The Modernization of Emacs: terminology buffer and keybinding

[Twisted]

On Jun 26, 2:01 am, Adriano Varoli Piazza <mora... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Twisted wrote:
> > With the latest stuff like Ubuntu, you're pretty much right ... until
> > something goes wrong. Windows has .
> [...]
> > Linux has ... the
> > command line, or worse a GRUB or fsck prompt at startup. No access to
> > accessible, easy to browse help right when you need it most.
>
> I suppose you never used Ubuntu's disc for anything but installing or
> reformatting either, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing that
> can be done with it. You can boot with it, have a working net
> connection (or create it) and solve many problems in the comfort of
> the full GUI, and with all the help available from the web.

Ah, if you have a live CD this might indeed be possible. If you can
get it to mount your usual hdd partitions to go sniffing around the
configuration files that might be gummed up, and if doing this isn't
insanely complicated anyway.

A Windows restore CD or recovery partition doesn't do anything of the
sort, although a genuine install CD has a repair function, which can
among other things fix problems with the MBR and reinstall key Windoze
components on the hdd. If you can boot to safe mode you can fix most
things with System Restore, which simply lets you roll back the
configuration to before that ill-advised install, uninstall, driver
update, or whatever it was that hosed things. I've had to resort to it
exactly twice; once when firewall software b0rked the system on
install and put it in infinite-reboot mode (safe mode halted the loop)
and once when nVidia released some driver update that hosed the 3D
accelerator and screwed up the available graphics modes. System
Restore works by quietly backing up key files (DLLs, config files, and
suchlike) and registry trees when an installer is run and under some
other circumstances, including a manual instruction to create a save
point, which you can use before you try anything dodgy so you can roll
back to right before the attempt if it goes wrong. Ordinary document
files and the like aren't backed up or anything by this, however. If
they get hosed, they get hosed, although System Restore won't damage
them any more than it will back them up.

I've managed to fix driver and networking problems a few times, and
sometimes on someone else's computer, with and without system restore.
Most of the times if I've seen any flavor of unix misbehaving, it's
been find a bigger geek or resort to beads and rattles; it's been far
from obvious what the problem was from the error messages, let alone
what the fix was, and often the problem precluded access to any useful
tools or documentation simultaneously. A live CD might make that less
of an issue, though it would still be a pain if you had to keep using
it as a workaround for days while waiting for a mailing list or usenet
response explaining what the f*#! "bad zixflob in fuzzwangle.rc,
aborting" meant and how to fix it, especially as a system-wide search
didn't turn up any files named "fuzzwangle.rc" -- or whatever the
problem was. :)

[Insulting insinuation snipped]

Oh, sod off.