13 Feb
2005
13 Feb
'05
4:23 p.m.
Patrick Useldinger wrote:
Or 4Gb on a 80Gb disk ;-) Your user data is not duplicated.
Not sure. It *is* time consuming to update, but when
you update at least
you have a chance of some settings being kept. Otherwise you can be sure
they won't, which may be OK for me but my girlfriend wouldn't
appreciate. And I certainly do not have a log of the customisations she
did.
I do not know your girlfriend. But isn't keeping config files in the
home directory enough? If you have a separate /home directory everything
is kept during a fresh install. Or did she manipulate /etc files?
During the update, I wondered how other distros handle
this. I'd be
surprised if you had to go through all this with a SuSE or Fedora, for
example. And I caught myself thinking, "the next machine will be a
Macintosh...".
I have an ibook. In principle MacOSX is a wonderful system. Just install
X11 and run all Linux apps (gimp, openoffice, etc.) natively along with
MacOSX applications. It is also very easy to configure. You have a fully
functional BSD system and tools like bash, vi, apache, rsync, perl,
python, ... are all installed by default on every modern Mac. Linux apps
can be installed from source simply by doing a ./configure; make; make
install. You have a RISC processor and OpenFirmware (an open standard
also used by AIX and Solaris systems).
But:
1. OS updates costs (Panther: 150 Euro) and happen very often (almost
yearly)
2. If you do not update (ie save 150 Euro/year), Apples let you in the
rain. I still get security updates for Jaguar, but many new things only
run on Panther.
3. Apple omitted MacOS classic when releasing Panther. This means that
you are no more compatible with the pre-2001 Mac world. Many people
protested and Apple had to reconsider MacOS classic for Panther.
4. Many pre-2001 Apple users have peripherals which are still not
supported by MacOSX.
I still recommend Apple, especially as a Linux/UNIX user (Linux runs on
Apple hardware). But be prepared to invest more often in updates and
peripherals than on other systems. In a sense Apple is more open than
the PC world (Open source Darwin as a foundation for MacOSX,
OpenFirmware, improvements to Safari are integrated back to Konqueror,
etc.), but as an overall system Apple is more proprietary.
Just keep
/home and /usr/local on different partitions and install a
new version of the distro (or even another distro) on a spare partition.
Which takes twice the disk, that could be a problem. As long as you don't mess the partition table up.
No risk with
Slackware, but I have heard of other distros believing they should be
alone on a disk, very Windows-like.
This is still gpart... Just kidding. But backing up /etc on the same
disk is no better ;-) The backup must be on a separate disk if you want
to go for sure.
like tripwire in order to monitor exactly what
changed. Next time.
Modification dates on files should normally be enough. Only hackers make
sure that modification dates stay unchanged after changing a file.
I had one lock-up, but I am unable to reproduce it. I
have a slight
fear that this version might be a little less stable than usual,
seeing how it was rushed out.
We all know that Patrick Volkerding needed the money to pay his bills
(and medical treatment) ;-) I was surprised to hear that Slackware is
his only income.
Most of these are just first impressions, I did my
upgrade yesterday and
haven't used it a lot since. Again, I'll keep you updated, as well as
the document mentionned in my first post.
Thanks. Hope that the lock up doesn't happen again!
Greetings, Patrick Kaell