Comments on Open Source Opportunities: Rebooting Linux

hey can i knw,,,y v r not advisable to restart Lin...

2010-08-30T19:59:33.714-07:00

hey can i knw,,,y v r not advisable to restart Linux again and again..???

I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my PC as a dual-bo...

2008-06-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my PC as a dual-boot with XP. My uptime records show that this instance has been running for 14 days, 18 hours, and 57 minutes. I installed this 17 days ago, so I know what you mean about stability.

The system has run out of memory once due to Firefox memory leaks, but it recovered quite gracefully when I killed the process.

As far as plug and play is concerned, dealing with hardware issues doesn't seem to be as frustrating as dealing with spyware, adware, viruses, and other Windows maladies. Perhaps it's because the lack of hardware support generally isn't the result of some malicious user trying to ruin your day.

Overall, so far I'm very impressed with Ubuntu 8.04. It's more stable than SUSE 10.1, which I tried to run as a dual-boot, but would only do so when I needed a UNIX shell. With Ubuntu, I find that I don't really miss Windows XP, which is something that I -- surprisingly enough -- find quite surprising.

I stand to be corrected, but the last time I check...

2008-06-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

I stand to be corrected, but the last time I checked, Red Hat-style machines could stand to be rebooted after "yum update" installs a new kernel. Otherwise the system keeps going with the old kernel (according to what 'uname' reports).

And once or twice I've had stupid (and physically inaccessible) hardware (a PCMCIA modem which shall remain nameless) that needed to be reset by being switched off, but that's not quite the same thing, eh?

There are a couple of troubleshooting rituals that Windows-heads need to unlearn after they've seen the light:
1) rebooting
2) re-installing everything
3) uninstalling and re-installing drivers
4) fighting back tears of frustration

When I first started using Linux (8 years ago), I found it a bit spooky: no interminable waiting for the hourglass to go away, no laborious cranking of the HDD at every double-click. Make no mistake, I often curse and wish that I could just "plug & play" the latest hardware, but then I remember viruses, worms, spyware, blue screens, and plug & play that doesn't work as intended, and I begin to emit a warm peaceful glow.