(Personal, Vanity) Looking for A Good Penguin

self ^ | 5-23-2009 | grey_whiskers

[grey_whiskers]

This is a personal request, not an article.

I'm looking for thoughts by FReepers who know what the hell they're talking about, not flamewars.

I have a Mac (love it) and a Windows (XP, whatever the latest service pack is).

Have the following questions.

1) I want to do backups of the Mac. What is a good website or source (explicit page reference!) to the Time Machine utility?

1a) Where can I find the logfile to see who is attempting to access my Mac? (The PC has several anti-virus products and firewalls on it already.)

2) I want to do backups of the PC, as it is getting old. I particularly want to save the Bookmarks on the browsers, and a bunch of old writing. But while I'm at it, it'd be just as well to capture an image of the current OS and configuration, in addition to the user files -- such that I could load it onto another PC if this one croaks.

What is the best tool to do this, or is even the question clueless ("not even wrong").

3) Finally, I want to get a small PC and load some Linux distribution or other onto it from scratch.

Looking for a machine to do light shell scripting on, possible FReeping, some writing. Needn't be "Word" compatible but should have ordinary word processing capabilities and have drivers for HP Officejet 4100 printer.

Any suggestion for best "out of the box" Linux, and/or manuals to walk through the installation?

Further guidance: as anyone can tell from my posting history, I FReep 26 hours a day. Therefore the Linux should be something I can install "in fits and starts" without needing any contiguous, user-attended, 8-hour blocks of time.

Thanks in advance for your guidance and understanding towards a befuddled newbie.

[grey_whiskers]

Random literary thought of the day, just to cross your wires.

Boccacio is Chaucer on steroids.

Rabelais is Boccacio on Everclear and Peyote.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, dudes.

If you would be so kind...?

I have noted you tend to be more knowledgable and more helpful than some others...

Also, I will not be able to respond for some hours: have to get the air conditioning leak in the car repaired.

But I will be reading and trying to learn when I get back.

Thanks very much for your kindness.

Cheers!

[WarriorPoet]

I use Ubuntu 9.4. It worked right out of the box (actually downloaded an iso off the net and installed it from cd), self-detected my hardware and automatically installed all the drivers. No issues, no problems, no hassle. I’ve had it up and running 24/7 for the past several weeks and no hiccups at all.

[frankenMonkey]

If you want to backup the Mac, Time Machine is built into the OS. I use it with an external disk. Go to Help in the Finder upper menu bar, type in Time Machine for details.

[Tax-chick]

This is Fluffy, Destroyer of Trolls. Please give him a fishy.

[grey_whiskers]

Off to the car-repair place now.

Cheers!

[paulycy]

Boccacio is Chaucer on steroids.

Rabelais is Boccacio on Everclear and Peyote.

Brahms has the competency of Beethoven without the spark of genius.

Wynton Marsalis is no Miles Davis. He's not even Fats Navarro.

[joseph20]

As far as linux goes, I recommend Fedora

[cowboyway]

What is a good website or source

Carbonite

some writing. Needn't be "Word" compatible but should have ordinary word processing capabilities

Neo Office. It's free.

[knarf]

"Boccacio is Chaucer on steroids. Rabelais is Boccacio on Everclear and Peyote."

Do you sleep?

[Lucretia Borgia]

3. Ubuntu. It's free, works well, and is so easy to install even my kid was able to do it.

[Tax-chick]

Good luck!

[Lucretia Borgia]

> Needn't be "Word" compatible but should have ordinary word processing capabilities...

I use OpenOffice for everything. If there are any incompatibilities with Microsoft Office, I haven't found them yet, and I use it six hours a day for writing and spreadsheet work. It's free, too.

And come to think of it, bundled right into Ubuntu.

[dfwgator]

[preciousbabies]

hee hee

[Tax-chick]

Isn’t he the cutest thing?

[socialismisinsidious]

Crosby or Malkin....take your pick.

Actually they are both GREAT penguins. GO PENS!

[savedbygrace]

Rather than Time Machine, I use SuperDuper.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

The free version disallows incremental backups, so I recommend paying the $27.95 and gaining that feature and others.

Well worth $27.95 without any of the problems that have been reported WRT Time Machine.

[fremont_steve]

Kubuntu - a Ubuntu relative with KDE which is a bit more easy to use (this is personal opinion). www.kubuntu.org

OpenSuse - www.opensuse.org - I use this one personally all day long. I use it for work!

Mandriva - a long time favorite of mine BEFORE I switched over to OpenSuse. Perhaps more colorful than OpenSuse.

You won’t go wrong with any of the above. (This from a 17 year user of Linux ;-)

[savedbygrace]

Forgot to add: SuperDuper will make the clone of your boot volume bootable, of course.

So, if the drive with your boot volume ever goes paws up, you’re back in business in less than a minute.