Bill Gates is to hacking as Sid Vicious was to the Sex Pistols

for those of you linux newbies, i’m copying over some comments i made on Lifehacker.com for the benefit of you guys.

(sorry for the messy formatting. maybe i’ll clean it up some other time. VERY text-heavy, but has a LOT of good info in it.)

a bit of GNU ddrescue magic…

right now, i have the 750 gb seagate hooked up and doing a badblocks test.

when that finishes, i’m going to:

1. partition it into a ~345gb partition and a ~405gb partition
2. set up ext3 filesystems on both
3. GNU ddrescue the old dying data drive into an image file on the 405gb partition
4. mount the image file as a loopback device, and copy what i can to a 160gb hdd i had lying around. once i get the image’s contents down to ~320gb, i’ll copy the rest to the 345gb partition.
5. use GPartEd to delete the second partition and grow the 345gb partition to the whole drive.

here’s hoping it works with no hitches.

EDIT:
venting and frustration below. not for young eyes.

WHOO 7.10

let me begin by saying i, by habit, am not an ubuntu fan. i find it a bit too bloated for my likes, and the system scripts it uses are less than friendly (compared to my preferred distro, gentoo. warning: NOT FOR BEGINNERS). and i still feel it lacks the stability that its daddy, debian, has for servers.

but i WILL grant it this- it has and is bringing linux to the people.

today marks the release of Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon. if you never tried linux before for whatever reason (being scared, i think, is the most common reason. but don’t be scared! it’s more stable than windows, it’s free, and tux is WAY cuter than the windows logo), Ubuntu is a GREAT place to start. it’s probably the most newbie-friendly distro out there. if you want to try it out, you have a couple of options. it’s all on their site and there are plenty of people willing to help you in the forums. just a caveat: make sure to do a little reading before jumping right in. google any questions you might have beforehand; you’ll find most of them have been answered. and, as always, beware the FUD-mud. it’s icky and it’s out there. ignore it in favor of intelligent criticism.

so what’re you waiting for? give it a shot! at the very least, learn about it.

it’s a sick, sad world when we decide between paying rent and eating

i noticed that Last.fm is hiring.