A few days ago, someone at work was surprised to hear that i run Windows as my desktop. This past weekend kinda proved why.
One of the benefits of being a fairly cheap bastard is that when i decide i could use a network server in the garage, i tend not to go out and buy a real one. Instead, what i'll usually wind up doing is building a $300 franken-box out of aging, discount parts i bought on line, stuff them into a fairly ugly case, toss in a handful of older drives and bungee that to a top shelf somewhere. In addition, i'll generally pick an OS that's simple, but mostly falls in the "Free" group, in this case Kubuntu. Thus, i've now described my backend server "Draal".
Since i've been working with platforms for a while, i've learned one critical lesson: Put the System on it's own partition. That always turns out to be kind of important, particularly recently.
You see, recently, i was having various issues with Draal. The USB stuff wasn't picking up new drives when i plugged them in, my KDE menu was more than a little messed up, but more importantly, after a recent attempt at an upgrade, my kernel got corrupted and the box wouldn't boot. Granted, the fix was to download the 7.10 distribution, burn it onto the RWCD, boot it, copy the critical bits into a safe directory, do a fresh install to the root partition, and reconfigure things back using those critical bits previously safely stored. Mind you, there's really nothing here that's unusual or difficult. Although the box is a big network server, the other stuff it's running is mostly LAMP kinda stuff (apache2, php5, mysql5, perl, python and a few like others). Although i'm using KDE, i'm mostly using it remotely so there's no fancy graphical stuff or anything going on here. Heck i don't even have audio enabled, and the wireless is handled by an external game adapter. This should be about as simple an upgrade as possible, but, inevitably, every time i try to do a version upgrade, stuff breaks, falls over or catches fire and i find it far easier to just wipe and rebuild where needed.
Yeah, so it's about two hour's worth of actual work (several hours counting downloads, updates, and edits) to effectively get a brand new system up and going. A bit of a hassle, but not a huge deal.
Now imagine your sister-in-law who does marketing for some movie studio doing that. Or your brother who still points to the monitor and calls it the computer. Or a lot of other folks who you see at shopping malls, grocery stores, or other like locations. Say what you will about the closed natures of Mac and Windows, but they really do work as advertised, and for the most part, involve a fair bit less tweaking and general knowledge about how things actually work. The various *nixen have gotten FAR better in the years, and although i still can't load Kubuntu onto my laptop and get it to run, i know it's really just a matter of time before i can. (Of course, i doubt that the wireless card will be supported, but that's another problem.)
So yeah, i do love me some Linux and nothing beats working on a Unix back-end when you need to get something done. Just don't ask me to work on a Linux front end. i've got other things i'd like to spend my time on.
meh. Any system can be rooted. It just depends on how diligent one is about keeping it up to date. I run a free anti virus package and free two levels of firewalls. Plus I tend to mostly use it as a platform, so I don't run things like IE and have a lot of services turned off.
In fairness, I tend to do the same with nearly every platform I run, so it's not that different. I've also not been hit by a virus, trojan or any other bit of net based evil.
I think it's cool that you guys can basically homebrew your OS, I am one of those people who will use Linux when you can keep clicking the "Next" button to solve problems.
I know that's not really very hip admit, but I think that's the audience third-party systems have to gain before they shift any paradigms.
Save This Page
I couldn't run a windows system. Really. Connect it to the net and get rooted … or pay lotsa dosh to keep the various virus + malware filters up to date.
I've got better things to do with my time.
This opensuse 10.2 machine has been working like a dream for more than a year, and I'll keep it as is for as long as possible; once I have to change to something else, it'll be the latest opensuse distro, again, like it's been since suse 7.3 or so.