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[Choop]

Okay. My local-brand box's win2k installation finally died on me, so I thought I'd try to revive the system with a FOSS OS. Wisely in the past, I used Fat32 to format my drives, scoffing at the closed-to-everybody-but-Microsoft NTFS.

Using the work laptop, I burnt a quick LiveCD of Knoppix, with which I booted the dead box and backed up my data files to CD-R. I then proceeded to burn an installer of Kubuntu (it's just Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome), which didn't work. Couldn't, wouldn't work. At all. Never got through the installer.

Realizing that Kubuntu perhaps wasn't mature enough to use, I figured Mandrake would be a good choice. They've changed their name (surprisingly) to Mandriva (huh?) and the installer is 3 CDs long, as my dead box has no DVD drive. Downloaded ISOs, burnt to CD, and began the install.

FIVE TIMES I had to try the install. FOUR TIMES it hung before it finished. Now, I've finally gotten an "Install Successful!" message, and after a reboot, a login prompt.

Here's the thing. On install try 4, I specified a username. I was never, ever asked for a password.

Is it me, or does this make absolutely no sense whatsoever? Is there a default password for the first login? How the hell can I get into this new system?

Somebody help me, and quick, so I can save $1500 by NOT going out and buying a Mac Mini + 19" Apple Cinema Display.

[Va]

There is definitely something wrong with your install.  The fact that you had trouble installing from two different distros makes me wonder if you have a hardware problem.  Perhaps your hard disk is going bad.

[Choop]

Well, fuck it then, I'll just go buy the Mac. I am so sick of dying and/or non-interoperable hardware and faulty vendor-supplied/created software I don't care any damned more.

Sorry about the prior posts's rant. I'm just sick of computer-caused headaches.

For curiosity's sake, how does a hard disk die? What makes it ditch reliability? My prior PC died of age (4 years, though I could get it and this desktop up and running for less than the price of a Mac), and hard disk failure was the diagnosis. This hard disk is under a year old- approaching, but under.

What's the problem?

[jough]

Well, hard drives spin, the arm has to move back and forth, and they're really only made to work for so many hours.

I've read that the fault tolerance for an iPod hard drive is ten hours of use.  Now, keep in mind that due to the buffer the hard drive is only read for about a second or two every ten to twenty minutes of play - so the drive could last for YEARS if you didn't use it that much.  And they're only made to be guaranteed to work for ten hours of use - the actual use may be much more.

But if you mostly use it to transfer files you may find that the drive dies very quickly.

Do you jostle your drive around a lot?  Do you have pets?  Pets and dust are killers of hard drives.

I've seen people keep their PCs on the floor, which is about the worst place for them, and then they're confused when the PC dies after a year.  When I open up some of these things it's amazing just HOW MUCH dust and pet hair can get clogged up in there.  Dust and pet hair will kill fans and processors too.

[arkabee]

What's the problem?

entropy.

1- you know that cliche "they don't make them like they used to"?  you know why it's a cliche?  because it's true.

computers are now personal electronics devices, and as such are designed and developed and produced with the same amount of planning and care as the dvd player designed to last 6 months past its warranty (+/-5 months).

why would an engineer put electronic temperature controls on a cooktop range?  they wouldn't.  because they die when used with parts designed to die, and they aren't easliy replaceable by the lay person.  which means instead of fixing it you buy another one.

anything with moving parts is going to wear out eventually.  hell, wire will wear out simply from use as a transporter of electrons.  but that takes too long, you will be dead.  so, put in a capacitor desgined to poop itself just in time for the next model to be released and be bought.

also, happily, at some point in the murky future there will likely be a generation of hard drives that all die at the same time because the magnetics are way too unstable for long term storage, but the consumer demand push for bigger, cheaper led the companies (or did the companies lead the consumer demand... [dum, dum, duh...]?) to cross the threshold where in space and magnetic physics was understood in its long term effects.

a shorter answer:

remember how much you paid for a 40MB scsi hard drive in 1993?

is it still working?

how much did you pay for your 40GB ata100 hd in 2003?

is it still working?