[PLUG] New computer working on old computer

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Sat Sep 6 22:56:50 UTC 2014


On Fri, Sep 05, 2014 at 01:04:19PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> here is the best part: I plugged it into the Thinkpad and booted to it.
> Not only did it boot, but there was not even the slightest hiccup. I
> expected the video at least to be messed up, but the screen came up
> exactly as it looked on the Bonobo Extreme.

Hijacking the thread back, yes, this is the way Linux works, and
for those of us who migrate hourly between different models of
laptops and desktops, The One True Way.  The display on the old
Thinkpad X60 I am using now has lost sync three times in the last
two months - I am about to swap drives to the spare X60, with
the pesky nuisance of upgrading /etc/dhcpd.conf, perhaps 10 minutes
of work total. 

The same drive will work in my T60 and desktop machines, though
because I populate a lot of virtual windows with optimized xterms,
that could take as much as twenty minutes.  I set up those xterms
from size-optimized shell scripts, so even that is not difficult.

Meanwhile, Windows demands that you buy a new license if you clone
to new hardware, and mother-may-I if you migrate your single copy. 
Apple won't even let you replace the battery.  Environmental criminals.

I don't know what format John's SSD drive takes, but you can run
two SATA drives on the larger thinkpads, because you can put one
in an Ultrabay.  An external USB case is OK, too, but USB2 is 
kinda slow.  There are Cardbus cards for eSATA and USB3 which
would make that faster.  Bottom line, you can move a lot of stuff
around, Linux will find it, and if you are geeky enough there are
ways to live-swap just about everything but the boot drive.

Keith

Protip: For those discussing System 76, if you change the subject,
change the subject line, please, or you are wasting other people's
time and demonstrating callousness and perhaps unsuitability for
employment.  This list is archived online forever, you never know
who you will someday piss off, perhaps decades from now.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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