OpenEuphoria

Re: Backups

• Posted by acran at readout.fsnet.co.uk Mar 26, 2002
• 360 views

Hi Euman,

At 20:04 25/03/02 -0500, you wrote:
<snip>
>I have to say that recently when I updated my Win98 box to IE6
>I havent seen a crash in several months.
<snip>

I might bump up my Windows 98 SE machine from IE5.5 to IE6 but as it's only
a 450 Mhz AMD with 128 meg of RAM I'm worried IE6 will be too much of a
resource hog. Any thoughts?

<snip>
>LINUX RANT:
<snip>

You know how to make me bite 

<snip>
>I can tell you that anyone who thinks Linux is faster and safer than 
>Windows has been brain washed by someone.
<snip>

I don't run a desktop on my Linux machine.  It's more of a server.  Backups
via FTP, system snapshots using a large Samba share, email gateway using
sendmail, web proxy using squid.  Those sorts of things so I have no need
for a graphical user interface.  The good old command line works for me on
this system.  Hence I can't comment on whether a Linux GUI is faster than
the Windows one.

As for safer you'll have to clarify what safer means for you. Perhaps
defining dangerous instead might help.

<snip>
>Try running Linux on a i486 processor.
>    * SLOW, SLOW and way SLOW *
<snip>

Try running Windows 95 on a i486 processor - that is also slow.  I get just
passable performance running Windows 95 (OSRB) on a Pentium 75 with 48
megabytes of RAM.  Then again all I do on that system is surf the net and
search/download MP3 files 

<snip>
>Not to mention you have to keep recompiling the kernel 
>for everychange you make to your system.
<snip>

Now not every change surely   The up side is that you have precise
control over the changes.

<snip>
>Some people say that Linux is more stable and hardly crashes and I 
>say that when it does make a mistake it doesnt let you know until you
>cant boot the O/S anymore.
<snip>

Linux, like most UNIX implementations, is generally very good at allowing
you to backout your changes as long as you have taken the correct steps
beforehand to do so (recent recovery diskettes, copies of previous config
files etc).  Also good systems management practice is to not perform many
changes at once.  If you have two changes to make and both require a reboot
then do the first change, reboot, do the second change and reboot a second
time.  Don't do change one followed by change two and then a single reboot.
 It might work but then again it might not.  If possible do the first
change and run the system for a while to check it is still stable before
applying the second change.  Thay way if one of the changes does cause
unstable behaviour you have a better chance of guessing which one (and
hence which change to backout/reverse).

Now consider this: if upgrading from IE5.5 to IE6 made your Windows machine
more unstable how would you backout that change?  It's difficult because
you have no idea what the upgrade changed in the first place because Mr.
Gates and his microsoftees won't tell you.  If you had the time,
inclination and patience you could maybe work out what the changes were but
I wouldn't fancy this sort of reverse engineering task.

My experience with Linux is that it is more stable - uptimes in Linux out
perform those on Windows - YMMV.

<snip>
>Linux Black-Hats chew on those words.
<snip>

I'm no Linux "black-hat" I've just decided to use Linux as an appropriate
tool for some of my needs (FTP server, Samba, sendmail, etc) and also use
Windows 98 SE for my other computing needs (web surfing, email, digital
photography, document scanning, CD writing, etc).

So I don't see this (and other issues) as "this is better than that"
because it is rarely such a clear cut situation.  Choosing an OS for a task
or range of tasks is just the same as choosing a motor vehicle.  A town
dweller might choose something small that is easy to park.  A farmer might
choose a large four wheel drive.  Others might buy one of each.

Regards,

Andy Cranston.