QUOTE
Have you tried Feisty Fawn yet?
gunug,
Nope.
I have been focusing on hardware upgrades of late. Specifically -
You may know that I multiboot. ;-)
I have been doing this largely on a single hard drive. In my case this has meant running various Linux distributions on different hard drive partitions.
The most elegant way that I have found to multiboot is to run the GRUB boot loader off of a boot floppy and/or floppies. This allows competing operating systems, which otherwise seem to like to wipe each other off the MBR, to live together in peace and harmony.
It works very well.
Some of these distributions I have on my hard drive are locked down just about as secure as I can make them. Others are explorational or just for fun. Others are now half forgotten.
Did I really put Knoppix on a hard drive partition a while back? Whoops!
What was I thinking?
Oh yes - I was just exploring and having fun.
However -
A general principle of security is that security is only as strong as the weakest link. And I have some pretty weak links on that hard drive.
I have thought that it would be more prudent to run different Linux distributions on completely separate removable hard drives. At least two hard drives - on for serious work, the other for fun. I have quite a few hard drives lying around, anyway, so I might as well use them. But how to set it all up?
Hard drive rack and removable hard drive trayI have this now up and running in a single 5 inch bay with a single removable drive. Now time to buy some
additional removable drive trays and it will be on to a new level of multi-booting goodness.
One could also use such setups for backup drives.
Others prefer external hard drives connected by Firewire or USB 2.0. I may go that route when external SATA drives are commonplace.
But for right now, this makes the most sense for me.
As to Ubuntu -
Even with plenty of partitions on my hard drive, Ubuntu has never lasted out the week before getting wiped.
In my experience, Ubuntu has been a spotted camel - i.e., a horse built by committee. A lot of breadth but limited depth. Holes everywhere I turn.
I am very pleased, however, running Mepis 6.5.
Mepis 6.5 is based on Ubuntu 6.10 - but it is then considerably refined. Sort of like what Ubuntu would be like if Ubuntu were built with adult supervision.
So - computing for me right now looks like it is going to consist of looking through old hard drives to see what needs to be kept - archiving - wiping the old drives down as close to the molecular level that I can - and turning them into removable hard drives.
Ubuntu will just have to mature while I remain otherwise engaged. ;-)
After that, I may give Ubuntu another look.
And if Mr. Dell will get his act together and market an inexpensive laptop that runs Linux fully -
I might consider giving that a look, as well.
Best regards,
Epaminondas
