[Ubuntu-SG] Ubuntu-related article on ST Digital Life

Rui Boon ruiboon at gmail.com
Wed Aug 20 07:25:16 UTC 2008


Maung Myat Thu @ Billy Aung Myint wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 11:32 +0800, Chen Xiangpeng wrote:
>   
>> A bit is a huge understatement :)
>>     
>
> I don't mind giving someone who can follow the steps the first time
> without any errors a monetary reward. Unfortunately , I happen to be a
> student now and can only afford 10cents. If anyone would like to take
> the challenge , pls email me. Thank you.
>
> regards
> billy
To start of, I will like to thank DL for publishing this Ubuntu related
article. This can help to build up awareness about Ubuntu.

Linux distros are designed in such a way that there are many ways to do
things. There are the point-and-click approach as well as the cmdline
way. However, I will not recommend new users to play around with the
partition manger especially for things that can be done in a simpler
way. When thing goes wrong, the OS tends to suffer in the blame-game. It
is like how people blame XP when it crashes, although it may be due to a
non-MS faulty driver. With this particular article, could you imagine
what will happen when the user delete the partition, instead of resizing
it? Although this is unlikely to happen if the user is careful and read
through the warning dialogs, this illustrates how bad it can go.

The DL article also mentioned that "upgrading ... will cause you to lose
all your data". This will only occur when the user deviates from the
default options. The common ways to upgrade, especially from a LTS to
another LTS, will not cause data to be wiped out. When upgrading from a
live cd, it defaults to the upgrade options, keeping your data intact.
Another popular approach, upgrading from aptitude, will also not delete
your personal files. The article is clearly wrong on that.

If the aim of the article is to get people to backup their data before
carrying out any changes to the system(which is a good practice and
should be done), it can be achieved in easier ways as well. One can
easily copy /home to an external storage. There are many such articles,
that cater to user of all background, on the Internet.

Anyone thinking of writing of DL about this?


Cheers

Rui Boon






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