On Dec 7, 2009, at 2:00 PM, Andrew McNabb wrote: > > PXE Knife, which is used in BKO, looks really cool. My only problem is > that I'm not sure what other tools I need. The hard drive utilities > category (with 10 different manufactur-specific tools) seems pretty > useless.
In one of my old jobs we maintained an aging fleet of Dells and home-builts, and with management that would only buy new stuff if you absolutely needed it, we used the manufacturer diagnostics not infrequently to prove the integrity of a drive. I can see where this would come in handy for a certain group, and I wouldn't mind having all of them so that when my relatives/roommates ask, "Hey, my hard drive is making weird noises, can you take a look at it?" I don't have to hunt down the diagnostics on a manufacturer's site. > > My opinion for a while has been that the Install Fests are less helpful > than they used to be. I think it would be better to help with > post-installation problems and configuration. Installation has gotten > really easy, but people still need help with configuration and > workarounds. I heartily agree. I was ruminating the other evening on why the UUG hasn't done an installfest this semester, and with the exception of 'roll-your-own' distro's like Arch or Gentoo, the biggest problem with installations these days is choosing which programs to install, or whether to try out ext4. Sure, problems come up, but it's a lot more rare now, with all the attention that has been given to the installers by Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, and even Debian. I think perhaps a 'post-install-fest'/fragfest would perhaps be more beneficial to the community. Jake Adams -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
