Use exclude

Posted Nov 9, 2006 16:19 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

Even better, give your Windows user a hard disk extracted from a PC that was happily running Windows XP before its motherboard broke down (say an old AMD Athlon), and a new PC (say an Intel Core Duo 2), and tell him to get back to where he was before the breakdown.

He'll need good tech skills to sort out HAL. And good people skills to avoid paying Microsoft for another copy of Windows. (If it was an OEM copy originally, he *will* have to pay for another copy of Windows!). Point out to him that while he's on hold listening to muzak, he's paying a premium rate and Microsoft is getting half of it, which is why they aren't in any sort of hurry to eventually let him talk to someone in Bombay with an imperfect grasp of English.

It's even less fun with a Windows server.

Then show him the same job with Linux. I've done this several times. Yank the disk, install it in a new PC, boot, usually that's it. 10 minute job. Even if by some chance it won't boot (hardware too new for old kernel?) , userdata is safe in separate /home partition (and system config safe in /etc for inspection and re-use as appropriate). You can get quick access to your data with the latest Knoppix CD or go find an older new PC, it won't have scrambled your disk.

Heck, that Knoppix disk should have been the first thing that your Windows user reached for!

If he needs further convincing get him to make McAfee anti-virus start working again after it auto-updated itself into non-functionality. I spent most of yesterday sorting that one out on about 30 PCs. sadly I'm not in an all-Linux environment.