SystemRescueCD Rocks at Robert Pogson

I have been using SystemRescueCD a lot lately:

resetting NT passwords
transferring disc images using ssh
testing RAM and hard drives
investigating drivers
investigating hardware

It’s just too useful… Tonight some visitors brought in a new PC with Vista. It was a compact machine with 2 gB RAM and AMD64 5000. It should have been a rocket but it was dog slow. They had an issue with getting Norton registered which turned out to be an incomplete download. I took the opportunity to show them GNU/Linux. They used it to fetch their e-mail without using any software running on that other OS. It was a novel concept… Then we used SystemRescueCD to run the GUI on their machine. It was obviously faster than Vista. They loved it. The only hardware not handled immediately was a winmodem. They are planning to move to satellite Internet access so that should not be a problem We found a driver but SystemRescueCD could not build it for want of headers. That could be fixed.

I took the opportunity to show off some GNU/Linux tricks my students will enjoy in the second semester. We should have the new server in production by then. It only needs a router configuration.

The evening was topped off by the Boss coming by to chat and get a demo. Everything worked but the thin clients would not connect again. The logs showed I had not set up /etc/hosts to recognize the new clients and X was worried about that… Fixed. The lab will be in production tomorrow when I have some spreadsheet work to do.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.