In my Windows days I ghosted all my PCs. I first used Norton Ghost and later I realized I liked Acronis True Image better. The reason was I didn't want to have to spend a ton of time reinstalling my OS. Windows is a vulnerable operating system that can get trashed via malware or just corrupted DLLs or by user error (not that that ever happened since I'm so perfect). In my old XP machine, I had an extra internal hard drive dedicated just to Acronis ghosts of my OS. I stored all data on external hard drives, so that if Windows got buggy, I just started the restore and went and watched TV and came back to a fresh Windows with all my applications installed. I did something similar with Norton Ghost and external drives in Windows 98 & 2000. (And '98 was a monster of instability -- I can't believe some people called that thing stable.)
So far I haven't done this with Kubuntu. Kubuntu's stable. It's extremely unlikely to get trashed via malware. However, I did have to go through a lot of work to make my Windows 7 / Kubuntu dual boot setup run. Turns out Lenovo has done some extremely bizarre engineering that thwarts Grub. From time to time I've thought it might be worth ghosting this entire thing to an external hard drive with a tool like Clonezilla. I downloaded it at one point, but ended up never using it.
Kubuntu just keeps running with no evidence of any bugginess. It's as fast and stable as when I installed it. I've thought of developing a joke app named something like "Ubuntudefrag" or "Linuxdefrag" that shows a progress bar of supposedly defragging an Ext2/3/4 hard drive without actually doing it and seeing who downloads and installs it. However, writing a bunch of code just as a practical joke does seem like a frivolous use of time.
In any event, if you've used a ghosting tool like Clonezilla in Linux, I'd be curious if it's worked well for you. Another great use for such a utility is if you need to install an OS including a specific set of applications on a lot of computers.
So far I haven't done this with Kubuntu. Kubuntu's stable. It's extremely unlikely to get trashed via malware. However, I did have to go through a lot of work to make my Windows 7 / Kubuntu dual boot setup run. Turns out Lenovo has done some extremely bizarre engineering that thwarts Grub. From time to time I've thought it might be worth ghosting this entire thing to an external hard drive with a tool like Clonezilla. I downloaded it at one point, but ended up never using it.
Kubuntu just keeps running with no evidence of any bugginess. It's as fast and stable as when I installed it. I've thought of developing a joke app named something like "Ubuntudefrag" or "Linuxdefrag" that shows a progress bar of supposedly defragging an Ext2/3/4 hard drive without actually doing it and seeing who downloads and installs it. However, writing a bunch of code just as a practical joke does seem like a frivolous use of time.
In any event, if you've used a ghosting tool like Clonezilla in Linux, I'd be curious if it's worked well for you. Another great use for such a utility is if you need to install an OS including a specific set of applications on a lot of computers.
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