Thursday, May 03, 2007

 

Fast install, just copy

Some MSFT fanboy was bragging that he can install MS-Vista in 35 minutes. Of course that's not including any MSFT applications. You have to do those one at a time, or you're "stealing."

I can reproduce an entire GNU+X+Linux installation in half that time. With the applications. That's because the Free Software Foundation's version of the UNIX "cp(1)" program can copy everything on a disk partition, faithfully, in one operation. Then all you need to do is "make the drive bootable" (install a boot loader) which takes another minute or two. It's way faster than installing from scratch, and you don't have to repeat your post-install customizations.

The (1) means it's in the first chapter of the online manual, and it's part of the program's name. GNU cp(1) is part of the GNU fileutils package, standard on any "Linux" distro you'll ever see.

The first GNU+Linux distribution I really liked was H.J. Liu's "GCC Release." Its installation program was, you guessed it, GNU cp(1).

MSFT users aren't allowed to copy their systems, even if it were possible.

Comments:
> Some MSFT fanboy was bragging that he can install MS-Vista in 35 minutes.

You might have seen this.

> MSFT users aren't allowed to copy their systems, even if it were possible.

It is in fact quite possible....and Microsoft can't stop me.

Mark Odell
 
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