[mythtv-users] Recomended distro???

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Fri Jan 19 22:11:36 UTC 2007


Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
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> On Jan 18, 2007, at 01.43, David Brodbeck wrote:
> 
>> Dewey Smolka wrote:
>>> MS Windows, on the other hand, gets to be more of a hassle every time
>>> you have to reinstall. Last time I had to do a clean install of XP
>>> (from OEM recovery discs), it took over three hours and something  
>>> like
>>> 14 reboots.
>>>
>> Shortly before Windows NT 4.0 was end-of-lifed, someone figured out  
>> that
>> installing NT4 on a modern machine, including upgrading to service  
>> pack
>> 6a, installing all the necessary drivers, and installing security
>> updates, took close to two dozen reboots.  Having done it before, I  
>> find
>> that totally believable.
>>
>> About the only time you really need to reboot Linux is to upgrade the
>> kernel or to test changes to the startup files.  And upgrading the
>> kernel is rarely necessary because security fixes rarely need to  
>> touch it.
> 
> There have been a couple times when rebooting Linux has fixed issues,  
> just to note. However, either way, Linux requires SIGNIFICANTLY fewer  
> reboots than any other non-UNIX-derivative OS.

I have never tried the following with WinXP but the process worked wit 
Win98SE and worked many many times for OS/2 WarpServer on Warp4, giving 
me a record time *for a complete OS re-install* of 17 minutes.

Booting from other media, zip the OS partition to another space, using 
-rS  as in  'zip -rS c:\ d:\backup.zip'.  This picks up everything.

When the solids have impinged upon the rotating hardware, boot from a 
rescue disk/partition, wipe the OS/2 partition clean, and then unzip the 
backup onto that space. Re-boot.

Sometimes this is tricky if the MBR points directly into the partition, 
but using grub or a boot manager to stage the process works like a charm.

This is MUCH easier to do if the OS partition does NOT contain other 
programs such as work processors etc. and data....keeps the size down.

An OS/2 server c: partition was about 210 Mb and easily zipped down to a 
mini-CD. A DamnSmallLinux business-card sized CD and the mini-CD got me 
working again one day without problems.

Pity that we really have to fight to keep our / partition down to an 
acceptable size. I still haven't after 3 years figured out what really 
needs to be segregated...

Geoff



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