[luau] Ghost for Linux and Pattition Image

[W. Wayne Liauh]

The reason I am all of a sudden interested in a Ghost-like image cloning 
program such as g4u or Partition Image is that, during my recent trip to 
Taiwan, I installed a Linux PC (Red Hat 8.0) for my mother-in-law, who 
never even dared to touch a computer in her life.

With the Red Hat Linux PC (remember, there are very big differences 
between versions 7.3 and 8 of Red Hat), not only did she no longer have 
the fear (believe me, Microsoft Windows is VERY intimidating, especially 
for old people), she was also very impressed and instantly liked it. 
 (In fact, she liked the Linux PC so much that, after I left, she bought 
herself a nice LCD monitor as well as applied for an ADSL 
subscription--so that she can better manage her stock portfolio).

Without Linux, my mother-in-law most likely would have never had the 
"privilege" to use a computer.  Linux has removed the psychological as 
well as generational barrier.  And I don't think her experience will be 
unique.

One of the most impressive features of Red Hat 8.0 is its multi-lingual 
capability.  For example, you can set up a plurality of users, each with 
a different locale such as English, Taiwanese (traditional Chinese), 
Chinese (simplified Chinese), Japanese, Korean, etc.  In the part of the 
world where we should be most interested in, this setup is guaranteed to 
impress everyone.

What I have in mind is that it should not be too difficult to develop an 
optimized and "minimalized" Red Hat 8.0 system, then clone the image 
into a CD-R and make the disk bootable.  Thereafter, when booted from 
the CD-ROM, it will execute scripts which will copy the disk image onto 
the free space.




Warren Togami wrote:

> bhoward at hale.org wrote:
>
>>>>>>>           
>>>>>>
>> Yep, several people I know who use ghost for mass deployment of NT and
>> other DOS family systems swear by it and tell me that they haven't
>> found any application "magic" numbers it couldn't handle (or that the
>> ghost development team couldn't make handle within a few days of
>> reporting a problem).
>>
>> MonMotha> However, on UNIX, I can't think of anything a specialized
>> MonMotha> program would offer over dd and netcat :)
>>
>> Maybe it just offers a degree of branding "security" for the novice
>> user and perhaps a little cleverness at figuring out things like the
>> blocksizes.
>>
>>                         Bruce
>>
>>  
>>
> Perhaps my understanding of these tools is inaccurate, but I thought 
> that nothing Open Source came close to the capabilities of tools like 
> Ghost.  For example, we have nothing like the multicasting features. 
> None of our tools are nearly as polished either.
>
>
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