Another Reason Why I Love Linux!

Recently I built a 'new' PC from various bits and pieces: a Foxconn socket 939 board i had lying about, with 2.4ghz single core CPU; 2GB of ram (made up of four 512MB modules running in dual channel mode) and I put in an 80GB drive for Windows. Of course, I had to do a fresh install on it as it has a different chipset than my old machine (Nvidia as opposed to SIS on the old Asus board) though both machines use Athlon 64 bit CPUs (2800+ socket 754 and 3800+ X2). So once I had afresh install it came to thinking about how to transfer all my settings and things for Ubuntu. Instead of the tedious approach of reinstall then re-downloading all my programs, I decided to risk just moving the hard drive straight into it, and just repairing Grub with Super Grub Disk Imagine my surprise when it worked perfectly without any problems! I'm writing this on it now. Now you can't do that with Windows without a whole lot of messing about, I didn't even have to uninstall anything!

Having successfully transferred the Ubuntu system between desktops, I wondered whether it would work with other mixed systems. the opportunity came when I repaired a HP nc6000 laptop, and on having a faulty DVD drive, and not having a spare I used an unorthodox method of getting a working system on it. I installed the Ubuntu 8.0.4 live CD on the hard drive connected to a USB/mini IDE converter to my pentium 3 750mhz test-bed machine, then put the drive back in the machine when the install had completed but before the reboot to the new system. On booting up in the laptop it worked fine, with no problems! I wonder what would flummox a Linux install! After installing the ATI drivers and adding another 256MB of ram, Compiz works great on it.