A.

Bassey · 11-09-2008, 08:24 PM

By the way Andy, what do you use to backup your Ubuntu? I can take a copy of everything under the /home directory easily enough but I'm struggling to find anything to take a full system copy in the way I can with, say, Acronis in Windows.

bruisah · 12-09-2008, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bassey

By the way Andy, what do you use to backup your Ubuntu? I can take a copy of everything under the /home directory easily enough but I'm struggling to find anything to take a full system copy in the way I can with, say, Acronis in Windows.

Backups? As a Swedish friend of mine says:

"Backups is for chicken, real men don't do backups"

His laptop got nicked not long after he said that - he has since become a chicken!

As for me, I'm not very good at making regular backups (though my main PC does have mirrored disks). Last time I did it, I just used a USB HD and used 'rsync' (it will check for differences so you don't have to worry about full versus incremental backups).

There are loads of 'proper' backup tools for Linux - some free, some commercial - that you can use. Don't forget, <Linux> - Google Search is your friend!

Regards,

Andy B.

Bassey · 15-09-2008, 09:52 AM

Yeah, I've done lots of searching and tried four or five of the 100+ different utlitlies I've found. It's just that none seems particularly user friendly and most only back up the user account. I'm used to taking a full system image and then being able to restore the bits I need. I've already dragged and dropped the user account to a USB Key.

I suspect I may end up using a disk utility, booting off a CD and then taking a full image that way.