Re: new PC catch-22

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 14:09:28 -0500, Mike Monett wrote:

John Devereux <jdREMOVE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> What I generally find is that the released linux kernel seems to
> be a few months behind the "bleeding edge" of motherboard
> chipsets. Although it always boots up OK, a motherboard-integrated
> peripheral might not work. After a couple of months there is a new
> kernel available and it too starts working. If you pick a
> motherboard with a chipset that has been out a while, there is no
> problem. (And it is likely cheaper and more stable).

>> Also DOS:)

> I use dosemu under linux (to run some old IAR dos compilers),
> works OK. In fact they seem much faster than under the "real" DOS,
> better filesystem performance perhaps.

> Then there are various virtualization systems such as xen, vmware
> etc.

> John Devereux

Thanks for the good info, John. I'm already running Eagle on Suse
with excellent results, and starting to think it might be time to
convert everything else over to Linux.

How do you back up your system in case of hard disk failure? Is
there an equivalent to XCOPY32?

What I'm looking for is to have a backup drive that I can install as
Master and have it contain exactly what is on the original. The
advantage of XCOPY32 is it doesn't waste time copying files that
don't need updating, so the backup is very quick and you can afford
to do it several times per day.


With Linux, you can do *so* much better. For example, rsync will do a
similar update copy, but much more efficiently. In particular, it is more
efficient over a network (you do backup to a different machine, don't
you?), and will only send the differences for large files that are
changed. The other smart thing it can do, along with a Linux file system,
is support hard links when taking snapshot backups. Use a system like
"dirvish" as a wrapper to save reading the manual pages and writing your
own scripts, and it is easy to get daily backup snapshots that only use up
disk space when a file is added or changed.

Regards,

Mike Monett

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