Repave Periodically
Bill de hÓra: I don’t have time to change OSes
That’s scary. When was the last time you installed any version of Windows? For me, it was April.
My biggest concern is an involuntary need to reinstall that comes at a time that I can least afford it.
My kids are constantly asking me to repave their computers. Luckily, semester breaks present a natural opportunity for resetting with little danger of data loss. It also helps that their biggest data retention concern is iTunes.
The story is quite a bit better for grown-ups. Unlike Windows of the mid-nineties which seemed to have a half-life of a year or so, Windows XP can be used for years. However, eventually I had a registry corruption problem — even attempts to install .Net framework version 2.0 failed. Add to that the joys of Windows Genuine Advantage and weekly down time due to virus scans, and it was time for me to switch. This was over a year ago, well before it became the thing all the cool kids are doing these days.
My wife’s Windows XP has lasted a bit longer, but even it is getting progressively slower. It looks like it is time for me to do a reinstall for her, just like David Weinberger recently did for his wife.
By contrast, I upgraded my server with a dist-upgrade. I then backed up my crontab, and the /home/rubys and /etc directories on my laptop, formatted, and did a complete reinstall. In both cases, I was back up and running in hours. Every few days, I find something missing (I can understand why Ubuntu doesn’t automatically install build-essential, but curl?), but that’s readily solved with a simple apt-get.
Yes, I am quite capable of installing subversion on WinXP, but with Ubuntu, it is easier to install, I get a version that works with other software I have installed, and I get automatic updates.
I like the fact that copy/paste of utf-8 characters to command line windows “just works”. As does resizing ssh windows. And I like that no longer have to deal with CRLF issues. Or directions of slashes in paths. I also like pleasant surprises like command completion for scp works across machines — this seems to be new with Dapper.
My recommendation is that even if you don’t actually switch operating systems, it is still helpful to repave occasionally.
I reformat the hard drive of any Windows computer I am using once a year, then reinstall the os. It’s amazing how bad performance on an Windows machine can degrade even inside a year--especially if you try lots of sofware out. After reinstalling, it’s almost like giving the machine a new life (facelift?). Anything downloaded goes into a “tmp” directory. If I decide later that the program was worth it, the download is moved into a “keep” folder. Before a reformat, I burn the “keep” folder to a CD. This is about as simple as it gets--I’d be interested in hearing other systems that people use when forced to use Windows.
Posted by Mike at
Not only have I never (in the past 5 years) had to reinstall the OS, I’ve never done a reinstall when upgrading machines.
My procedure for upgrading to a new machine has consisted of
1. Unpack the box.
2. Connect the new machine and the old one with a firewire cable.
3. Boot the new machine in firewire target-disk mode.
4. Reformat the new hard drive.
5. Clone the hard drive of the old machine onto the new one.
6. Reboot.
7. Find everything configured, and every file in place, just as I left it.
I’ve done this upgrading hard drives on a laptop ("old" machine, in this case, being the old hard drive in an external case), upgrading a G4 desktop to a G5 desktop, and upgrading a G3 laptop to a G4 laptop.
The only thing that might cause me to pause and contemplate a Pilgrim-esque switch is that upgrading to an Intel-based Mac would actually require me to reinstall something.
And if I’m going
Posted by Jacques Distler atRepave Periodically - Bill de hÓra: I don't have time to change OSes (Sam Ruby)
Repave Periodically — Bill de hÓra: I don’t have time to change OSes — That’s scary. When was the last time you installed any version of Windows? For me, it was April. — My...Excerpt from Techmeme at
Jeremy Zawodny : Repave Periodically - Repave Periodically: “My recommendation is that even if you don’t actually switch operating systems, it is still helpful to repave occasionally.” Tags : links...
Excerpt from HotLinks - Level 1 at
My experience is similar to Jacques’. I had an iMac DV+ that I bought on the day my copy of the OS X Public Beta arrived via UPS. I reformatted and reinstalled OS X 10.0 the day that shipped, and did only incremental updates (10.0.0-10.3.9) from that day until the machine finally (physically) died earlier this year: that’s April 2001 to February 2006 without a reinstall/repave.
Posted by d.w. at
The key bit is about balancing switching v opportunity costs, not about finding time. Is the the ubuntu opportunity apt, a passable UI, and line endings? All the bad things have been hardware related in the last few years. And since 1996 which is when I think I first tried out linux, I’m fairly sure I’ve sunk as much time getting linux on the desktop to “just work” in the guise of redhat, slackware, suse, gentoo as I have with windows. I appreciate I might be a statistical improbability in that regard.
Posted by Bill de hOra at
I’m fairly sure I’ve sunk as much time getting linux on the desktop to “just work”
Life has certainly improved a bit since 1996:
- download CD image
- burn CD
- boot from CD
- take a look around. See if your display works. And if wifi works. And your USB device.
- (optionally) install to hard drive
Your only down time should be the time it takes to boot from the CD, and the time it takes to boot back either into Windows or into your recently installed Ubuntu, if you chose to install it. You can even use Ubuntu while it is installing. Ubuntu can even repartition your disk and install as dual boot, if that is your preference.
Last weekend, my wife and I were traveling, and we stopped into an IBM office in Hampton, VA to check mail. My wifi “just worked”. I could also VPN into work. My wife’s WindowsXP machine required her to go into and reconfigure her wireless, and once that worked, she had to go into a preferences menu and toggle an obscure option to get the VPN to work. This isn’t always the case, sometimes it works out the other way. But my point is that the differences are rapidly vanishing.
I’m clearly happy with my current setup.
Posted by Sam Ruby atHonestly, I think the real question is, do you know how to install Subversion on Windows from source. If you do, please tell me, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to since sometime last year. Cygwin doesn’t count.
Also, does “copy/paste of utf-8 characters to command line windows” that happen to be using GNU readline “just work”, because it sure doesn’t on my computer (OS X). Try copy/pasting into an IRB session (uses the GNU readline ruby bindings by default) and let me know how that goes. It tends to bug out when using the arrow keys to edit. I suppose it might be a platform-specific issue though. Still... even that’s an improvement over “doesn’t really work at all”.
How does command completion for scp work exactly? That would be a pleasant surprise!
I really need to find an excuse to buy a secondary computer that would run Ubuntu. I’m a long way from actually switching operating systems (haven’t run into openness/freedom issues with Apple yet -fingers crossed-), but between cross-platform testing issues and just being curious about what you guys are talking about...
Posted by Bob Aman atAlso, in my case, when I went to switch OSes from Windows to OS X, I don’t think I thought of it as a migration, and in fact, I don’t think I migrated any data at all, not even my music. I took the switch as an opportunity to start from scratch without the cruft. That part of the switch was, in my opinion, the very best part.
Posted by Bob Aman at
Honestly, I think the real question is, do you know how to install Subversion on Windows from source. If you do, please tell me, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to since sometime last year. Cygwin doesn’t count.
Don’t know. Haven’t tried. But I have built Ruby/DB2 on Windows. It wasn’t pleasant.
Also, does “copy/paste of utf-8 characters to command line windows” that happen to be using GNU readline “just work”, because it sure doesn’t on my computer (OS X). Try copy/pasting into an IRB session (uses the GNU readline ruby bindings by default) and let me know how that goes. It tends to bug out when using the arrow keys to edit. I suppose it might be a platform-specific issue though. Still... even that’s an improvement over “doesn’t really work at all”.
irb(main):001:0> puts 'Bill de hÓra'
Bill de hÓra
=> nil
irb(main):002:0> 'Bill de hÓra'.each_byte {|c| puts c}
32
66
105
108
108
32
100
101
32
104
195
147
114
97
=> "Bill de h\303\223ra"
And, yes, up and down arrows “just work”.
How does command completion for scp work exactly? That would be a pleasant surprise!
man bash look for “Programmable Completion”.
IIRC, there’s a bash_autocomplete package with comes with dozens of preprogrammed bash autocomplete definitions. scp autocomplete has worked in Suse for me since ages - maybe debian/ubuntu were just slow in picking up the latest changes!
BTW, bash_autocomplete rocks so much - you can even use it to complete things like options to mplayer switches ‘$ mplayer -vo <tab>’ :-)
Posted by antrix at“I appreciate I might be a statistical improbability in that regard.”
Bill, your experience matches mine; never quite getting a distro to work
properly on a desktop machine. All that changed last November when my XP
install died yet again on my laptop; disgusted, I burned an Ubuntu CD and
gave it a try.
It just worked.
Even better than Windows in some respects, somehow the cute little volume and
mute buttons on the Inspiron never worked right under Windows, yet they worked
flawlessly under Ubuntu. Wireless, graphics card, etc, all just worked. My only
complaint is suspend and hibernate, which are marginal, but they never worked
under XP.
My experience has been much like Bill’s, but because I tend to split tasks across 3 machines I don’t have quite so much pain when repaving is unavoidable (svn on a remote server helps too). I’ve had the same install of Win2k on an Inspiron for years, and it’s painfully slow - but I only use it as a router and when I need MS Word.
“See if your display works. And if wifi works. And your USB device.”
- I just did my first Ubuntu install (notes). Display - using vesa, yes. But I’m now having to download kernel-source to get the nvidia driver in. Wifi - no. USB - yes for a memory stick, not tried the USB modem yet (problems with that in Debian is why I’m using the Win2k machine as a router). So I’d call that 1 1/2 out of 3. Would WinXP fare any better? My money would be on yes (though I’ve no intention of trying it). Would OS X fare better? Well it just works, though you do have to use Mac hardware. But I’m rapidly getting the impression that when it comes to convenience, Ubuntu’s not all that different - it just works (on IBM hardware).
Don’t get me wrong, my preference would be to run Ubuntu on all these machines. But right now it’s wishful thinking to suggest it wouldn’t be a major time-eater.
Posted by Danny atI know about programmable autocompletion, I was asking more about how scp autocompletion worked, not what feature of bash enabled it. :-P But I suppose that I can just go look now that I know where it is.
As for GNU readline, I guess it’s just a platform issue then. Or maybe a compile-time switch that wasn’t turned on. I guess I’ll do some investigation the next time it bothers me sufficiently.
Posted by Bob Aman atBob, if you have the bash_completion package installed, paths and file names will be completed on every machine you have installed your ssh public key.
Posted by Michele at
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That seems like giving up to me. I expect lots of other tools I own to work without replacing fundamental pieces of them, why can’t operating systems be the same?
Posted by Chris Winters at