[thelist] Your favourite site backup utility?

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Mon Nov 14 13:46:13 CST 2005


On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 19:30 +0000, Kasimir K wrote:
> > On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 13:08 -0500, Frank wrote:
> >> My server is linux, my backup machine is PC.
> 
> Shawn K. Quinn scribeva in 2005-11-14 18:21:
> > First... GNU/Linux, you mean?
> > 
> > Second, PC running what OS? PC just means what kind of hardware it is.
> 
> Shawn, as it seems you have missed it:
> 
> 1. when people speak about "linux" they DO refer to "GNU/Linux" - if 
> somebody is using different kind of "linux", they will tell it.

Where I come from, Linux refers to just a kernel. There are many systems
which boot a Linux kernel that don't boot into any variant of GNU, and
these illustrate why it is a bad idea to use one name to mean another.

> 2. when people speak about "PC", they DO refer to Windows - if somebody 
> uses "PC" to describe a personal computer running something else than 
> Windows, they will tell it.

Where I come from, PC means PC (as in "personal computer" or the
hardware) and Windows refers to Microsoft's operating system.

My PC runs GNU/Linux and I have another PC here running OpenBSD. In
fact, Windows runs on devices besides PCs.

> It is fine and good to be precise. But it's even finer to forgive 
> inaccurate names for operating systems and concentrate on the real 
> question at hand.

Forgiving is one thing; not having enough information to answer the
question is another.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>




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