On 2006-06-24, B Gruff <bbgruff@xxxxxxxxxxx> posted something concerning:
> On Saturday 24 June 2006 07:42 Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> True. I have always said that an impulsive move to Linux will simply not
>> take. This needs to be done gradually. First, dual-boot* or Open Source
>> Windows applications. Then, transition to Linux as the major platform. In
>> due time, Windows becomes obsolete. Its maintenance problems make it a
>> chore, which is not worth keeping. Wated disk space (DLL's) can finally be
>> reclaimed. The next machine to be bought will require no Windows licence.
>
> In my personal experience, all absolutely true.
> For a while (weeks) I hovered on the brink, using linux but frequently
> booting Windows.
> The breakthough? Well, I had e-mail set up on both, of course. The Windows
> account deleted the mail after reading, while the linux account left it on
> the server. In this sense, the Windows was the "master". It seems a
> trivial thing, but I reckon that I became a real "linux user" when I
> swapped that round - once I stopped going into Windows to clear the ISP
> mailbox, I found that I had little or no use for Windows. That was two
> years ago.
> Last August, my Windows 2000 stopped working. I rescued the data (some old
> stuff) using linux, and started to re-install Windows. It was a very
> tedious task, finding all those damned CDs for the drivers, rebooting etc.
> I'm sure you would like to know long that task took, and when I get round to
> finishing the installation, I really will write and tell you!!
> Meanwhile, I've embarked on a little task with that 70 year-old lady I was
> telling you about - the one who has just discovered that she was sold a
> pirated XP....... and I think that the eventual outcome will be very
> interesting, especially in view of all those stories that linux is not yet
> ready for Joe-six-pack.....:-)
I lasted a few months dual-booting. I had Winders on most of the drive
and linux on a small part of the same one.* I dual-booted for awhile
because I had trouble getting an internet connection established for
dialup o the linux side. After I did, I found I spent less and less
time on Whinedows, so I wiped it and reinstalled linux to the whole
drive.**
* An 850M drive on an old Compaq laptop. Windwoes had most of it, linux
a small part. It had no CD reader and was only connected to the
internet via dialup. I had to split all of the files on another
WinDOS machine, move them via ZIP drive disks (a SCSI model drive),
read them via a parallel port SCSI emulator off of the drive and
reassemble them on the other Windoze machine. It took days just to
get the files over because of errors, mostly on the parallel SCSI
emulator. Once done linux had something like 300M to work with,
just about right in those days to be able to dick around with
things to learn, and still have a desktop. Even Winders was cramped
for awhile because it had all of the installation files I needed
for linux on its partition.
** By this time I had a PCMCIA SCSI board that let me use an external
NEC 3X SCSI CD reader*** I had for reinstalling everything. All
this was done running RH 4.2. It took an hour, give or take, to
install from one CD to a 100MHz machine with a 3X reader. I tried
to install directly from this drive originally. But the emulator
kept tossing out errors all over the place and made it impossible
to use the reader to do anything.
*** I might even still have the reader around someplace, but I think I
tossed it after using it for about 5 more years after all this.
--
Sometimes I wake up grumpy. Other times I let her sleep.
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