Cargo Cult sysadmining

[John Aldrich]

Quoting Dave Ihnat <dihnat at dminet.com>:

> Once, long ago--actually, on Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 09:29:49PM   
> -0700--jdow (jdow at earthlink.net) said:
>> Then I discovered a property of Windows. If your motherboard goes
>> bad and you can't replace it with an exact replacement the system and
>> all other software installed on that disk are suddenly useless. (Yes,
>> you can at least recover the files. But you cannot recover the installs.)
>
> Ah...just a parenthetical aside.  This is quite untrue.  I've replaced
> failed motherboards on numerous Windows installations of various versions.
> You usually have to do a recovery reinstallation, but it does work, and
> your installed programs, data, etc. are all preserved.
>
> I'm not defending Windows--this is more along the lines of "Know thine
> enemy".  If you're trying to promote Linux, but express actual falsehoods
> about Windows, people will discount all your views.
>
Yes...but if your Linux box is set up with a generic, modular kernel,  
chances are you won't have to re-install Linux, where, as you point  
out, with Windows, you'll have to do a "repair" install, at a minimum.  
At worst, you'll have to try and re-install on another disk and  
re-install all your apps and copy your data over. So, you are correct  
in that many cases, on Windows you can do a "repair install" but may  
end up having to start over from near scratch. Linux, properly set up,  
doesn't have that issue. :D