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posted by janrinok on Thursday July 09 2015, @05:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-you dept.

Summary: I'm trying to back up a failing harddisk and bring programs over to a new system. I'd also like to transition off Windows. I'm hoping my fellow Soylentils can share their experiences and help ease the transition. I realize I'm probably not the only person who may be looking to do such things, so I'm hoping that the replies will be helpful to someone who later comes upon this story.

Background: I have a 10-year-old HP laptop with an AMD Athlon64 3200+ running Windows XP/SP3 with an 80 GB hard disk Over the past 10 years I've installed well over 100 programs and done countless tweaks and modifications to their defaults. Thanks to the generosity of a kind friend, I'm getting a Dell Latitude with a fresh install of Win 7 Pro which has an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz and a 500 GB hard disk.

Goal: Full-disk backups of both systems and as-painless-as-possible installation of programs on the new system. Ultimately transition off Windows to a Linux/BSD distro.

Challenges: When I run SMART on the HP's 80 GB disk, it reports "Prefailure" for: "Raw Read Error Rate", "Spin Up Time", "Reallocated Sector Count", "Seek Error Rate", and "Spin Retry Count." A couple years ago, I tried doing a full-disk backup. In preparation, I did a CHKDSK /R to relocate bad sectors and fix any other errors. Then I ran a Live CD version of Clonezilla (2.0.1-5-i486) to backup the disk to an external USB hard disk; it happily chewed along for several hours until it hit a disk error and then just stopped. I'd like to use something which is more determined to retry challenged sectors and not die on any errors — ideally it would report details on any non-recoverable sectors, etc.

As for installing my old programs on the new machine, I surely miss the pre-registry days when one could just zip up a directory on one machine, unzip it on another, and you were good to go! Example: I use Pale Moon as my browser. I've set customizations for fonts, character sets, etc. as well as having updated the internal spelling dictionary. What is the easiest way to bring the program over to the new system? Similarly, how would I bring over such programs as: Mozilla Thunderbird, PuTTY, HexChat, and VLC?

Lastly: I'd like to get off the Windows merry-go-round. I have considerable experience in using Unix userland commands (ls, find, gawk, sed, etc.) but negligible experience in installing Linux/BSD/etc. The new box has sufficient memory (6 GB) that I could conceivably run Windows in a VM. I've never done that on a PC before. (Many years ago I worked at IBM testing their VM operating system, so I'm familiar with the concepts.) So, I'm open to folks' experience on how to go about doing a P2V (physical to virtual) of the new system. Based on what I've read, I'd like to stay away from systemd, so that strikes out a few of the selections mentioned in: What Distro Do Soylentils Use? What has your experience been? What do you recommend?

I know there's probably something I don't know; what else should I be asking? What problems should I watch out for?


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  • (Score: 1) by FreeUser on Thursday July 09 2015, @05:33PM

    by FreeUser (5423) on Thursday July 09 2015, @05:33PM (#207039) Homepage

    Lastly: I'd like to get off the Windows merry-go-round. I have considerable experience in using Unix userland commands (ls, find, gawk, sed, etc.) but negligible experience in installing Linux/BSD/etc. [...] I'd like to stay away from systemd, so that strikes out a few of the selections mentioned in: What Distro Do Soylentils Use? What has your experience been? What do you recommend?

    I share your distaste for systemd. I personally run Funtoo at home and Gentoo at work, but there are numerous distributions available that are systemd-free, including at least one Debian fork and a systemd-free Arch, as well as numerous others:

    http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page [without-systemd.org]

    BSD also runs on many laptops if you want to go that route (disclaimer: I like both BSD and Linux, but bottom line I prefer Gentoo/Funtoo to the *BSDs I've tried): https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.0R/hardware.html#support [freebsd.org]

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy, a Novel
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:13PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:13PM (#207065) Journal

    Systemd is going to be the least of his problems.
    Avoidance of that is a pointless exercise, even Linus Torvalds has no major objections to it.

    I didn't like the systemd came about or the assholes who pushed it out. But it has not caused me any problems.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 1) by FreeUser on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:42PM

      by FreeUser (5423) on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:42PM (#207074) Homepage

      I didn't like the systemd came about or the assholes who pushed it out. But it has not caused me any problems.

      My objections are technical, and it has caused me significant problems on critical servers (in addition to Gentoo I work on numerous Fedora and Centos systems, most of which are riddled with systemd). Significant in impact, that is. Less problems numerically that early on, but severe when they occur. When systemd works it is fine, when it breaks, debugging and fixing the issue takes on nightmare proportions, and with it subsuming ntpd and a host of other perfectly workable applications that are already good at what they do, the issues become more complex and more difficult to debug.

      systemd is easily avoided, and maintaining viable options so people have a choice is an important contribution. A part of that is having users use things like OpenRC (which is significantly superior to systemd in my opinon), upstart etc. He wants to get off the Windows merry-go-round, and wants to avoid systemd. Both are easily achievable, as the resources I linked to above show.

      --
      The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy, a Novel
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:25PM

        by frojack (1554) on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:25PM (#207091) Journal

        Yeah, thanks for the links.

        But I remain unconvinced that the extra effort and limitations of distros you so glibly accept as "easily avoidable" are the proper course of action for a newbie.
        Some of those distros are fine, I use a couple of them myself. But many are marginal distros in every sense of the word, and the peer to peer support base is smaller, and significant amounts of upstream software still has dependencies on systemd.

        Finally, you rant about all the huge problems it has caused, all seemingly from the early days, with no specifics. Total extra effort it has caused me: 2 hours browsing the man pages, spread over 3 months when it first arrived. Could it be your problems might have been pebcak issues?

        But you don't balance that rant with any of the extra effort you needed to move away from systemd. In fact, UNLESS you install a competent, (not marginal) non-systemd distro from the start, just about ANY effort you need to make to avoid systemd (including trying to install OpenRC) will be more effort and more work than just using systemd.

        Contributing and using a marginal distro just to say you are doing so is fine. For you. But this isn't what you do to Newbies.

        You want the new user of Linux to have a positive experience out of the gate, with a full fledged easy to maintain desktop suite that can do everything that their prior OS did. You want install to be painless, probably graphic, with a complete package and common tools.

        They can join your jihad against systemd when they gain experience, and they suddenly find systemd causing a whole bunch of problems. (Which i predict will be on the 12th of Never. )

        Poettering and Sievers are rude arrogant asses. But they have nothing on Theo de Raadt who is far worse.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:04PM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:04PM (#207125) Journal

          Look I may be the token "Windows guy" here so feel free to tell me to fuck off but systemd even has MY spidey sense tingling, just from what I saw which was ...

          1.-Normally VERY technical Linux devs, the kind that would give you a fricking book on "why we did this" so filled with technical jargon it'd make your head explode suddenly using appeals to emotion and lines literally out of the Windows Metro fanboys book (embrace the innovation, you are a Luddite, change for change sake is progress,etc) was my first "DaFuq?" moment, then 2.- Conversations were getting erased, posts wiped, users banned who dared to say anything negative about systemd. Remember guys these are the same places where Vi VS Emacs and GNOME VS KDE battles have been raging for ages, yet they are gonna suddenly start acting like SJWs and ban any dissent? Why? And finally 3.- this is being shoved with both hands really really REALLY hard by Red Hat, and when you connect the dots a lot of those doing the flaming and appeals to emotion and shit? ALL go right back to Red Hat. Okay so what is wrong with that? Uhhhh...you DO know where Red Hat gets nearly ALL of their money, right? Over 85% of the money Red Hat makes comes from three letter agencies of the US government, your CIA,FBI,NSA, if the US government cut off funding tomorrow? Red Hat would go from a billion dollar company to "Bob's Distro" overnight.

          When you add these observations to the other facts such as 4.- Pottering is an arrogant idiot who has gone on record saying systemd should be in control of everything and has posted such pearls of wisdom as "Couldn't get systemd working on ARM, shipping it anyway" (remember folks you don't need to write specific back doors if you tie everything into the work of a cowboy coder who rushes shit out the door without a care in the world) and 5.- Nobody was really going "ZOMFG we have GOT to get rid of init!" until AFTER the Snowden revelation about how Stasi-like the NSA was being and all these articles on "Have secure communications with safe Linux LiveCDs" articles starting showing up everywhere.....I'm sorry, call me paranoid (they said the same of those that said Gulf Of Tonkin was a false flag, turned out they were right), call me a nutter, but I've been hanging around the FOSS forums and arguing with the hardcores for the better part of a decade and this is not how they act this is how WINDOWS fanboys act. The whole thing was so out of character it just made no damned sense....until I saw who was pushing what and....well if I worked for the NSA? I would have done it the same way, let 'em argue over the bullshit details while this dumbass cowboy got his mitts on everything and gave us the next CodeRed or Shellshock by treating critical systems like game releases. If it is the NSA? Give 'em credit, it was a damned smart move as it worked perfectly. I mean seriously guys look at his past work, Pottering gave us Pulse....you are gonna put THAT GUY in charge of critical systems? Really? Yeah, no, I smell bullshit.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:30PM

            by frojack (1554) on Thursday July 09 2015, @09:30PM (#207138) Journal

            Well, some corrections: systemd was well in the works and released (2011) before Snowden 2013.

            Being opensource, its been gone over with a fine tooth comb by its detractors and enemies, and nobody has found anything nefarious, and actually very little in the way of crappy code.

            It was not designed for Joe user, and renders no benefits to joe user. It is not significantly faster, not significantly more secure, not smaller, and not significantly easier to use. Its just different, which imposes a short learning curve, which sysvInit did also.
            Having said that, its not significantly worse in any of those categories either. But it does offend the sensibilities of a lot of people, my self included.

            All I'm saying is it has not caused me any problems. I'm not a fan of it. My distro (Opensuse) is very careful in its implementation of it such that I have never been inconvenienced by it for longer than it takes to google an answer.

            It was designed for big server farm operators and massive virtual machine clouds. It was not built for Joe user.

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 5, Interesting) by NCommander on Friday July 10 2015, @06:40AM

              by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Friday July 10 2015, @06:40AM (#207300) Homepage Journal

              It doesn't have to be backdoored if the design itself is completely idiotic. Everything in systemd is built around connecting to journald, and requiring code level callbacks to sd_notify ti allow the thing to work as adversed. I'm not a big fan of journald, but it would chaft me at all if the damn thing was useful, it can only long stdout, so with a lot of daemons which use stderr (which has been standard practice for 30+ years of UNIX). Due to replacing LDAP with Hesiod on our backend, SSH started hanging on our one CentOS node, and it proved impossible to get useful debug information out of systemd; I ended up just spawning another sshd instance, and getting debug output that way.

              Beyond the stderr idioticy, systemd allows malformed unit files, and will not fail (or warn) if theres a stanza it doesn't recongize. This allows a typo to have serious security issues that could easily be missed in code review and such. I could probably find more to hate but that's just what I ran into today.

              --
              Still always moving
            • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @10:47PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @10:47PM (#207679)

              It was not designed for Joe user, and renders no benefits to joe user. It is not significantly faster, not significantly more secure, not smaller, and not significantly easier to use. Its just different

              Ah I see you work in marketing.

      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday July 10 2015, @11:20PM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Friday July 10 2015, @11:20PM (#207690) Homepage

        >when it breaks, debugging and fixing the issue takes on nightmare proportions
        Sounds like you're just unfamiliar with systemd vs SysV. Had systemd come first, you would probably be arguing the converse.

        A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
        them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new
        generation grows up that is familiar with it.

        -- Max Planck

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        Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @08:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @08:12PM (#211553)

      Torvalds do not have an objection to it as an init. If it stayed just a init, there would be less noise about it.

      But for far it has either grown a replacement or subsumed:

      /dev management
      cron
      session/seat tracking
      inetd
      ntpd
      dns client
      dhcp client
      bootloader

      And i am probably forgetting some.

      Here is the creeping horror thing that get people on edge:

      Each of those hinge on systemd running as init. You can't use them independently. So if something like your DE starts to depend on any of them being present, it has effectively become dependent on systemd as init. This is a massive departure for how Linux used to be, and why many adopted Linux in the first place.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @08:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @08:13AM (#207327)

    An important point in that regard is that the Gentoo Handbook is mostly excellent, and installing it will give you all the opportunity you need to learn about linux in the process. The Gentoo forums are also very helpful if you run into any problems.

    The BSD's also have pretty good documentation. An entrenched linux user like me managed to install several of them this winter.