Drastic Action

I've been fighting with sbackup again!

I spent a large part of yesterday trying to get sbackup to work on my laptop and failed! However, there are a couple of good things to come out of my struggle:

• It seems that my test machine is more important to me than I'd realized and is now worthy of being backed up.
• Finally, I have been forced to evaluate my backup policy for all of my machines.
• My DELL Inspiron 1501 runs Ubuntu 10.04 LTS!

That's right, my little DELL (a machine that could barely cope with Microsoft's Vista OS) runs Lucid Lynx. Moreover, it doesn't just run 10.04: it copes admirably with the demands of Compiz, AWN, and visual effects! Now there's a revelation.

However, if I'm honest, my discovery was more desperation than investigation. I had tried manfully to get sbackup to connect to my network drive and even tried mounting the drive permanently but the application simply wouldn't connect for incremental backups using Karmic. So, I hit the update button.

I fully expected to be restoring Karmic this morning, but the DELL has demonstrated once again that I have underestimated its capabilities and, more importantly, overestimated the demands of Ubuntu. Now, not only is the machine running Compiz, AWN and visual effects, it is also backing up to my network drive and emailing me a report on completion: all with free software that is freely available!

"Ubuntu still is and always will be free to use, share and develop. We hope it will bring a touch of light to your computing – and we hope that you'll join us in helping to build the next version too."
Source: Ubuntu.com About Ubuntu

Sometimes I have to remind myself that Canonical provides Ubuntu to the world for free and that this operating system is not just comparable to the commercial alternatives but is, in many ways, superior!

Sources & References:
Ubuntu.com About Ubuntu