Sharing the same home over different distros? Look, you don't need it, it's clear.... Just don't come whining at me when you actually do format your / accidentally.
Meanwhile, you still haven't explained the advantages of putting/home on a separate partition.
Simple: less risk that you forget to uncheck the "format" checkbox when installing the OS. If it is on a separate partition, your data is safe. (Well as safe as the disk hardware).
Default Ubuntu install is "format" the / disk. If this includes your/home, you're fucked. At least the average user is.
suddenly you have to guess how much space you'll want in / and/home, and if you underestimate, you find yourself having to resize filesystems.
Why? With disks sufficiently large these day, just allocate 10GB for Ubuntu and take the rest for/home. For basic usage 10GB is overkill for applications, logs, etc...
If you don't trust that, simply use LVM. Really, this is childsplay.
I just replaced my 1.6ghz/256MB laptop with a netbook with a similar speed processor but 1GB of RAM.
Are you sure it's a similar speed? That 1.6GHz hints to me it's an Atom and Atoms are veeeeery slow. The original laptop was probably a Pentium-M which running at 1.6GHz which beats the Atom hands down. I heard (but not confirmed) that a 1.6GHz Atom runs about as fast as a half-that-speed (800MHz) Celeron. Not good at all!
I have had the unlucky experience of running Ubuntu 9.04 on an Atom 330 desktop board (I bought it to toy around as a server, but my main desktop died -popped a cap- and I just used the Atom 330 as a stop-gap solution.) It is unbearably slow. On web 2.0 sites, often I can see the text lagging several words behind while I type. A flash game on facebook? Forget it... At least it plays youtube well (but not full-screen). This particular desktop board has 4Gig of RAM (3.4Gig usable) It's definitely not memory starved.
Now this might be because I run Ubuntu. Never tried Windows XP on it, perhaps it fares better.
Of course, if you don't have an Atom.... forget this rant.
Because compact flash is essentially the IDE interface... That's why it is preferable over pretty much anything. Alas, as you say: it lost, mainly due because of pyhsical size. In the beginning the price difference between SD and CF wasn't all that apparent.
Microsoft could use the very content of the ad to develop their own ad deriding Linux as low-grade
I though the same thing, but then... If you're number #1, you don't talk about #2 (which would be Apple). Apple will talk about Micrsoft (it needs to profile itself), but surely won't talk about the underdog... Linux.
To the moment one actually wants to use an operating system, for let's say that very uncommon thing called "pinter and file sharing", you're toast? How wonderful.
Here you go. Extended support is well into 2014. Mainstream support has already ended though.... Which is very strange considering XP is still sold with netbooks.
It reminds me a bit of NT 4.0 back in the day. They stopped giving out patches for critical vulnerabilities 6 months before the EOL of NT 4.0. The reasons were similar: "It cannot be done". How far away is the official EOL of Windows XP? Somewhere in 2012, no?
Indeed.... My main computer (actually it's my wifes... mine was better but hers was quieter) is a P-IV 2.6HT, 2Gig RAM. Recently, I had to replace a power supply for a friend and I needed to order a new one.... I though, let's share shipping costs and I'll buy something to replace that old thing (6 years and counting). A nice dual core Atom 330... surely that's nice.... Well...No... According to what I read it barely matches a P-IV 2GHz.... I don't do that much multi threaded stuff, so, even the fact that it's dual core and HT doesn't help anything.
Hmmm... I got it as a free gift with an order we did at the office. It said "USB 1GB Internet Radio" on it. It look physically like this but the inscription is different.
I'd gladly give you more specifications if you tell me where to look.
Since, I'm the guy who posted the (offtopic) question, I have posted the whole thing I did to try to kill it: here.
So, no... neither i) nor ii) works. If they did they would also be trivial in Windows and no "Uninstallation tool" would be required (as it currently is).
but my first idea is to repartition it with fdisk.
Zeroing out the whole disk (sdb instead of sdb1) should kill the partition table. Besides, it's not as if I didn't think of that. There is (well, was... since I trashed the thing again while making the previous post) only one partition on the disk. You can easily see this in the dmesg I posted, by the way.
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Funny, because I thought the premise was bottom-of-the-barrel computer users. Those don't have backups. Just saying...
Your solution is just as bad as mine for the computers users who are targeted by Ubuntu.
Sharing the same home over different distros? Look, you don't need it, it's clear.... Just don't come whining at me when you actually do format your / accidentally.
Simple: less risk that you forget to uncheck the "format" checkbox when installing the OS. If it is on a separate partition, your data is safe. (Well as safe as the disk hardware).
Default Ubuntu install is "format" the / disk. If this includes your /home, you're fucked. At least the average user is.
Haven't had the need ever for more than 10GB on /.... Normally, I do the full /usr /tmp /var /opt /home separation anyway.
Why? With disks sufficiently large these day, just allocate 10GB for Ubuntu and take the rest for /home. For basic usage 10GB is overkill for applications, logs, etc...
If you don't trust that, simply use LVM. Really, this is childsplay.
Are you sure it's a similar speed? That 1.6GHz hints to me it's an Atom and Atoms are veeeeery slow. The original laptop was probably a Pentium-M which running at 1.6GHz which beats the Atom hands down. I heard (but not confirmed) that a 1.6GHz Atom runs about as fast as a half-that-speed (800MHz) Celeron. Not good at all!
I have had the unlucky experience of running Ubuntu 9.04 on an Atom 330 desktop board (I bought it to toy around as a server, but my main desktop died -popped a cap- and I just used the Atom 330 as a stop-gap solution.) It is unbearably slow. On web 2.0 sites, often I can see the text lagging several words behind while I type. A flash game on facebook? Forget it... At least it plays youtube well (but not full-screen). This particular desktop board has 4Gig of RAM (3.4Gig usable) It's definitely not memory starved.
Now this might be because I run Ubuntu. Never tried Windows XP on it, perhaps it fares better.
Of course, if you don't have an Atom.... forget this rant.
As someone who has worked as a consultant in different Luxembourgish banks, I confirm. It's saddening, and pointing out helps nothing at all.
While working there, I heard that some Swiss banks operate with only excel sheets, pretty much...
Banks are like sausage factories, once you worked in one, you don't ever want a sausage again. Too bad you can't really avoid bank accounts.
Because compact flash is essentially the IDE interface... That's why it is preferable over pretty much anything. Alas, as you say: it lost, mainly due because of pyhsical size. In the beginning the price difference between SD and CF wasn't all that apparent.
I though the same thing, but then... If you're number #1, you don't talk about #2 (which would be Apple). Apple will talk about Micrsoft (it needs to profile itself), but surely won't talk about the underdog... Linux.
Works for me....
To the moment one actually wants to use an operating system, for let's say that very uncommon thing called "pinter and file sharing", you're toast? How wonderful.
Netbooks come with CD Rom drives?
No problem... When I Googled for "Windows XP EOL", I got that page too...
Here you go. Extended support is well into 2014. Mainstream support has already ended though.... Which is very strange considering XP is still sold with netbooks.
No, that's the availability of licenses, not the end-of-life for support.
It reminds me a bit of NT 4.0 back in the day. They stopped giving out patches for critical vulnerabilities 6 months before the EOL of NT 4.0. The reasons were similar: "It cannot be done". How far away is the official EOL of Windows XP? Somewhere in 2012, no?
May be... but if it needs to *replace* another machine, it should match the performance. Regardless of power consumption.
Indeed.... My main computer (actually it's my wifes... mine was better but hers was quieter) is a P-IV 2.6HT, 2Gig RAM. Recently, I had to replace a power supply for a friend and I needed to order a new one.... I though, let's share shipping costs and I'll buy something to replace that old thing (6 years and counting). A nice dual core Atom 330... surely that's nice.... Well...No... According to what I read it barely matches a P-IV 2GHz.... I don't do that much multi threaded stuff, so, even the fact that it's dual core and HT doesn't help anything.
I'm a Linux admin... Only Linux machines at work. And at home, well... Linux and OpenBSD. Thanks for looking anyway :-)
Laptops are by definition not bound to one network. It is enough to be connected directly to the net once...
Hmmm... I got it as a free gift with an order we did at the office. It said "USB 1GB Internet Radio" on it. It look physically like this but the inscription is different.
I'd gladly give you more specifications if you tell me where to look.
Sorry, wrong link to post
Since, I'm the guy who posted the (offtopic) question, I have posted the whole thing I did to try to kill it: here.
So, no... neither i) nor ii) works. If they did they would also be trivial in Windows and no "Uninstallation tool" would be required (as it currently is).
Zeroing out the whole disk (sdb instead of sdb1) should kill the partition table. Besides, it's not as if I didn't think of that. There is (well, was... since I trashed the thing again while making the previous post) only one partition on the disk. You can easily see this in the dmesg I posted, by the way.
I just wrote that as a placeholder. Anyway, I'll do it in real time for you here:
My best guess is that its a ROM chip that presents itself as the virtual CD.