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More Migration Concerns — Day 8© Copyright Darrell Anderson. What seems obvious to me is migrating cold turkey is out of the question. I am not a computer hobbyist who can blow away my Windows partitions and not look back. Too much data. Too much stability in what I currently use. I also am too meticulous in how I want my system to function — I’ve been tweaking my NT4 system for years and such habits are difficult to break. That latter observation means I will need to spend time tinkering and customizing my GNU/Linux system to suit my needs and vision of how my computer should serve me as a tool. As I mentioned previously, my computer tasks divide into several primary areas:
There are many secondary tasks and tools involved too, but those four areas concern me the most. I have only a handful of Excel spreadsheets to convert. I do not use presentation software (although I probably should learn!). I use an old version of Visio (version 4) for my limited drawing needs. Those Visio drawings won’t convert to anything in GNU/Linux, but I could tolerate booting to Windows to maintain those drawings if I have to learn another drawing package. I have dozens of small applets and utility programs installed and converting those types of tools will take time but is less critical to the big picture. I know that the last bastion will be moving away from Word 97. Despite understanding the psychology, I will resist that particular aspect of my migration. No, I am not giving up before I try, I am being realistic. Time is a scarce resource, a precious commodity. I know of people still using WordPerfect for DOS because they refuse to consume valuable time retraining themselves. I know one individual who still uses a Commodore 64 for only one computer task — to maintain his simple bookkeeping. Similarly, I do not have the time right now to sever my relationship with Word. Recently I installed OpenOffice 1.1.3 to my Windows system, but first attempts at importing Word 97 files was dismal. Understand that I am heavy into using various features of Word. Templates, styles, and structured documents are important to me. Converting to OpenOffice means being able to work productively with that same approach, and that necessarily means investing much time to master similar and equivalent features in OpenOffice. Time, time, time! The remainder of my migration seems more doable — at least superficially. Doable, but horrendously time consuming. Although I enjoy tinkering with computers and I am experienced at doing so, I am no longer a computer hobbyist. Some hobbyists might appreciate how fine-tuned my system has evolved over the years, but not understand how migrating might seem a daunting proposition. Almost every little tweak plays a role in my computer life. For example, my system depends heavily upon numerous batch files I have written through the years. Of utmost importance is a collection of batch files I wrote to backup and restore my hard drive. I use a hard drive bay and multiple spare hard drives to backup my system. I perform a full backup about every two weeks and numerous differential backups in between. I routinely take snapshots of my registry and important Word files that change daily. I can restore a corrupted registry in three minutes and my entire system in about an hour. Indeed, recently I opened a Word file intending to use that file as a basis for a new file. I absent-mindedly forgot to immediately perform a Save As. About an hour later I thought I was hosed and had lost my original document. Not really. Thanks to my real-time background backup scripts, I was able to restore the original file and keep my new file. Yet, every one of those batch files must be converted to the bash scripting language. Bash is far more powerful than anemic DOS commands, but I am ignorant of programming with bash. My system is useless if I lose my data and this is a point some hobbyists might fail to appreciate. Unlike a hobbyist, I cannot merely wipe my partitions and start over! Finis. |
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