Sunday, January 28, 2007

More Useful Than Originally Intended

There is a new linux oriented website which I just learned of today called goodbye-microsoft.com. Aside from the likely Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution claim Microsoft has against the venture, I've got to say that I'm very impressed with what's going on here.

The idea is simple. Using nothing more than a webbrowser and Windows, go to a website and download all the necessary bits to install Debian Linux onto a desktop. No optical discs necessary. Besides the obvious marketing value of such a website, it has tremendous functionality value for those of us with laptops.

See, more and more laptops these days are shipped without an optical disc drive. Or, if they have one, it connects via a strange PCMCIA card. Which means that it is very difficult to start the Linux install process (though not impossible). The process itself is nearly painless these days (in stark contrast to my first experience in 2000). But if you can't get the damn thing started then you've got serious problems.

But now, thanks to this brilliant invention, it will be trivial to install Linux on my next laptop.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very slick. It looks like ubuntu is working on their own version as well:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/install.exe
(this is a page not a file)

Sean Bakker Kellogg said...

Hmmm.... matt. I wonder who matt could be? No bother, I shall dispatch with this comment with all appropriate wit and brevity.

Ubuntu is to Debian, as the Chevy Nova is to Toyota Corrola.

Both are the same essential car, but one has a funny name and eventually was discontinued. Long live Debian, its proud DPL, and its endless flamewars.