Joachim Breitner

Linux’ flexibility

Published 2007-02-05 in sections English, Digital World.

One of the things about the GNU/Linux system that I wouldn’t want to miss anymore is the general flexibility: I had to send my main machine, a ThinkPad, for warranty repair (again...). But I wanted to continue to use my programs with all my settings and all my data. So I took my old desktop machine, upgraded the Debian to unstable (which is what my laptop was running), using dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections I made sure that it had all programs installed that were on my laptop and then I mounted the laptop’s harddrive, which I put in a USB case, on /home. Et voilá, I can continue to work just as before. I wonder if this would have been as easy with, say, Microsoft Windows.

Comments

a true leenucks hax0r would just have booted the laptop harddrive on the desktop machine :)



+++ neingeist
#1 neingeist (Homepage) am 2007-02-05
True, possible. Actually, I think using the data and config from one system and running them on a other system is cooler. And I don’t have to change, e.g. my laptop’s system network and X settings, so when my laptop comes back, it’s just a matter of putting back the hard drive.
#2 Joachim Breitner (Homepage) am 2007-02-05

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