Is Linux about to make a breakthrough to the desktop? Sam Docknevich of IBM's Global Services thinks so.
Speaking of Linux on the desktop, today I had a great expereince with Linux. My wife's laptop hard drive has some big problems and repeated attemts to restore or repair her Windows XP system had failed. Myk Melez (of the Mozilla Foundation, Bugzilla, Tinderstatus and ForumZilla fame) suggested I try this very cool linux on a floppy distro called tomsrtbt, and he even let me borrow his floppy (saving me the painful download ;-) After playing around for a little while with that, I was able to mount the laptop's ntfs partition and verify that Deanna's files were all still visible and (hopefully) intact. Deciding that the little distro on a disk wasn't quite sufficient for my ham fists, I downloaded and burned the amazing Knoppix "Live Linux CD". With the power of a full-blown Linux distro, that instantly recognized the wireless card, I was able to locate, verify integrity of, zip up, and mail all of Deanna's important files. It was a surprisingly easy process from start to finish and I recommend that everyone get a copy of Knoppix to keep around for rescue and repair.
Posted by asa at November 8, 2003 11:25 PM