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?"

Comments

On linux...

[peterpi]

Nobody's found out how long it takes on linux, they're still working at it! ;P

Re:On linux...

[ArsonSmith]

Windows - Tweaks for about 4-6 hours and spending about $400 on extra applications
OS X - Tweaks for about 1-2 hours and spending about $600 on extra applications
Linux - Change desktop background. Done.

Re:On linux...

[paeanblack]

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.

Re:On linux...

[Sparr0]

Why arent you just keeping your /home partition backed up? When I installed Kubuntu I let it run overnight with a huge batch of things to download and install. That took about 10 minutes to set up. Then another 15 minutes to copy /home from my old machine. So, call it 25 minutes of work for a fully customized and tweaked installation?

Re:On linux...

[aputerguy]

Agreed. I set up up, customized, and played with FC6 running cygwin on my underpowered XP laptop.
Once that was setup, all I had to do was copy it over to my Linux server and turn on/off a couple of services that I needed on my server but not on my laptop. I mean *literally* just copied the root partition.
It then ran perfectly with all my user and /etc configurations intact.

When I wanted to set up another machine, I used the same root image and only had to edit a small handfull of files to change the machine name/IP address and to change a couple of passswords.

When I upgrade to another machine, all I will need to do is copy (or even just physically move) my hard-disks.

With Windoze, because of the dang registry, you can't just copy or move disks without corrupting everything. Also, since customization is done through menus and stored in obscure parts of the registry, you can't just copy over and/or edit individual config files. Instead, you need to reinstall each application individually and then individually run the program and customize the options by going through endless menus.

Re:On linux...

[cdrudge]

Yeah, a great deal of that is because you can download a linux ISO that is already mostly up-to-date with patches. With Windows, you're stuck with whatever you have pressed on the CD.

Perhaps you should look up slipstreaming updates into a Windows installation before you speak incorrectly on the topic. Just about all updates and service packs, including hot fixes, can be slipstreamed onto a new install disc much like the current Linux distro's daily/weekly/monthly offerings.

Re:On linux...

[shmlco]

Actually, the last time I moved from a Powerbook to a MacBook Pro I used Tiger's Migration Assistant. After the copy finished (about 2 hours) almost everything (applications, preferences, backgrounds, altered command keys, control panel changes, accounts, folder layouts, etc.) was there. I had to reinstall Dreamweaver and Photoshop since their registration mechanisms detected the new hardware and "broke", but other than that I was impressed to no end.

Contrast that to the last new Windows machine (XP) I bought, when I had to move everything by hand, reset everything by hand, and spent about a week reinstalling each and every application I used... by hand.

Re:On linux...

[drachenstern]

The registry had two important goals, consolidating configuration information into one location with an easy storage and retrieval method, and application interopability enhancement.

Ya know why CLSID is such a large part of the registry? It has nothing to do with preventing piracy.

Ya know how CurrentControlSet is so thorough, and how it's off on it's own branch of HKLM? Yeah, if you were to replace all of those values with the correct values for the machine that you were moving to (primarily system driver and hardware reference information) then you could in theory just boot windows back up without ever having a glitch. Theory though, not practice. The theory is sound because MS designed the registry to be modular. It's not their fault that other companies don't respect the sandboxing that MS set up, and it's hard for them to enforce that people play nice, but look at the strides they've made via their IDEs (which is where most people write the said crappy software) and .NET v2.

Most of the problems that people have with drivers or program interoperability stem from those two registry branches anyways, is another good reason why all IT folks should be able to recite the major points of the registry, as well as knowing all the places where windows looks when it goes to start the various functions.

This is one of the few shortcomings I can find with the registry, but it's not the fault of MS as a whole, but rather the failure of different groups to consolidate on one storage location for important settings. Then again, two of the reasons why there were so many different locations where settings may have been in the flat files were for security through obfuscation and because sometimes the maximum size you could read on a flat file could have been exceeded due to the number of settings that you might want, so MS designers purposely chose to store info in multiple places, such as the load differences between system.ini and win.ini.

So I've been going in this direction to come back to, the registry didn't have anything to do with limiting piracy, if anything, it's the reason why so many people want to run Windows, even if they don't want to pay for it. The real thing that seems to be annoying to so many geeks is the oobe libs.

Need I go further?

Re:On linux...

[SadGeekHermit]

>>The whole point of the registry is to "make piracy difficult". The ONLY reason
>>they created it in the FIRST place was because Bill
>>Gates et al thought their third-rate operating system was so special and important
>>that to protect it from nasty "pirates" they had
>>to essentially lobotomize it.

>Um, no, not quite

Oh, I disagree.

Consider these related points:

1. All other commercially available operating systems use flat files to store configuration information. And almost every other operating system out there works better than Windows in a variety of ways, not least of which being performance.

2. Operating systems that use flat files to store configuration information are trivially easy to back up. They're also trivially easy to clone and distribute.

3. People who run operating systems that use flat files tend to READ those flat files. The registry, on the other hand, is so huge and byzantine (again, WHY???) that finding entries in it is like going on a fishing expedition. Nobody really knows what's in their registry. I believe this is by design, not by accident.

4. The registry is IN FACT used to make piracy difficult. Virtually every piece of commercial Windows software stores registration information in the registry, usually in literally dozens of different locations so that to clear out a botched install you have to use a search tool and guess at all the possible names the company may have used for its keys. First, do you think Microsoft isn't doing the same thing??? Second, do you think this isn't by design???

5. When a hacker creates a Word Macro Virus and the cops catch him like, a week later, how do you think that happens? Word, installed, puts serial number information in the registry and later, into documents. Again, by design.

6. When they spent millions of dollars building Windows 95 and created long filename support, do you think it was by mistake that they just happened to leave long filename support out of their new version of DOS? Or that you couldn't boot to a command prompt that had long filename support? Again, it was to make piracy difficult. At the time, you couldn't boot to a CD. You had to use a floppy. Live CDs didn't even exist. And there was NO WAY to boot with a floppy and get long filename support. So where before you could use pkzip to zip up your whole windows and dos directory and back up your system to about twenty floppies, with Windows 95 you were basically hosed. Even if you DID zip up all the directories, when you unzipped them during the restore process they'd look like "Progra~1" instead of "Program Files" and you'd be hosed.

IF YOU ARE CORRECT, you must have a reasonable justification for the use of the registry that is credibly better than using a flat-file approach. I bet you don't have one. :)

Personally

[geek]

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's never over with

[igotmybfg]

The time I spend tweaking the settings asymptotically approaches something like 5-10% of the time I spend on the PC.

Re:It's never over with

[PurifyYourMind]

Then it would seem not worth it, unless you were seeing over 5-10% of time/comfort savings. Then again, some people just tweak for fun, and it's its own reward. (please mod me up for proper it's/its use!)

The only real shortcut....

[ProppaT]

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.

Let it evolve

[jermz]

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.

20 minutes

[iusty]

Let's see:
  - copy old /home/username dir
  - "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.

Re:20 minutes

[umeboshi]

For replicating the package list, try this:
  dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt on old machine,
then do:
  dpkg --set-selections packages.txt on new machine,
then do:
  apt-get dselect-upgrade on new machine.

Home

[voice_of_all_reason]

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.

3 days

[fistfullast33l]

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.

OS X Plus Firewire

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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?

Windows Update

[Hijacked Public]

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.

Re:Norton Ghost?

[Overzeetop]

That'd be great if nothing every got updated. I actually tried this once and by the time I was ready to start over from scratch I realized it was almost easier to do an actual clean install with current-version apps than try and upgrade everything from 0.4-2.0 versions ago. Now I just keep a directory around with all the commonly installed apps, and when I get an update, I try to remember to put the new install version in the appropriate folder. I've almost given up that for a simple list of apps, and a directory with critical drivers. Things change too fast to have a "stable" image that's good for more than 6 months or so, and with XP running stably for longer than that (my current install is 2.5 years old), the image is just useless.

Karma profit!

[BecomingLumberg]

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!

On Windows

[ewhac]

I've done this a couple of times recently -- once for my new machine, and once for a friend of mine whose machine got pwn3d. My checklist works roughly like this:

• Perform an inventory of the hardware in the machine. Note especially the vendor and model number of the major components. You'll need this later.
• Establish partitions on the boot drive (only if I'm dual-booting Linux or BeOS or something).
• Yank network cable.
• Install Windows from installation media. This takes a ridiculous amount of time, considering that most of the work is (should be) simply copying files. Reboot.
• Install Service Pack 2, which I conveniently have on a separate CD I burned. Reboot.
• Crank up Windows firewall to highest setting, or moral equivalent thereof (I'm behind a NAT router, so that works).
• Visit Windows Update, and download all security and bug fixes. Duration depends on connection speed, but it can easily consume an hour. Reboot.
• Using the hardware inventory you prepared earlier: for $item in $inventory ; do
  • Visit hardware vendor's site.
  • Locate, download, and install latest device driver(s) for $item.
  • Reboot.
• done

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:

• Firefox
• Vim
• VirtuaWin
• TreeSize
• PuTTY
• WinSCP
• TweakUI

Schwab

One to two weeks...

[Anonymous Coward]

depending on how much money I spend on her.

Re:Not long.

[linvir]

Change mouse behaviour to "Focus follows mouse"

So you're the degenerate pervert using this. Damn you! Damn you to hell!

Mounted Home

[Bent Mind]

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.