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How Long Does it Take You to Tweak a New Box?
An anonymous reader asks: "When you get a new computer, how long does it take to make it 'home'? On a Windows system, there seem to be a huge number of preferences I have to choose before it is really comfortable (doing things like: installing software; changing the wallpaper and color schemes; start menu layout; and so forth). How long do you have to fiddle with computer until you have it set up the way you like? Do you use any shortcuts to speed up the process?"
Nobody's found out how long it takes on linux, they're still working at it! ;P
Not very long. After years of working with computers (over 20), I've found keeping it simple is best. I change the background, arrange icons how I like and that's about it these days, whether it's windows or OSX or Ubuntu. If the OS can't accommodate this simple style I don't use it.
It'll take me a week or two, depending on the distribution, to tweak it to my liking. Some items like KDE I'll just copy over a known good install directory. If it's a system I'm transitioning to, I'll just copy $HOME over and make sure everything's nicely compiled right.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
The time I spend tweaking the settings asymptotically approaches something like 5-10% of the time I spend on the PC.
I never really stop tweaking. But just to get slackware installed and the necessary extras installed (libdvdcss and my personal apps) and setting up the x server and my desktop takes about an hour to an hour and a half ish. But that depends alot on why im setting up the machine.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
The only real shortcut is to setup your system how you like it the first time and make a system image so you can restore it if you ever have to nuke your system. The first time is always gonna be time consuming. The only other thing I could see that would shorten the process would be to use MS's system settings transfer option to move settings from your existing box.
Also, how the heck did this one make it through the filters? Who the heck cares how long it takes people to set up their system? Although I will brag that I can assemble a new box in under 10 minutes without troubleshooting.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I usually spend about an hour or two or three at most. But most of that is all installing programs and hardware. I would say about 30 mins or so on arranging and uninstalling crap that I don't need.
Just tweak it until your happy and then ghost it to a backup drive. When it gets filled with cruft wipe and restore.
When I do the whole burn-down-rebuild on a system, I let it evolve to my tastes. I like a change of scenery now and then, and a new OS install is the right time for me to get that. I try new apps, new desktops, new ideas all around. I might do KDE next time, I might stick with Gnome. I get new icon sets, experiment with new color schemes and wallpapers. It keeps me entertained and I always end up with a usable desktop in the end.
Hi-Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor!
Let's see: /home/username dir
- copy old
- "debconf-get-selections" on old computer and pipe to "debconf-set-selections" on new one
- "dpkg -l |grep ^ii" on old computer and replicate the package list
- go drink some tea while the apt-get proceeds
- done!
I carried my home dir with its settings across about three or four new computers in the last eight years or so, and I didn't have to tweak things very much. Only upgrading major components require some maintenance, but other than that, it's simple.
That's the clincher. About a week, simply because I don't do it that often (once every 3-4 years) that I don't have a list
Classic-ize windows display settings
Give the system an enema (remove all the windows default crap, any ads or OEM-given crap)
Install the necessities (ad-aware, avg, firefox, powertools, other windows registry hax)
Install a few benchmark things and test (diablo 2, doom, zsnes, media player classic + fddshow)
Dump data from old backup. (Over my last 3 installs this was via diskettes, then CDrs, then DVDrs). Then over the next week I'll just install new stuff as needed. Winamp, AIM, mud client -- I save all these executables but by the time you do a reinstall they're outdated anyway.
On windows, I can never get that "home" feeling. Mostly because of the select-to-copy/middle-click-to-paste idea hasn't been "innovated" yet on windows.
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About a week ago.
I spent about a week or so writing some simple programs(bmp to transparent gif converter, hex editor) and adding a few registry hacks to make them context menu accessible. I'd imagine my case is a bit different from the normal person's, but for me it's about where I want it in a week.
tweak a new box?
back in high school I was in bed by 8 and home by 11
giggity giggity
With Gnome, I usually make a changes: setting my background, configuring the Workspace Switcher how I like it, adding a few icons to the application bar at the top, and a few hotkeys. I also like to map the F1 key to maximize the window, so that when I hit it by accident, I don't get inconvenienced by the pop-up. Who needs documentation anyway?
I used to spend hours building up my computers, and then I spent $20 on a site listed on Froogle for a copy of Norton Ghost 2003. After several hours of building it up the way I wanted, I just popped in a DVD and now, when the system needs to be rebuilt, I can rebuild it in less than 1/3 of the time, all of which is automated once I get it started. Every sane person should buy imaging software for their PC so that if they have any failure, or want to play around, they can easily restore their system.
I keep my main configuration files (e.g. .bashrc, .emacs) in a subsversion repository. When I get on a new machine I checkout the "my-etc" project that contains those files. I have a Makefile with a target "links" which automatically creates sym-links and makes backups of the original files. It has worked well for me for quite some time now. It gives me the freedom of making config changes and easily importing those changes (svn up) on other machines.
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
Run the updator.
Install X11
Download and install development tools
Download and install subversion
Download and install firefox & opera
Find the Office disks, install and update office.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I've worked with computers for quite a lot of years. The installation usually goes this way:
.. and then now and then when I see that I miss an application - install it with apt-get or yast or whatever the tool of the day is. .. and I'll probably fetch my .bashrc from somewhere.
.. 1.5-3 hours.
Put "Favorite Distro of the year" into CD tray and do a default install with my partitioning scheme (1-2 hours).
Do the security patch routine (30 minutes)
Change mouse behaviour to "Focus follows mouse" (2 minutes)
Change panel behaviour in KDE to 'auto hide' (30 sek)
So.. I'm set to go in about
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
ask your mom, she'd know better than me
badump ching
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I use gentoo, and because I'm sadistic I love the install process. The acutal gentoo install is about two hours I think now that they've eliminated stage 1 and 2. But I like to compile everything from sources after that so it takes me another day (not straight through, I usually do it while I'm at work) to compile open office, firefox, x.org, and the like. Then it takes me another day or so to make sure my laptop can handle things like ACPI (I always forget to compile it for some reason), 3D acceleration (stupid ATI drivers), suspend-resume, framebuffer, E17, gensplash, and whatever else takes a bit of time. I don't mind it because I like the feeling of starting fresh without all those packages that you use once and never again being installed.
This is slashdot, no one here ever gets with wome...oh, nevermind, I get it now.
Windows:
Step 1: Install Windows
Step 2: Change to Windows Classic
Step 3: Desktop Background to image of my choice or color black
Computer is now customized to my liking.
FreeBSD:
Step 1: Install FreeBSD
Step 2: Locate the ports I want installed and compile a list of make install clean commands into one command
Step 3: Periodically check for config menus
Computer is now customized to my liking.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Re-installing video games can be a pain. If I was re-installing UT 2004, I'll need the installation DVD, the patch, the four or five community map packs, and any save files. Newer games are worse when it comes to save files. Both F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and the Supreme Commander demo store the save files on the C drive under the user's profile. That's a bad location since I keep a mean and lean C drive. I want my save files to stay in the game folders where I can find on them.
Perhaps I run an overly customised GUI or something, or like hacking the registry too much - but I find it takes me months to before I truly feel that a system has everything I need on it the way I want it. I know many people say a re-install takes a day and that's true enough, but getting everything you want on a box set up the way you like it takes a fairly long time I reckon.
I'm a Linux user, so the process is simple:
1 - install new version of favorite distro (currently Ubuntu)
2 - use package manager to install any additional apps
3 - Use and enjoy!
This process takes me about 2 - 4 hours, including time to download and burn the iso, and does not require a backup of my home mount point because it sits on a seperate physical drive (actually SATA RAID array) in my box which I simply reference and mount during the install.
took me about 5 minutes on the dock and desktop and then an hour or two cleaning and an hour putting in new apps. (opera, firefox ,sketchup,google video) and modifing settings.
Bought a laptop 6 months ago, took me 4 hours to remove all the crap they had on it and replace anything(IE with firefox).
You boot the old computer in Firewire mode by holding down a key. You plug in a firewire cable to the new computer. You click the install from old computer button. You go get some coffee and a bagel.
So basically, it takes me about 60 seconds and it takes the computer an hour or so. That includes pulling over my Windows and Linux desktop installs within a VM. Seriously, this is one of the main reasons OS X is my base workstation OS instead of Linux. Who wants to waste a bunch of time manually copying things over, only to find not all of it works anyway and you still have to reinstall a few things and tweak a few more?
30 minutes of config, 1.9 days of `emerge -e world`.
Hey, it's still quicker than Windows took.
. . . and counting.
I used to tweak the UI until I was completely satisfied with the way it worked, but I find that nowadays I don't bother so much with it anymore. If I can find my files easily I am satisfied. So I make sure I make shortcuts to easily find and/or mount network drives, make the 'right' subdirectories in my home directory, and I make sure that I know what gets backed up. I hate the way Windows has a My Documents folder that you can move to another drive, but the settings keep getting written in obscure dirs everywhere on the harddrive, depending on the program. In that way you always lose settings during a crash.
-- Cheers!
About 5 minutes of work from me and another 30 minutes waiting for the transfer. (The first time).
I have a high turn-over rate within my set of machines in common use. In the past 7 years I've owned about 9 distinct machines.
Some time ago I began exploring my options for rapid deployment of, as you put it, "home". First off I began minimizing the number of packages I have installed, and of those I do actually use I can rapidly recall and install with ease via aptitude. Anything I forget is either unimportant or recalled and installed at a later date.
For my home directory I loooked at using rsync, but that seemed to lack simple bi-directional unification and simple gui interaction. I looked at version controlling the entire thing but that seemed overkill. Eventually I ran across Unison.
Unison, though a little crufty, performs bi-directional syncing adequately. Now switching across Laptop/Desktop is relatively seamless, where in the worst case I merely have to perform a sync. Depending on how long it's been this can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes, but that deviation is more my fault and an inevitable result of my tardiness.
I believe Unison has a Windows port, but seeing as how Windows lacks a decent package management and deployment system I suppose your stuck with iteratively installing each application.
I have 5 boxes I use everyday. Whenever I have a fresh, clean install of anything, I will just compare the new box with an existing box to make sure I have all the essentials and that everything is working good. Then I have a master directory I keep of installers and different archives so I know where and what I have installed. I reference that folder whenever I set up a new box and it goes really quick. After that only have a few windows settings to adjust and I am good to go.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
In Windows or FreeBSD, I typically do changes as needed. I do a lot of stuff with my computer, and it's rare for me to go a month without installing a new app, as such I'll need to give it a proper home on a well organized start/k menu, and I'll want to configure it's UI settings, if it has any...
In Linux, I usually get sick of trying to figure out how to get a program to work/run properly, and give up.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
These days it's just a few commands:
and then finally:
and then either have the puppet server autocert the new machine or do it by hand (for the paranoid)...
So, about 5 minutes, I'd think.
Check out puppet, it's really a great (albeit a bit new) project: http://puppet.reductivelabs.com/
xchg
jmp emailMe
It has probably been mentioned and I just skipped it, but just the process of securing a Windows reinstall can take days, unless you have the time to babysit the whole thing.
I have reinstalled XP a few times, from an SP1 disc. Visit Windows Update. It can't Update until I install some ActiveX stuff so I can use the latest version of the site. That done, it recommends maybe 50 or 60 updates. Reboot. Go back to the site, spend a half hour downloading SP2 and another 2 installing it. Reboot. Go back to the site. More updates, maybe only a dozen this time. Reboot. IE7. Reboot. Patch for IE7. Possibly a couple of driver updates. Reboot.
And if you leave to go to the store without accepting the EULA for the patch....more wasted time. And this whole process is just to secure the machine, no app install of setup or tweaking.
Vista seems slightly better in this regard as it can download updates during the install process, but it still isn't up to the level that most Linux distros are.
I don't even know what the OSX install process looks like, or if there even is one. And I own more Macs than anything else.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
5 days, haha (slight exaggeration)
15 minutes of activity, followed by 3 hours of waiting. Which is how long it takes for Migration Assistant to copy over all my apps & data & configuration from my old mac.
It copies some skeleton and data files from a NFS share, and uses these to edit a bunch of config files if needed (it also detects if it's needed, and leaves things alone if not. And backups are kept of the files in case it makes a mistake.)
Things updated include: /etc/hosts /etc/passwd /etc/shadow /etc/group /etc/syslog.conf /etc/inittab /etc/mail/submit.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/auto.master /etc/exports /etc/ntp.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/mail/aliases /root/.bashrc and others.
It also looks for certain packages, and will install them if missing (if it knows how to for this particular distribution.) It turns off services we don't use, and turns on services we do use.
It can even be added to rc.local and run every time the system reboots, and will look for changes and apply them. If the script itself has changed (there's a copy in the NFS data directory it uses) then it'll get the updated version and update itself.
It's pretty slick. It took a while to write, but it's now pretty well set up, and it can handle most of the distributions we've ever used or even looked at. I even had it working for Solaris as well, but it didn't do quite as much for Solaris, and we don't use Solaris as much so I haven't really maintained that part of it.
So, to answer the question, less than five seconds.
all of windows update
install the 3 or 4 system heavy utilities I'm using now
(wow, studio, ms publisher/office currently)
and stick my old box under the desk and connect to it via MSTSC (remote desktop)
then I share it's hard drives completely open.
New PC is used only for trusted, normal, I can type the domain by memory websites.
some blogs, slashdot, news sites, and google summary/cache searches only.
anything I want to 'download and try' I do it to the old pc.. under remote desktop...without drives connected via remote.
if it's REALLY GOOD, then I'll add it to the new PC.
email, I keep on the old PC (which has antivirus & popup blockers) the new PC has no antivirus.. just the CPU heavy apps.
or access via exchange webclient (I have a SBS server)
keeps my ace PC clean and quick.
old pc session is the only one used for googling of random internet lookups...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
>Do you use any shortcuts to speed up the process?
I keep a set of files in a directory that has my initial set
of tweeks when I install a new OS.
One file has the commands I run on a new install. A second file
keeps the list of software packages I install. Another file
has the network setup, including the IP addresses.
If I edit any configuration file, I use ln -s to the changed
configuration file.
This could come in handy if I lose my harddrive. I only need to
go through my check-list. And yes, I do keep a backup of these files
on a place off hard drive.
The hard part is having the discipline to keep these files up-to-date.
-cmh
Simply copy across your home directory. Bingo, all your favourite settings...
Deleted
My tuning begins before even installing the OS. I make the C: drive about 20 to 40 gigs, depending on available space. If I have multiple drives, I might dedicate C: to one. The point is, I always will create another partition or two, usually D: for data, G: for games, and J: for junk. That way if I need to format and reinstall the OS or back up important data, its much easier to deal with. Data I want to back up goes on D:, for example.
I will place the page file on J: as well. J: is for things where I don't care if files are fragmented or optimized so much. The pagefile goes on before any other data and is static in size, so I don't figure fragmentation is a problem there.
After windows is installed, I obviously update to the latest hotfix level, install missing drivers, directx 9.x and etc. This is probably the most time consuming step.
I always change the start menu to "Classic" so the "My Computer" and "My Net Places" are on the desktop. And I don't care for the "improved" start menu so "classic" is a quick and easy fix. I usally take the bitmap off the background as well.
From there I go through the services and disable all the lame ones that I never really found useful, like the wireless one (where my PC doesn't have a wireless device installed). I used to have a batch file for that to make it more convenient, but I am too lazy to make a Cd or have a usb key to make it available.
After that, if I am on a home network, I will set up a XFER share (usually on J:) with everyone ALL permissions. That makes it easy to share files, and its standard across any of my PCs on the network. I might do things like statically assign the IP, in case I need to for NAT / port forwarding.
Thats about it, all my tweaks are generally function related over form. I don't need my OS to be pretty and gadgety looking. Give me a shortcut on either my desktop (if its EXTREMELY common for me to use) or on my start menu and I am good. All in all it takes me the better part of an afternoon to get it set up and ready to go.
I have gotten a reputation for reinstalling windows among my friends. The most time I've done it to a single computer was 5 times in a single week (don't ask... I'm just a little bit neurotic). I found that the simplest way of doing things is to have stuff that takes forever to get setup to liking (Firefox and all it's add ons and extensions, etc.) setup as a portable app. Shuffle it off and on the computer or just leave it on a usb key. I made an automatic installer with nLite, including automatic setup of MS Office - now I just drop the dvd in the drive, setup the partition and come back in about 45 minutes. The rest of my setup and apps change frequently, but all the common installers fit on the dvd with the windows installation. You can make a profile for all your other settings and/or use tweakui for the rest. People tell me I should just ghost the drive, but eh... this way I get to do something at 3 am when I can't sleep, but am too tired to be productive.
I've found it handy to keep /home on a separate partition, so that if I feel like switching/updating distros, all my settings are kept across the change. There's the possibility of an application which does not use the same settings across versions, but I haven't yet found this to be a problem.
/home stored on a networked fileserver, then just mounting it on each of the computers that you use. I haven't tried this, but have been thinking about doing it for some time.
Even better, if you're feeling particularly geeky, would be having
For Windows? No clue, haha!
I am not a number - I am a free man!
Nobody's found out how long it takes on linux, they're still working at it! ;P
Whereas with Windows, it doesn't take long at all... before you realise that it is impossible. :-)
www.wavefront-av.com
Yeah, that's right!
;)
With my server (Linux), it's about 4h work getting from a wipped disk to functionnal, but sometimes it's a couple of days before I remmember the little tweak I did last year that made me happy.
With my clients (OS X), it's about 2h and everything's there (home directory, games, updates). Than it's a couple of days before I remmember the little tweak... you get the idea
Than, if I get to read about some new tweak, utility, parameter or anything that could be usefull to me, it get's tried that's for shure!
Menzoberranzan Networks
I've switched to using my computer's OS as just a shell for running VMWare. When I get a new computer, I stick the old HD in there with it. If I feel that the new HD is sufficiently faster, I'll transfer the image over; otherwise, I'll just double-click the image on the old HD and continue as before. No tweaking required.
I would toil endlessly with utilities and settings for days on end. Now I just disable font smoothing on the PC(technical reasons, I'd leave it on if I could) and pick my favorite wallpaper. On my Mac's I shrink and disable scaling on the dock. I really really hate the dock, if someone knows of an application that basically makes the dock a menu and utterly eliminates it I'd like to know. Display extensions/invisible files on all platforms. Total time about a minute. Add another minute for all the miscellaneous things I may have forgotten. Two minutes.
Ubuntu... I'm the guy who liked brown. Sorry.
(For the purposes of this post, I don't consider installing applications I actually use to be tweaking.)
The time I was spending tweaking was never even being close to made up in productivity. Tinting scroll bars might be nice to look at, but making wavy windows in Ubuntu is nothing more than a distraction. What I need is a quick stable platform. Even if I were inclined to tweak again, stability and performance are way more important to me and most of these sorts of things compromise that.
What I have found that has made my life so much easier... Figuring out what the developer decided what was the "right" way to do things and just do them that way. Relenting and just doing things the MS/Apple/Ubuntu way ultimately made me more productive. I still think there are some pretty questionable practices going on (Apple I'm looking at you) but for the most part installing a new file manager/gadget/accessory/widget or whatever doesn't actually save me as much time as it takes to install it.
You know what's funny... I love my Mac and Linux PC's you could even think of them as an extension of my old tweaking ways. But I keep coming back to my XP box for the bulk of my work. Why? This isn't the thread or crowd for that but I'll leave you with my favorite Guy Kawasaki quote.
I'd love to discuss advocacy with you, but I've got a check to cash.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I usually spend about 3 hours using nLite before I install windoze... then about an hour after its up and running
I simply tweak /etc/fstab, /etc/passwd and /etc/groups to use my NFS and NIS exports of users and home dirs. That means, I add 2 lines to the first (to handle email too) and one to each of the other files...
When the server dies (already happened) I simple exchange the hardware, and keep the disks (sometimes I have to insert a new module into the kernel, but it is rare). When a disk die I'll have to restore backpus. That takes time.
Rethinking email
I run slackware, and it's the way I want it straight out of the box.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
This is especially because I have shuffled temporary solutions for a long time. I'm aiming for one last long haul Windows machine which I will take several months to set up perfectly, because I expect it to last 5 years minimum.
On my lazy temp systems, I have the necessities done in 1-day's-work spread over a week.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I configure the system to be usable, that takes a few hours for each physical install, VM image or jail. On windows it's GVim, firefox and bblean and removing or disabling flash if that's already installed. For unix, it depends what role the machine will be filling. I do build my own nix kernels, usually removing stuff I don't need (like USB) but I don't consider that tweaking. These days my desktops are all flux/Xfce and the only consistent tweaks I make are to pine when I update the OS on my main shell box (every few years).
Then there's my laptop which runs gentoo, I don't tweak that either unless you count instances when portage breaks or a major package upgrade requires some action (fairly often).
I don't understand tweakers, it's like a manifestation of OCD or something.
I can screw with a machine to get it "just right" for months before I would consider it truly mine. Especially if you consider software installation part of the tweaking process. But then I'm just silly like that when it comes to messing with my machine(s).
Well, the xbox 360 really only takes a couple minutes. Get your HD video settings, clock, and Xbox live setup and you hit the ground running.
Windows, on the other hand, takes at least a couple weeks. Even after creating a unattended install disc. Just too many little settings to change here and there.
Linux (Fedora), took me about 6 months, but I am somewhat a Linux novice, and I spend less time on my linux box. For a basic web or file server, it doesn't take long, but for an everyday PC, it does take alot of tweaking that isn't always easy to do. You have to install alot of Plug-ins manually, and getting the thing to be able to play certain media files can be a hassle if you're like me and just know enough about Linux to be dangerous. Linux tends to make the important things (web server, firewall, port management) easy to do, but the trivial things (media players, browser plug-ins, etc) that you want in a PC tend to be difficult. At least they seemed to be for me.
For OS X, it takes about 10-15 minutes: long enough to set a homepage, turn on the middle and right buttons of the mighty mouse, and install Quicksilver.
For Windows, it takes about half an hour to get to the point that I no longer feel unclean for using the machine. This includes turning off pretty much all the eye-candy, stripping the system of the most common bloatware, and disabling as many MS apps as possible. But the process never truly ends. Months later, I will try to find a file and end up seeing that f****ing dog. He takes about five minutes to kill.
On Linux, I am always tweaking unless I have an important deadline looming, or if I'm surfing the web while waiting for a compile to finish.
1. Wait for someone to make a joke at Linux's expense 2. Blast 'em! 3. Completely ignore your sense of humor's pleading, from inside the locked closet, that it is a joke. 4. ...
5. Karma!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
... about 1 hour, about 55 minutes of which are spent for adding 17 additional package sources (packman, guru, kde base from buildtree, etc etc) and installing massive amounts of software from there.
the actual configuration after a clean install is done in about 15 seconds, thanks to dhcp/nis/automounter... the _only_ setting i have to tweak is to make the dhcp client send a release packet before quitting on shutdown.
for me to setup windows XP to the way I like it with updates, patches, utilities, codecs, and game installs. I usually start installing in the afternoon with a beer in my hand, and switch to whiskey and 7up later. As the evening closes in I find myself crashing more frequently then the computer and end up going into sleep mode and finishing the next day.
My boot comes in suppository form, but only for you...
I work as a tech, and usually for other businesses. While i do have my own laptop, i often work at other machines.
;)
This is why i usually try to use as little third party programs as possible, and try to almost everything i can with the tools provided by the OS. That OS is Windows, most of the time.
I've got a little folder of tools which i have on a USB stick (mostly sysinternals, putty, etc.). I keep all settings on defaults. I usually change the background image to my companies logo, though
While this might sound very strange to someone who works with only one machine all the time, this has given me the ability to work as fast on other machines as on my own. It's an entirely different approach, and probably not suitable for software developers, but it worked out very well for me.
At this point, you have a usable machine. If it's my machine (and even if it isn't my machine), I usually install the following software:
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
ir depends if you include updates (windows)
,i have french version so it's a couple more updates, then all software.
For me at my job setting up a machine goes around 2 to 3 hours but that includes all updates, MS Office plus all updates
adobe acrobat
winzip
erp software needs two consecutive reboots because of service pack.
then profile setup
Office tweaks ans outlook tweaks.
Xp tweaks to make it look and fell like W2k.
It all depends i gues on how far you want to go to get a better experience.
If it's just my com^puter at home i would say two days if i had to reinstall every game and software i have
I'm still tweaking my Commodore 64. I'll get back to you...
-- Alastair
depending on how much money I spend on her.
(see subject)
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I'm using the same debian installation for 5+ years now. It survived multiple computers, harddrives etc.
I'm still customizing it. There are a lot of tweaks that make my pc more productive, lots of scripts I've written over the years.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
svn checkout http://my.dotfiles.home/dotfiles dotfiles
cd dotfiles
make
Save off your home directory, and any tweaks you may have to the OS (packages, configuration, etc) should be in your kickstart file. New machine? No problem. Works on servers, works on laptops.
I recently re-installed Windows XP on both my machine, and my wife's, and both took 30 minutes apiece. The only settings I tweaked were to add file extensions, show hidden files, show status bar, show details, and finally, patch the machine with service packs. In total, that only takes me about 30 minutes a pop, and the majority of the time is spent watching the Windows Installer do its thing.
This is for Windows: For clients, it takes me about six hours to setup the basic system, then extra time for any specialized software that they need. I do have a list of setup related tasks that I follow pretty closely, then update after each setup to make sure that the procedure remains up to date. When setting up a computer for myself, I follow that same setup list loosely, then I have a list of 60 or so programs that I need to install. That usually takes about 12 hours over and above the six.
This never worked 100% for me. I always ran into some configuration setting or kernel extension or a Web certificate or something that was not stored in my home dir. Also, I run a lot of commercial software that is not stored in any repository, and all of that needed to be reinstalled and re-registered. Fonts were often an issue as well, as I have a large collection for my work and like them to be accessible to multiple user accounts on my workstations.
These days Linux lives in a virtual machine image and OS X manages to migrate everything over from old machines to new ones, including Linux and Windows VMs.
Truthfully? Until it's time for a new one, there are always things to tweak here and there and new things to add, it is the way of things now, newer faster better all the time; just when you get something dialed in, it's either time for an update (which likely as not breaks something else), or time for a newer faster better machine.... ;)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I don't finish futzing with a box until I replace it years later. This is for both Mac and Windows.
I cheat. /home is auto-mounted from a NFS server. Short of telling the box to grab the automount map from LDAP, I don't need to set up any personalization. It's already there. A new box is just new hardware. I do have different application sets depending on the hardware capabilities. However, that doesn't have anything to do with personalizing the system. Rather, it has to do with why the box was built.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
One hour. I've been using Ubuntu for a couple years on a few separate machines, and gotten this process down. This is because I always keep a separate /home partition, and on it I have scripts to automatically finish up the setup. A system administrator is supposed to document their changes, so why not do it in the form of a script? This script backs up the stock /etc/fstab, /etc/network/interfaces, and /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then proceeds to set them up as wish. I also install a specific package list, which since I symlink /var/cache/apt/archives to a directory on said retained /home partition, does not even require much in the way of downloads.
Compared to the constant rebooting needed to install all the drivers and programs needed to make a Windows system workable, it's luxury.
1. Install CVS
2. Check out my "dotfiles" modules
3. Run a script in it to make symlinks
4. Log out and log back in
If I'm building a new box from scratch, rather than setting up my account on an existing box, add:
5. Install things on the hard drive (while doing other stuff)
6. Set up my dotfiles again on the hard drive.
7. Reboot without the live CD
10 minutes, start to finish, most of which is spent getting a snack while the install runs. Keeping /home on a separate partition or an NFS share works wonders. I spent many hours tweaking my configuration to death a long time ago, and it keeps working with newer distros.
/home over NFS or on a separate partition, NIS/LDAP, VMware/Xen/KVM, kickstart, etc. The investment will pay off very quickly.
For tweaking the system software configuration, virtualization is really nice. I have a bunch of stock install images I can copy and boot up in a few seconds and customize from there.
If you do frequent OS installations, it's definitely worth investing a little bit of time with
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
On Windows: New version / new box, there would be at 3 install/wipe cycles.
/home as well. With LVM I find I tend to try and put more thought into it so that in the future disk expansion is easier.
... well that really is ongoing.
Part of that is making sure the latest (correct) drivers are downloaded and installed.
Other bits such as getting the intelligent partition sizing had generally waited until the next rebuild. Having built a windows install on a box, the next time it has to be rebuilt it is generally a lot easier (unless there is a new version involved).
Often because a new box comes with windows drivers and things like CD writing software, I know that I generally just used the ones that came with the box.
For Linux: Being a relative newcomer I'm still trying to get it right.
Although, yes you can get away with two partitions (/ and swap), I generally have one for
One thing I have found with linux is trying to work out which application to use. With soo many to choose from for a particular task it is easy to install/uninstall remove several different apps. Windows definitely left crap about with an install/uninstall cycles, I guess linux isn't perfect with it, but at least Unbuntu seems to be able to remove packages or be able to find out which packages are not needed.
As far as personalisation (desktop theme etc) goes
I'm not being a troll, but the fact is, it takes nearly no time on Linux or OS X. Apple's current "Would you like to bring data over from another computer?" thingie that you see when first launching a new computer or new OS install really does work quite well. Linux, of course, is a matter of copying over your home directory. Apps are too dependant upon the use & user to go into detail on here.
:-)
:-)
As for Windows, I work with a close to default install. Might take 10 minutes to get all the things I want--
- unlock the taskbar
- classic start menu
- classic scheme
- desktop icons (yes show my computer, no don't show my documents)
- turn off effects, animations, and sounds
- 3D white mouse pointer, no shadow
- open a folder, set it up (classic view, no web content, details), then folder options -> apply to all folders
- control panel -> classic view
- small apps--Firefox, Acrobat, iTunes, Putty, Crimson Editor, and a few other odds and ends
- big apps--Adobe Suite, MS Office, OpenOffice, etc., depending on what I'm doing and who's paying for it all
I don't do this enough to look into automation. I tried RSYNC once because it's great for other stuff but all it did was show me that about half of my settings must be in the registry--after RSYNCing up, what I had was a hybrid of half my stuff and half Windows defaults. The closest I come to automation is keeping the installers for most things on my server.
For a fun read, check out Mark--he got it down to a simple 147 step process.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There are people who stop setting up their systems? Really? That's cool. I never even get the case put back on mine, much less stop adjusting and installing and tweaking.
(That's a big benefit of a laptop: it's not always sitting around with the sides off and wires streaming out to nearby electronics, coz I can't *do* that with a laptop. I'm definitely the computer equivalent of the guy in high school who never had the hood on his car. He had the coolest car... but he was also the only person who *needed* the fire extinguisher under the passenger's seat.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Some other exciting posts to which I'll look forward.
How long does it take for you to configure OpenOffice the way you like it!?
How long does it take for you to configure MythTV the way you like it!?
How long does it take for you to configure World of Warcraft the way you like it!?
How long does it take an average girlfriend to write you off as boring!?
Yeah, I'm grumpy.
they replaced my twin-set (one 5-years-old Win98 Itautec, one white-tower Edgy) with a brand new Itautec. I had to reinstall everything. I installed Edgy and all the stuff I need in 30 minutes; in a VirtualBox machine, I installed XP, Oracle client, BlackBox (bblean), vim, 7zip, Delphi, Indy, ReportBuilder, QuickReport, and other stuff I need to do my Windows in-house systems maintenance. Took me 4 hours: 35 minutes to install XP and 3:25 to install and tweak the rest (all previously downloaded/imaged).
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Linux I use a very simple KDE configuration so it takes a coupla minutes just to make some shortcuts and change the desktop background. Obviously the install process takes a bit longer.... OS X again is pretty simple, change a few preferences, install some applications, myabe an hour or so. Windows seems to take all year, especially if you need to install security updates. Plus there are far fewer apps built into windows when you first install it, compared to OS X or a decent linux distro.
"Everlasting peace will come to Earth when the last man kills the last but one." - Adolf Hitler
i think there are about 4-5 clicks and your mac(s) take care of the rest via migration assistant
Finish the install, drop back to W2K style "theme" and uninstall the crap they preload. Good to Go.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
... 30 min for files and settings for all shipped apps .mac)
(actually sitting outside the Apple Store using Backup and
2 Sopranos episodes for all 3rd party apps.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
(Install FreeBSD)
./.fvwm2rc
.emacs with vi - the very best editor for editing .emacs - make sure to set viper-mode t)
> scp oldcomp:/home/bluesman/.fvwm2rc
> pkg_add -r fvwm-devel
> pkg_add -r emacs
> pkg_add -r clisp
> pkg_add -r sbcl
> pkg_add -r firefox
(Download slime)
(Edit
> pkg_add -r gimp
> pkg_add -r gaim
And I'm home. Install openoffice, Qt, Java, etc as necessary.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
The dog takes about 3 seconds to kill... right click, "Turn off the animated character."
It takes about 30 min to get the first cigarette burn on the keyboard , then it feels like 'home'.
#include bier;
It used to take about an hour to strip all the pre-installed crap from the new boxes. I ended up writing couple of "silent uninstall" scripts to take care of some most common pests. Still have to uninstall some of them manually though.
Given:
1. We have an image with base software already on it.
2. Internet connected when needed
3. All the CD's on hand needed.
4. Everything else pretty much available on the WAN or already on another partition.
It took about 5-6 hours. That does NOT include the time spent backing up stuff to DVD or hard disk.
Maybe 6 hours for Windows and maybe a little longer for Ubuntu.
Once that's done I make an image of my harddrives in case something goes wrong. For Linux I use partimage, and for Windows I use ntfsclone - never had any problems.
I then periodically update the images when I install and configure major software. Making an image takes about half an hour for Linux and 10 minute to reimage the drive, and for Windows it takes about an hour to image the drive and about 30 minutes to reimage the drive.
Of course, the first 8 months or so was waiting on version .20 to appear (as .19 was teh suxors). Still crashes like a mother whenever ANYTHING goes wrong with the frontend machine. At least the mt-daapd music server works great...
I could just scp /etc, but that loses many of the upgrades, so I have to edit manually.
1. installing windows: 5-10 hours 2. installing your applications: 5 hours 3. changing images/start menu etc etc: 2 hours 4. disk imaging your hd after installation: 5 hours not having to do 1-4 again: priceless This is very amoratized since you still need to install new updates since time changes etc.. etc..
A new computer used to mean days of tweaking and installing. When I used Windows it was trying to remember every program I wanted, finding the newest version, downloading, installing and rebooting.
When I switched to Gentoo it required a lot less manual labor, but still took a long time. A day or two of compiling required to get the box up and running in addition to the standard tweaking was unpleasant.
Just a few weeks ago I got a new laptop, and I threw the Fiesty Fawn on there. Tweaking doesn't take long at all. The environment I work in is pretty close to the default Ubuntu setup. I install the OS and get to work. As I get working I run into situations where I need something I don't have, or there is a customization I like that isn't set. I just install and change things as I go along my merry way. Installing all the Firefox extensions takes longer than anything else.
So thanks to Ubuntu and a change in attitude, the answer to this question is no longer several days, but under an hour.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
On linux debian based... ten seconds for main config:
apt-get remove gnome
(or kde if you have that) the rest is just plain sailing installing software etc maybe 3 hours then the server is live and kicking!
On Windows:
I have had this computer for 7 years and im still not happy with its hardware, operating system and software. I guess windows is uncomfortable with me.
Vista is the first operating system that I've been happy with out of the box. I still have the default background and theme. The only personalization I did was add some gadgets to the side bar, and make the desktop icons bigger.
As far as my development environment goes, that seems to change every week anyway, so...
There's nothing wrong with anything - Phillip J. Fry
I make a point of spending almost *NO* time doing this. There's a few things that have to be done (turn off Windows automatic update; copy .vimrc on Linux; install QuickSilver on OSX ) but they don't take long. I can learn to live with most things, given a day or so; over the course of the first few days I may tweak mouse tracking or the like. An awful lot of this (on OSX / Linux at least) can be handled automatically by copying my home directory.
I've always preferred Gnome for the same reason the gear heads don't: being less configurable means less time and trouble finding and fixing the few things that I can't get used to. The rest I don't care about and rarely change unless I need to. I just want things to work correctly with as little fuss as possible. I didn't enjoy breaking into systems in college, either.
I don't have much luck with laptops or any computing hardware.
I have got fed up with breaking in new ones and additionally would like to work on other computers, such as at friends or relations or simply at the office. I am also fed up with lugging my laptop around.
So what I'm trying to do is keep my work on an external USB disk. I have found that copying Python and my Python programs to the disk allows me to run from the disk on windows machines. Python does not have to use the windows registry and my programs can use relative disk locations.
I use a few little CherryPy servers and Firefox (even IE) to run HTML/javascript . That seems to work quite well. I am also looking for other programs that will run from my external disk. I am trying to get to the situation where I can just plug in and start work - without having to register anything or get my credit card out.
The aversion to credit card use is often irritation at the process rather than the actual sum paid. Which brings me to editors. Does anyone know of a good editor that I can do this with? Similar to my favourite Ultraedit so at least I have something half decent when I plug into a new machine.
Any other advice would be gratefully received.
...to get to the center of a Windows installation.
I merely use the same home dir, either by copying it back and forth, or by having it on a particular partition if I'm going to be using the same disk. An ext2 driver can then be employed if the new system is Windows.
1) Copy cab files from your original Windows installation CD/DVD
2) Incorporate service packs & hot fixes
3) Incorporate your RAID/SATA drivers (no more hitting F6 andinstalling a floppy drive JUST to load windows) and any device drivers (Video/Sound/other hardware) you'd like
3) Specify every setting you'd like; for example: What options do you want to appear on the start menu? What IP address would you like on your NIC? What screen resolution would you like on your desktop? What is your product key? nLite lets you set an amazing number of these
4) Recompress all of the above down to a new bootable image
If any of the above sounds scary, don't worry... nLite walks you through everything. The first time you do this, it takes a while to set everything up. However nLite allows you to import setting from previous sessions, so you can hit the ground running next time around. On subsequent loads, it can save a good number of hours and reboots. There is even a new version for Vista that I have yet to try... I forced myself to use Vista for one week and went screaming back to XP. (Woo hoo! Startin' a thread!)
Brian
What self respecting geek stops?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I should do a reinstall drill, see how quickly I can get my system back to normal, right now I'd say, including auto update and driver downloads, about 3 hours. Not counting a few days later when I realize I've forgotten something
For Linux, I am n00b so I don't get *too* picky, but that still takes about the same amount of time. Configuring a Debian router on a 667 Celery through a net install took a bit longer, lots to download. But I've never had to 'reinstall'
Completely reinstalling Windows and my applications takes me just a few hours.
;) But I also do it for (competitive) gaming. Lacking a powerful machine, CS gets a little choppy (and drives me crazy) if I let my machine go.
I used nLite to create a custom windows installer which includes SP2 and ALL the latest security updates, my drivers, my preferences (services, registry tweaks), and excludes WMP and other useless crap. Many programs will run without registry (for instance, Firefox after setting up your old profile with the -profilemanager). Custom batch files install my local Apache/MySQL servers. A little foresight goes a long way when it comes to reinstalls.
All this has taken a decent chunk of time to learn and debug (still having issues with some WMV since I removed WMP, but solutions exist), but I like to run a clean, barebones machine; my C drive (incl. Windows, Program Files) has less than 800 MB used. I have just 12 background processes (including NOD32) and I unregister unnecessary DLLs. I manually manage my explorer context menus from registry for complete control: Things I use are readily accessible and things I don't aren't creating clutter.
Of course, all the potential productivity benefit is squandered by all the tweaking I continue to do
How long does it take to uninstall Vista?
...so installing a new box to my liking is mostly following the log of last time. Also, some of the parts of the install log end up in a script. Still, it takes me around a full day to get started on a fully new install. I work with 2 disks, if I do a new install, I always do this on a fresh disk- should I need something from the previous install, it'll be available. After some time, the 'old' disk stops being actively used, at which point I'm ready for a new install.
Which will be any moment now. Ubuntu Studio is coming!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Home Servers: a little longer because I have so much damned 1-off stuff on them. I guess the same goes for the enterprise ones.
/home && tar -zxvf username.tgz' after doing the install. A couple of other minor tweaks in the init scripts (I've yet to find a distro that does everything exactly the way I like) is usually in order too.
Desktops: not much more than 'cd
time ( cd /home ; tar zxvf /mnt/backup/backup.tgz . ; chown -R me.me me )
And I am home. It also works accross distributions if you are careful with package selections.
Now you know why we scream at telephone technical support when they say you have to restore your system to the image they shipped it with (are you listening, Dell?) before they'll do anything more to diagnose what's clearly a hardware problem. It costs days to weeks of efforts of patching, updating, loading software, and setting preferences. This is a huge effort they seem to blithly ignore.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Stuff I want to keep : .. even DLTs are too sloww for that) ... on same tape than /home ... on same tape /usr/share/fonts/*ttf, and tarball of /etc, in case anything's not quite I like (USB thumb drive) .25hours :-)
... fetch bit-rotten CDs, writing down Serials, installing by hand each and every single time ... then comes the hide & seek game with the Registry base) : thousands of reboots, carpal tunnel syndrome from clicking the installers through, and no hairs left due to each bit-rooten CDs that cost in the $hundreds ...
-Home directory (/home, on tape)
-Various Data (switch disk with that
-Hand-crafted data (/usr/local)
-Some handy variable data (/var/lib/{mldonkey,www,postgresql,...})
-Backup of
-Debian package cache (about 15G, another tape)
-Kernel recompilation for new baby (about 1hours, including figuring which option means what)
-Package selection : about
-Then, comes the hard part : apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
-- Total consumption: 2 litters of tea, and a medium-sized book from long-overdue reading list,while tape drive unload data
-- Total time : about 5 hours, mostly automatic tasks
(If I had any Windows partition left : rumage through serials, cracks & Warez forums, including service packs, WGA evasion, several dozens different web sites for sofware updates, virus & spyware evasion tools
-- Estimated consumption: tons of black coffee, packs of cigs, $thousands for replacing bad CDs,
-- Estimated time for Windows : ages, stuck before computer
Linux : How do you want to spend your day today ?tm
On Linux, once Ubuntu is installed, apt-get install gnome-backgrounds, set GNOME-curves, adjust the theme to match the curves, adjust some of the applets for the panel, and done. Fifteen Minutes (maby a little less).
At work, I have to use Windows on my second desktop which is controlled by the Ubuntu box via x2vnc. I gave up on making Explorer usable once I discovered bblean. Once installed, I grab http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/, adjust a couple of settings, install a couple of extentions for bblean, make bblean the default shell, drag over GNOME-curves and set it as background, adjust the panel a bit, install Firefox, iTunes, and Cygwin. Probably half a day in total. Once bblean is installed I can get to work of course, but the system is hardly optimal until all my apps are installed.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Best case from bare drives, about an hour. Kickstart / Jumpstart take care of the system and applications, configuration scripts do the rest. This is for Linux and Solaris of course.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I was going to say I do the same thing, but then it occurred to me that the last time I upgraded, I switched from NetBSD to Solaris, so I didn't really copy anything over. And while I've attempted to keep everything in $HOME, I set up a caching DNS server, so I'd need to save that; I had to make some tweaks to the Apache startup script, so those need to be changed; all the final tweaks to my web sites that I did under htdocs that never got copied back; plus my PostgrSQL databases; plus all the jar files in the Tomcat common directory; thank goodness I was at least able to keep all my Ruby stuff in one place!
Hmmm, it's been a couple of months since I did a backup at home...I think I'll do one tonight....
Just junk food for thought...
I haven't investigated the pc de-crapifier enough yet, but I like the idea of an automatic removal of junk software and setting options the way a reasonable (and reasonably educated) computer user would want it. There really isn't much excuse for computers to ship the way they do, but there is enough common agreement on the basic settings (i.e. security settings) that any educated computer user should have. Let's make it automatic for all windows boxes, even if it takes a 3rd-party app to do it.
"How long do you have to fiddle with computer until you have it set up the way you like?"
...has been done in 6 seconds ^_^
"1h 45m from install to having a working, up to date and configured system running http, https, php, java, tomcat, mysql, mail server, ftp server, remote X access"
"Connect a fresh Windows ME box to the net and you can get all that in 1 minute and 45 seconds."
Dudes...
All my customization...
*stopwatch on*
$ cat >> ~/.bashrc alias dir='ls'
> EOF
$ exec bash
*stopwatch off*
that there is more to life than trying to prove one's journeyman technical prowess by wasting all one's time sewing a patchwork when other people are paid to be seamstresses.
The install/patches/drivers only take a few hours, maybe 4 at the most for all of the latest of each, but then I have to transfer over my games/music/iso/favorite proggy collection from the network store and run the various registry entry scripts i have to make the games/programs work.
Over all it isn't too bad, as i have the main system up within a few hours so i can start the transfer of the rest and go to bed, by the next morning I am good to go...
Spend fifteen minutes configuring and slipstreaming in wallpaper, programs, hotfixes, and SP2, enter your TCP/IP settings, CD key, user name, drivers, etc, then put the CD in and you're good to go.
The best parts if you go this route:
-It's quicker
-You don't have to worry about viruses (integrate anti-virus and hotfixes)
-No next, next, ok in the middle of the installation
-Works on any computer, as long as you integrate drivers
Hell, what's not to like? I've got an awesome "Windows Distro" that I've been using on all my friends gaming rigs for a few years now. It's all the customizability and ease of use of gentoo with the security and stability of XP (seriously, though, it is great).
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
About as long as it takes to restore my /home/$username and fix any simple permissions issues and add myself to the 7 or so groups I need to be a part of.
On my old machine do: dpkg --get-selections > installed.txt
New machine do: cat installed.txt | dpkg --set-selections && apt-get dselect-upgrade
I walk away from the machine for a bit, come back a few minutes later and sit down and do real work.
greg, REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
On MacOS X, 1 hour is enough. There are some free softwares I can't live without, like iTerm and Mplayer. But then, I don't need to tweak it a lot to feel confortable.
On Unix-like systems, about 48 hours. I like to polish the filesystem layout, I like to upgrade everything to -current, I like to install every piece of software I will need to work with various documents and media files, I like to tweak the kernel, I like to customize KDE, I like to get my beloved ZSH and Mutt configuration, etc. It takes about 2 days.
On a Windows system, it takes about 1 day, in order to install the updates... Then, I don't try to customize it. The more bloat I'd add, the more crashes it will get.
{{.sig}}
There are a few things I like to do to "customize" the system:
1. Switch Start menu to Classic. Unlock taskbar, ungroup similar items, show systray.
2. Switch background to no picture, color black.
3. Change all security options to off and don't remind me they're off.
4. Open IE, download FF. Delete IE from desktop, install FF.
5. Get and install latest motherboard/chipset/video/audio drivers. Set screen res.
At this point, the UI and hardware are set up exactly the way I like them and I consider the install complete. I used to tweak this and that in order to wring out every drop of speed and performance but nowadays I find myself content with just the above. If this is my main machine, then I'll restore all the stuff I backed up prior to the install and then I'll install my favorite apps and games. If this is for a friend/family member/coworker, it's done.
Pretty boring, I know, but my goal is to have the machine back up and running as soon as possible after the install, and I find this does the trick nicely.
There is simply too much glass..
till i get the new box to replace it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
First, once you've set up one Windows environment for yourself, you'll find it much, much faster to set up the next one, because you already have a feel for what you like.
Second, it really, really depends on whether you built the computer yourself, or bought the machine from a vendor like HP. If you built your own, you install XP, patch, d/l whatever apps you need (starting with AVG and Ad-Aware), and fiddle with the UI while stuff downloads. If you bought a Compaq, you're going to spend half your day uninstalling all the gratuitious little semi-enabled, trial-version crap they put on there, absolutely none of which is worth using. That's on top of the patch, d/l, tweak cycle.
Third, now that Vista is out, all bets are off.
My goal when setting up a computer is minimal intrusiveness. I don't need to be distracted by transparent backgrounds or menus that unfurl gloriously and make little tocking sounds as you select items. Once you learn to go through turning all the fancy options off, you'll find your environment much more usable.
This is not my sandwich.
After countless wipes and rebuilds of my Windows XP Pro OS.... I got tired of installing my applications and tweaking windows to my liking. I'm working (mostly done) on building an unattended install CD (Soon to be DVD/USB Memory Stick/Network Boot...whichever I find most clever). At this point in the game I've got SP2 slipstreamed on the CD, as well as all the critical hotfixes and drivers for my system. I've also configured silent installs for most of my applications. For those applications I am unable to install silently w/ switches I am using http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/ to create scripted installs.
I recommend checking out the guide at http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/ for more information. As well there are many helpful forum trolls to give you advice on issues you might come up against.
It takes a bit of time/effort to get it working. But it is worth it in the end to be able to slip in a CD or a DVD and coming back to a fully functioning system tailored to your liking.
Good luck.
I have all of my config files stored in CVS, so I just have to check out that repository, and run a single script. I have everything set so it works across the board on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris & OSX. Of course, it's taken years of tweaking to get to this point...
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
1. Keep an regularly updated Acronis image on the server - external HD works too. (Yes you DO need the "universal Restore" as well, else on a major hardware change you will bluescreen.)
2. Boot new box with Acronis CD and select restore.
3. Get some food happening while new box is doing its thing.
4. Reboot and let XP do its autodetection bit and install new hardware. You might be prompted for several reboots if the hardware is significantly different and you need to install new drivers.
TADA!!!
Same process for Linux installs, but, usually, fewer reboots.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
I just install slackware, ratpoison and a few other choice programs. Oh, and I have a plethora of config files for various programs squirelled away.
rsync -vva --exclude=/home/me/pr0n backups:/oldmachine/home/me /home/
Microsoft's USMT tool is actually pretty good if you are moving from one system to another. It grabs everything in My Documents, all Outlook settings and mail (including *.pst files), Favorites, and more. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=4af2d2c9-f16c-4c52-a203-8daf944dd555&Displa yLang=en
It does NOT do patches, updates, or things like DivX codec.
We combine the USMT tool at work with Ghost, and it work pretty well for deployment.
Maybe around 1 hour after the installation of Debian (which includes things like smtp configuration and stuff and might take a couple of hours with all the stuff I want to install). This does not include possible server things I might want to configure, like Apache (my home computer is both my desktop and my server, and I like it that way). Some stuff I do:
1. start KDE
2. change font sizes and fonts to something actually readable (like Bitstream Vera Sans/Mono 12)
3. change the icon size of the panel to bigger
4. disable stupid eye candy like fake transparencies and window open/close effects that I feel just slow me down
5. go through the KDE settings configuring things like
- my email address
- change the background to a solid color
- set KDE to have 8 virtual desktops
- set ctrl-arrows to change virtual desktops
- make icons bigger by default
6. open Konsole, set white on black, no menu bar, no tab bar, save settings
7. assign key bindings to opening Konsole, KOrganizer and Konqueror
8. copy my mutt configuration from some other computer (it might take some time to recreate it if I had to)
I think that's pretty much all.
Boot my old computer in hard drive mode. Connect to my new computer via firewire, move all my settings/applications/data over to the new computer. Took me about 2 hours to pull my PPC mac stuff over to my Intel mac.
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
Is there a difference between tweaking and tinkering? On my Gentoo Box, I have had it running for nearly a year now, and I still am tweaking it, but I consider that to be tinkering. I like finding new things to do to try and make it better (or, as it turns out, worse usually) and figure out how I fixed/destroyed it.
On my iBook, I do a reinstall about every 3-4 months or so, just cause I have so much shit I need to sort through and decide if it's even worth holding on to or not (more often than not, not). When I do this, it takes me about half an hour to tweak it. All my programs are close at hand, the most time consuming part is installing things like DP, ProTools, X11 (now I do that in the reinstall process) Disc Warrior, and sometimes Toast (depends on if I can find my copy of it or not). Usually that's easily within half an hour. I also copy my user's library and whatnot over. Never much more than 10 minutes for that.
So short answer, for Linux for me, I'm never done, for a Mac, 30 minutes most.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Some women take a while the fist time, but usually it takes about 5 minutes for me to tweak her box.
More and more I find it easier to less and less.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I work with both Apples and Dells. On Dells the first step is to begin removing software. Actually it's the same on XP OEX (Which I had the pleasure of installing six times last month). On my Macs the first step is always to add software. Funny actually.
One problem of many: Printer driver, running under RH8, doesn't work under FC6. Can't be recompiled because obsolete, incompatible libraries are required.
Another problem: X's zoom is broken. Attempting to patch causes X to hang.
And on .. and on .. and on.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
1.5 weeks.
But of course, I run Gentoo.
I go through this process often enough that I've got a folder full of registry tweaks, and I copy any software installation media to a USB hard drive. Then I keep an up-to-date customized Windows install repository. Reinstalling my OS involves about an hour from format to fully-functional desktop. I could automate it further but I really can't be bothered; I'm perfectly OK with double-clicking a dozen installers in rapid sequence, it's way faster and easier than shuffling discs. It gives me the opportunity to tweak even further, if I've learned anything since the last reinstall :)
I used to be able to house it all on a single DVD-R, but every year it seems my work apps double in size for nothing. It's actually a good thing because having it on a hard drive means I can update it anytime, whenever I get a new patch or device driver.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Yeah, so I use Gentoo. Thankfully, I don't have to do it often.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
That's why I'm a big one for backup/restore and update because I feel it is almost always easier for me to tweak hardware drivers and the like than it is to get my personal configuration back.
Obviously not practical in a business setting.
I like playing around with settings, and I'm never really content with the way my computers run, so I'm always changing stuff just to kill time.
Is this what passes for news these days?...
OK, I'll answer.
Windows:2-4 days, including reinstall, updates, etc. (yes, I could use ghost, but I got wise & bailed on Windows quite some time ago, so that's not really a concern).
Linux:2-3 hours, including the copying of my 100GB home folder over. All of my preferences are there, so I don't have to customize anything after install, it just works.
If scientists had "trade secrets", I'd have the nicest cave on the mountainside.
This is part of the reason why I wrote AppSnap. At least downloading and installing applications is faster and automated.
I have just reinstalled my system from Windows XP x64 back to the old Windows XP few days ago. (I don't dare to take vista as my main system as even XP x64 has so much incompabilities with some of my main drivers and programs) I bought an extra 500GB harddisk to store my data, so I did the following: Backup data files - 2 hours That was plain direct copying of 250GB worth of data from my old partition. Format and install Windows XP on 2nd harddisk - 2 hours After backing up the data harddisk the installation is direct. Did updates and installed some critical drivers and programs. Backup system settings and preferences - 1 hour Moving 50 msn emoticons is hell annoying. IE favorites, Azureus download list, desktop items, etc. A migration assistant would be good but only for this 1 hour. And I don't trust it will know everything I need to backup. Beta test on new system - 2 days Did works on the new system and make sure nothing critical was missed in the old system. Format 1st harddisk, restore backup data - 2 hours Say goodbye to my half year old XP x64. Install softwares on new system - 8+ hours! This is the most time consuming part. Office, firefox, azureus, apache, java, winrar, photoshop, flash, dreamweaver, quicktime, real, nero, cubase, etc etc. There is alot of software to be installed! The reason I never use ghost image to restore is there is too many software updates and new software. Even if there is a good migration assistant it would still just help little on preferences backup. The time taken by the assistant would still be the same to backup my downloads, mp3s, ebooks, and photos. Yes, I will not have an unstable linux to reformat, but there are too many applications I relies heavily which only run on windows. And I think the same amount of time would still be taken for me to migrate between linux distributions. If I were rich I would throw $100 to a computer shop and ask the people reformat my computer in one day. But also only if they knew how exactly my new system should work.
It depends on how much advertising crap the company you bought the PC from loaded on your new box. Go purchase an HP or a Gateway and see how much horse shit is loaded on those machines. I've seen brand new $1,000 PCs run like 486s because of all the useless utility applications that no one wants like Norton's and AOL.
well.....in windows it took me about 1 1/2 hour. that's enough. in linux, impossible to say, but i think two weeks working hard is good to get something.
Last weak, I managed to seriously mess up my Debian Sarge linux box at school by "enabling" the unstable repositories. Our system administrator took it away, and had to reinstall Sarge from scratch but he also kept a backup of /home and /etc. Today I received my box (along with admonitions about experimenting with the files system) and picked up my work from where I had left, almost seamlessly. I am also running windows on vmware [dealing with ms office files] on the box which was the way I had left it (including passwords of course and most of the shortcuts). So I would say it took zero seconds for me to tweak it on a fresh-installed Debian, since there was a backup. I guess it is mostly because the heavily used applications (and gnome) keep their stuff in /home/user/.foo
:)
Mind you, it took me a week to get my box back but now the scroll wheel works
I'm as much an MS hater as anyone else, but still, "Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence", or something like that, anyways
No, sorry, but the Registry deserves as special "Malice and incompetence" category.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I have no problem getting my default install of sarge done in less than an hour. I have the first disk of the debian isos and another disk that I made up of all debs that I use and a final disk with all my files and preference files. The last two files are tar files and I just unzip the final one while I am installing the other debs on my system and move my preference files where they belong as the debs are installing on the system. I used to use all the iso disks because of slow downloads from the internet but found it faster just to make a directory and use dpkg-scanpackages to get it set up.
My 'defaults' for a new system: rip the keys off and change them to Dvorak, install gcc + build tools, create RSA keys for ssh, certificates for wireless, setup rsync script for backup, install X11, install VNC + rdesktop clients, setting terminal to default to 'screen' for multiple tty goodness. And that's just for the girlfriend.
I'd owned my PowerBook for maybe 3 years when I discovered Quicksilver. That kept me busy for a while. Then I started wrapping shell scripts into apps with Platypus, and launching them with Quicksilver. Installed TypeIt4Me to make notes easier. About a year ago I started doing much of my work in the command line. 4 years later, I'm still 'tweaking' the system, wringing out as much efficiency as possible. Given what I do on it (sys admin), the limiting factor is not the CPU, but file manipulation, batching, networking, etc. and those can be tweaked as long as I'm willing to learn new things.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
Ubuntu Edgy? Not long. Ubuntu Edgy with Compiz or Beryl? Much longer, but totally worth it. Flash!
I have to say, alot of installs / configs for me have been painstaking, in linux and freebsd I tried. I think debian, gentoo, redhat, suse, and freebsd were all I tried. in OpenBSD, the system just seems set up so logically to me, plus it got my hardware all running immediately. I don't know that I'll ever run anything else.
create an image, load up an image, and then let the pc take over on the installation issue. The whole thing can take around 45 min.
Yes I cheated. But it can be done. Also there are options of making every changes you wanted to fixed the group policy, and then make a unattended setup ISO CD for the WinXP Installation. It can complete the entire install for you fairly quickly (on a fresh install).
Of course when I do an upgrade using imaging technique I do use the same RAID card and make sure I'm not making a huge upgrade (at least either HD size or the MB/Chipset are the same). But this saves a great deal of time and far less painful than a extreme makeover.
My Windows machines tend to need increasing amount of tweaking as time goes on, to deal with the cumulative effects of system rot.
:-)
Linux machines get every update and upgrade, because I can.
And Macs just work, for the most part.
Quick preface, I'm replying to the *responses* to this post, not directly to the topic itself- (which I think is a fair question about looking for system setup shortcuts) but damn, looking at the responses...
/home, %appdata% or whatever and move on. Don't have the patches? Download them. You're on a 300 baud modem? So is my C64. Lock down your firewall while you downloading them. Your on a network? Synch your prefs! AD peeps? Setup GPOs for OS vars! Offload these menial things, it's a desktop for crying out loud. Wtf, thought you were geeks?
.reg files or copy your .ini files... and get over it! So it takes 2 hours to setup your system? You get *at least* another 6 MONTHS out of it, don't you? Reminds me of what Carlin said about sliced bread- "You got a knife, you got a loaf of bread. Slice the fckin' thing! And get on with your life."
/. stereotypes- after I update the French Linux servers and reboot a UK windows server, I'm going to pick up my girlfriend at the strip club and spend the rest of the evening with her "co-workers" experimenting with various substances and positions. C'mon guys, I can't be the only one, her friend "Mercedes" is dating one of the world's leading robotics engineers, it can't be just me that's not sitting in mum's basement.
It's an OS guys, who cares? You export your app data beforehand and import it after. Minus the DVD install time, it takes me about 30 mins to have a comfortable system. Most of us have half a dozen systems... Linux, Mac, Windows... it's a BASE to carry your APPS. (Yeah, 2% really do have a need for os/distro/ford/chevy/tastes great/less filling/coke/pepsi specific functions, I am not talking to you)
Get
Gaaaa... don't mean to vent to all of you of course, it's just that several of these posts make me go- wtf?
I mean, look at some of these- the windows registry is a Bill Gates anti-piracy conspiracy? So... what if it is? You think he cares what you think? Export your
If one guy spends 3 hours setting up suse and another guy spends 3 hours setting up vista, is that the OS' fault? Between them, would the customizations even match? Even on the same platform? Probably not. Give the OS some credit for flexibility. And on that note, firefox *does what you want it to do on all of them*.
I've never been so embarrassed to be a geek. And toss the
This whole topic just feels like a troll and...
oh jeez, I just bit into it, didn't I?
=>
-----
Your filtering out anonymous cowards? Weren't you just supporting encryption and PGP?
"Windows - Tweaks for about 4-6 hours"
Is that with or without the trial of Norton Antivirus on the disk...?
No sig today...
On my main pc running XP, when reinstalling windows or moving to a new machine, I make sure I keep all my media/documents on a separate partition, using say 60% of my hd space-somewhat comparable to /home in linux. this way I can just reinstall windows or set up a new machine to have a similar two partition set up.
As for windows settings and apps, the only basic apps i really need are office, firefox, trillin/gaim, winamp/itunes, and Antispyware/Antivirus(avg has both for free and they're awesome) Then I can customize desktop and find a nice visual style after applying uxtheme multi-patcher.
Sice my docs and media are on a separate partition i just point my docs to the new directory and have winamp scan for music.
All this takes less than two hours. More if it's a new machine then the only other time-consuming part is transferring all my docs to the new partition.
I use Gentoo - it takes about two days to install because I have to go to work too, and there are things that I start in the morning and come home to find are finished. when I do it in the office it takes about a day or so. What takes all the time, really, is installing the desktop.
After that I install Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice - they take perhaps a couple of days, again because I start them in the mornings and evenings, and after that it is all the small stuff, like Gimp and a handful of other essentials, and then I am right at home, I think. All in all about a week, give or take.
But then on the other hand, with Linux, and especially Gentoo, you are never 'finished', because you always go and try new stuff, and then of course you mess things up and start over. That, however, is often the whole point of playing with a computer; it's like Lego - you can build The Thing and be done with it, but you don't, you keep taking them apart and building other things, because that is where the fun is.
IMHO, a Windows XP box that needs to run windows update and update some software is much nicer than having to totally re-install Windows.
... (and use the new image to recover other boxes, if I'm updating a few)
... overwrote all of their systems ... copied the VMs back. done.
I used Norton Ghost for years - now I use Acronis TrueImage (the home version is only $50 and it's 1000x times better than Ghost - the recovery CD is awesome).
I always have somewhat recent images of base Windows systems that I use often, as well as base linux systems.
Typically, I:
* recover old Windows image (6mo - 1yr)
* run Windows update
* create a new/updated Windows image from the system
* continue to configure the system
I usually keep pretty clean installs with very minimal software so that the image isn't "useless" (requiring lots of software updates). After restoring a base Windows install (which takes as little as 1 minute), I start installing required applications from my folder-o-apps.
Currently, I have 3 images that I use often for Windows machines. One base system, one with Office/Outlook pre-installed, one with Visual Studio pre-installed (because it takes forever to install).
I recently went around with a usb-drive and the Acronis TrueImage recovery cd and updated 10 development servers, and it took no time at all. I copied all of their VM's to a network drive
I use Quick Launch (and equivalents) quite a bit, for following applications:
:-)
AIM - no file associations; too lazy to type WinKey+R -> AIM -> Enter
Opera and Firefox, eMule and uTorrent - same
Word - when I have to type up my homework, I start from scratch
Visual Studio - it's easier to go File -> Recent Workspaces than C:\...\Project.dsw
XMPlay (plays music) - I don't want to alter the playlist by opening a music file
I use the Desktop for my most frequently-played games.
So see, there are uses for both. However, I dislike it when installers automatically stick folders into the Start Menu without asking.
First, there are two computer users.
1. The person who wants to see what the computer can do, how fast it can go, how many processes can be opened before it stops working, etc., etc.
2. The person who needs to do work with the computer.
The second person is more common, and like it or not, the majority of running systems are running on either Windows 98 or Windows XP.
For myself, I always have two internal drives, one for programs and the other exclusively for data. Then I have two external drives, which are copies of the contents of the data drive, internet profiles for IE and Firefox, and accumulated downloads. If my computer takes a total shit, all I have to do is plug one of the external drives into either a USB or Firewire port and get back to work.
The last time I went through the process of setting up a new PC, it took about two hours to make it behave a great deal like the previous one, only faster!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
I'm a happy nLite user, so a format with basic tweaking take about 30 minutes (Would be faster if MS could just get ZA's regional settings right....) Setting up the nLite CD takes a few hours however....
For my MacBook I still need to find my preferred setting, so I do not know how long tweaking takes.... My Gentoo takes forever, but that's exactly whhy I run Gentoo....
20 minutes to install Ubuntu, maybe 30 minutes to dupe all my home directory stuff over, and 20 minutes to install packages from a honking apt-get line. Though that last bit doesn't count, I can still continue to work while that's going on.
Seriously, I can say, that most of the linux builds that I use, have everything I need out of the box... however, with Windows XP, I have to tweak the OS, then install all of the Office warez (because we HAVE to use them at work), and I haven't even talked about the editors, AV, Firewalls, Anti-Spyware, and other protection.
I'm not a MS Hater, but I do see the value in having a quick to setup system. Windows is suffering from the "Jack of all trades" syndrome, where it has to be everything to everyone... Linux doesn't. You can pick specific distro's to perform specific functions, and for the most part, they contain everything that you need.
That's my 2, YMMV.
- just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean I'm not out to get you.
I recently put a new hard drive in my laptop; here's a great time-saver with Debian. First, get a list of all of the packages that are installed:
/etc/apt/, and then:
/home, in less time than a base install of Windows XP Home on another machine.
dpkg --get-selections > package_list.txt
Store the list somewhere safe, along with your repository list. Swap drives, install the new OS, copy your old list of repositories into
cat package_list.txt | cut -f 1 | xargs apt-get install
That will download and install (almost) every single package that was on your old machine. I got everything migrated, including hundreds of installed packages and everything in
--saint
As for appending a custom string to the kernel version, I'm using Debian, so I use the --append-to-version option on make-kpkg, thought I'm sure there's a way to do it by editing some file in the kernel source tree as well.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
Yeah, funny when Windows people talk about doing stuff like that, it is full of caveats like "try not to use different chipset, HD, video, etc." If you opt not to trust the OS X "copy settings" option, you can always boot from a firewire/USB drive, put your old computer in "target firewire" mode and clone the machine without having to buy/download a single utility or setup anything beforehand (other than having a bootable external drive, which any tech savvy Mac user should have, even an iPod will do, OS install DVD may work as well). You either ditto everything over or use Apple System Restore to clone the disks. ASR is probably fastest. Extremely fast, actually. I recently cloned disks at 45MB/sec. The only thing you would have to be concerned about is whether or not the source and target architectures are different.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Wipe everything out. Re-install and patch-up Windows. Download Firefox, anti-spam/virals, and anything I can remember (if I can't remember it it wasn't that important to begin with). Let adventure take me from there. I can't live for two weeks without moving my furniture, why would I want to keep my Windows configuration for 6 months or more?
"I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right."
Since I use Litestep, all I really have to do is reinstall and update it, copy/paste my personal folder with my current settings and theme, then update a couple windows things like appearance preferences, wallpaper, and folder settings like showing hidden files/folders. That's pretty much it for me.
My windows install runs 24/7, is almost 4 years old, has 260 programs (NOT an exaggeration; I recently counted) installed, and runs damn fine. Considering all it does (24/7 music including lyric fetching and song data posting, all video I watch is on this computer as well, plus other various junk; it is my primary media machine.) The only thing broken is that the process manager can't kill processes; but I prefer killing them at the command line via the 'kill' command from cygwin anyway.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
This is a phenomenon I have seen numerous times. Someone acts like he is very knowledgeable, but says erroneous things. Was he paid to make a pro-Microsoft comment, or is he just arrogant?
The registry vastly decreased the value of the operating system. Microsoft corrupted its own product to try to prevent easy piracy. I don't think that strategy worked, but the corruption remains. In the end, the world will reject an OS that puts all configuration in one file, because that is too fragile, and difficult when a program needs to be moved.
It is possible to move Windows XP to a new computer merely by re-loading Windows XP from the CD. Programs like Acronis TrueImage Universal Restore even allow restoring a backup to a machine with a different HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer).
--
Remarkable Occurrences Involving the Bush Family
Very useful. Just install software, then run the wizard, and hey presto, you're up and running. All your settings are set automatically, and any files you wanted brought to the new PC are copied across. It makes it very easy to get a new box up and running.
"Windows - Tweaks for about 4-6 hours"
Is that with or without the trial of Norton Antivirus on the disk...?
That's about how long it takes to get rid of Norton Antivirus and install AVG.
Does this
Except right now things tend to be streamlined. (relatively, for me)
On Windows (2k/XP):
Install slipstreamed SP2 disk and fixes
Uninstall windows messenger, disable IE icons, disable luna, tcp patch, kill windows update and error reporting.
Update DirectX, latest video card drivers, sound card drivers, asio4all, peripherals.
Install firefox, spybot, media monkey, Sergio's x-chat for windows http://www.larces.uece.br/~sergio/?page=xchat
Install Emerge Desktop http://www.emergedesktop.org/
(mostly in the first day, then a few over the next week or so, months before I have most of my applications and plugins installed)
Mac OSX:
Update
Install Deeper
Install iTerm
Install Macports
Install irssi
If I'm using Textmate, get my specific color preferences and add-ons which I can't find online. Use vim instead.
(Could all be done in 3 hours.)
Linux:
Do 500 things, mainly for device drivers. Customize XFCE, never use it, stay in console bliss 90% of the time.
(Gimme a week for a running system on uncertain terms, like a half-assed wifi card. Otherwise, if everything goes fine, maybe an hour)
Cross platform geek ftw.
-x
Eternity is a time bomb.
takes four minutes to boot - combined with my USB, I only tweak once!
*** Don't be dull.***
But really, what setup are you doing to a VM, thought that was the point of one, I only use 'em for testbeds and never save the changes (or rather, restore from the original install copy) so I can see how things will run in the future
Otherwise, no, no setup on a VM.
Although, with the state of the art rapidly improving, maybe I should consider going to a VM so that I never have to update my "user" o/s again, just keep improving the underlying o/s for hardware sake (cpu, ram and disk)
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