Portents and Omens
On June 21, this article appeared in my news feeds:
sábado 19 de junio de 2010
No One Takes Linux Seriously Until...
Yes, nobody takes Linux seriously until you are face to face with the Blue Screen of Death, your system refuses to start, or maybe it does, but then it goes into a never ending loop of booting. I have never experienced anything like this in Linux. All those critical moments become particularly nerve-racking when you depend on your computer for turning in a vital assignment, when you are waiting for an important document file, or the day in which you must retrieve information that happens to be stored only inside your HD. [...]
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Little did I know that this was a portent to disaster. Two days later scribe_ari's Windows XP laptop blue screened. I could not even get it to boot to a command prompt. DOA. The vendor diagnostics showed the hardware to be fine.
Today, after three days (not full time, mind you) her computer has been restored to full functionality. I was able to save all her files via a Linux Live CD. I mounted the NTFS formatted drives, one was a USB drive, and copied all the requested files from the main drive to the external one. No problem.
Yeah... Linux. When Windows stops working, you'll be wanting it. Even if you don't want to ever install it, do get a Live CD for when Windows inevitably crashes and you MUST recover your files.
sábado 19 de junio de 2010
No One Takes Linux Seriously Until...
Yes, nobody takes Linux seriously until you are face to face with the Blue Screen of Death, your system refuses to start, or maybe it does, but then it goes into a never ending loop of booting. I have never experienced anything like this in Linux. All those critical moments become particularly nerve-racking when you depend on your computer for turning in a vital assignment, when you are waiting for an important document file, or the day in which you must retrieve information that happens to be stored only inside your HD. [...]
---
Little did I know that this was a portent to disaster. Two days later scribe_ari's Windows XP laptop blue screened. I could not even get it to boot to a command prompt. DOA. The vendor diagnostics showed the hardware to be fine.
Today, after three days (not full time, mind you) her computer has been restored to full functionality. I was able to save all her files via a Linux Live CD. I mounted the NTFS formatted drives, one was a USB drive, and copied all the requested files from the main drive to the external one. No problem.
Yeah... Linux. When Windows stops working, you'll be wanting it. Even if you don't want to ever install it, do get a Live CD for when Windows inevitably crashes and you MUST recover your files.