Why GNU/Linux Rocks

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lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,937
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My old P4 bedroom computer went tits up today. I shut it down, took it outside to clean it, and it never ran again :^/

After dicking around with it for a couple hours, I pulled the HD, and put it in my C2D box. I'm running without optical drives due to the HD being IDE, and having limited room. Anyway, I booted it up, and it went into Ubuntu fine, albeit in low gfx mode. I updated the drivers trough the handy utility that deals with proprietary drivers, rebooted, and here I am, about 10* faster than before :^D

Try doing that with Windows!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
V

Vic Vega

Diamond Member
Sep 24, 2010
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lxskllr said:
My old P4 bedroom computer went tits up today. I shut it down, took it outside to clean it, and it never ran again :^/

After dicking around with it for a couple hours, I pulled the HD, and put it in my C2D box. I'm running without optical drives due to the HD being IDE, and having limited room. Anyway, I booted it up, and it went into Ubuntu fine, albeit in low gfx mode. I updated the drivers trough the handy utility that deals with proprietary drivers, rebooted, and here I am, about 10* faster than before :^D

Try doing that with Windows!
Click to expand...

I've done it myself. The last time I can remember was back in 2010 with Windows 7 Enterprise. I ran the system like that for a while, no issues.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2112039&highlight=overclocking+surprise
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,937
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IceBergSLiM said:
Updating video drivers? That can be done easily with windows.
Click to expand...

No, installing a drive from a system of a completely different architecture, and have it flawlessly boot, gfx, and everything. A side benefit is not having to call someone and plead with them to let me use my computer :^D
 
DesiPower

DesiPower

Lifer
Nov 22, 2008
15,299
740
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yeah, a lot of things you did, talked about in OP, went over my head and over the head of majority of people, and therefore GNU/Linux sucks big time
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,937
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corwin

corwin

Diamond Member
Jan 13, 2006
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lxskllr said:
No, installing a drive from a system of a completely different architecture, and have it flawlessly boot, gfx, and everything. A side benefit is not having to call someone and plead with them to let me use my computer :^D
Click to expand...
Intel to Intel is not a "completely different architecture", Intel to AMD would be..I did the same thing with XP from a PIII to a P4 and it booted "flawlessly" as well
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,937
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corwin said:
Intel to Intel is not a "completely different architecture", Intel to AMD would be..I did the same thing with XP from a PIII to a P4 and it booted "flawlessly" as well
Click to expand...

Eh... I've had mixed luck swapping drives with Windows. It's still nice not having to call someone, and deal with activation.
 
V

Vic Vega

Diamond Member
Sep 24, 2010
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lxskllr said:
What was the system you were upgrading from? Putting it in Intel terms would be helpful, as I don't follow AMD. Was it a similar step as going from a P4 Northwood to a C2D?
Click to expand...

S939 (2004) - > SAM3 (2009)

The only hardware which got changed over was the video card, HD and DVD burners...

I've done this same thing with XP boxes. With XP sometimes it would work, sometimes not and usually there were problems.

With Windows 7 there were zero issues. :)
 
surfsatwerk

surfsatwerk

Lifer
Mar 6, 2008
10,110
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Yeah I did that with a windows 7 drive a month or two ago, just have to prep it first. Forget how I did this off the top of my head, have it written down at home.
 
V

Vic Vega

Diamond Member
Sep 24, 2010
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surfsatwerk said:
Yeah I did that with a windows 7 drive a month or two ago, just have to prep it first. Forget how I did this off the top of my head, have it written down at home.
Click to expand...

MS makes a tool called SysPrep (or did... been a while since I did this kind of thing) to prep an OS install to be moved to a different platform...

I didn't use it myself, not sure if it's out there for Windows 7. Been a while since I was a HD lackey.
 
lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,937
11,268
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Vic Vega said:
S939 (2004) - > SAM3 (2009)

The only hardware which got changed over was the video card, HD and DVD burners...

I've done this same thing with XP boxes. With XP sometimes it would work, sometimes not and usually there were problems.

With Windows 7 there were zero issues. :)
Click to expand...

I'm fairly impressed. I didn't know Windows (7?) was so forgiving. I haven't tried that on anything newer than XP. This box I put the Ubuntu drive in still has my original Vista 64 install from Sept 07.
 
surfsatwerk

surfsatwerk

Lifer
Mar 6, 2008
10,110
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Vic Vega said:
MS makes a tool called SysPrep (or did... been a while since I did this kind of thing) to prep an OS install to be moved to a different platform...

I didn't use it myself, not sure if it's out there for Windows 7. Been a while since I was a HD lackey.
Click to expand...

Bingo! It removed some of my personalization and I had to re-enter my validation code, otherwise it was a piece of cake to transfer my HD to my new computer.
 
V

Vic Vega

Diamond Member
Sep 24, 2010
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lxskllr said:
I'm fairly impressed. I didn't know Windows (7?) was so forgiving. I haven't tried that on anything newer than XP. This box I put the Ubuntu drive in still has my original Vista 64 install from Sept 07.
Click to expand...

At the risk of sounding fanboi'ish and being that I'm a *nix guy at work, I have been extremely impressed with Windows 7, not to mention, I never had problems with Vista. :)
 
cronos

cronos

Diamond Member
Nov 7, 2001
9,380
26
101
Vista and 7 have been really good with this type of issue. XP and earlier versions of Windows are pretty much a crap shoot (most will not work at all unless you have a Windows install CD ready and do a repair right away at first boot).

However, I'm pretty sure your statement are only accurate for recent GNU/Linux iterations. Back in the mid-to-late 90s when I was messing with these, they were an absolute pain to install and get working with different hardware. Sure you'll probably get a console working right away, but if you want more than that you'll need to find the correct drivers for each individual things (graphic cards, network, optical) and install them first to get it working, and driver installations back then are not exactly straightforward.

My point is: if we're comparing how much easier it is to plug the recent versions of both OSs to different hardware and have them working, I'll say they're about the same :)
 
S

Sureshot324

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2003
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This used to be problematic with Windows back in the XP days but now it works fine. In general I have much less problems with hardware in Windows than Linux.
 
V

Vic Vega

Diamond Member
Sep 24, 2010
4,535
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cronos said:
Vista and 7 have been really good with this type of issue. XP and earlier versions of Windows are pretty much a crap shoot (most will not work at all unless you have a Windows install CD ready and do a repair right away at first boot).

However, I'm pretty sure your statement are only accurate for recent GNU/Linux iterations. Back in the mid-to-late 90s when I was messing with these, they were an absolute pain to install and get working with different hardware. Sure you'll probably get a console working right away, but if you want more than that you'll need to find the correct drivers for each individual things (graphic cards, network, optical) and install them first to get it working, and driver installations back then are not exactly straightforward.

My point is: if we're comparing how much easier it is to plug the recent versions of both OSs to different hardware and have them working, I'll say they're about the same :)
Click to expand...

Heck yeah, Linux 10 years, 15 years ago was a huge PITA. The reason it's so well liked now is mainly due to the Windows-like GUI (in my opinion) and Windows like functionality, along with available drivers. Not to mention it's free (for the most part, not talking about enterprise products like ESX or Redhat).
 
I

ioni

Senior member
Aug 3, 2009
619
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So you took an HDD out of an old computer, put it in a new one and put linux on it? And then say try doing that with windows? Pretty sure I've done that. Or was linux already on the HDD? Because I've done that too....
 
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