[Gllug] Microsoft admit the existence of Linux!

[Ian Northeast]

Christopher Hunter wrote:
> This page gave me a chuckle or two:
> 
> http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;314458&spid=1173&sid=324
> 
> It actually recommends booting into Linux to remove it!

Well this would be because of:

"There are other utilities that work just as well, such as Fdisk from 
MS-DOS 5.0 and later"

Which is a blatant lie. There is a well known problem with MS's fdisk in 
that it will refuse to remove "non-DOS" partitions from within the 
extended partition, on the grounds that the extended partition contains 
no partitions, and then refuse to delete the extended partition because 
it isn't empty.

On a (vaguely) related note, another thing gave me a bit of a laugh 
recently. Once upon a very long time ago, I used to install a very 
temporary copy of Windows if I was faced with some dodgy hardware I 
couldn't identify, as it was better than Linux at hardware detection, 
note down what the hardware was and then blow it away.

My lodger was just given a laptop by his sister - I can see why. It's a 
Dell which are mostly OK but this is one of the ultra-thin jobs from 
about 4 years ago and appears to contain no hardware which isn't dodgy 
(apart, perhaps, from the Pooh Bear stickers she has decorated it with). 
She had Windows XP on it and it ran like a dog with no legs. Not 
surprising with 64MB. So he wanted to put 98 on it, and failed (end user 
isntallable OS eh?). I offered to do him a nice Debian install with a 
lightweight WM but he insisted on 98. So to identify the hardware, I 
booted a Knoppix CD, which got the whole lot straight off and everything 
worked. I noted down what it all was, and then went into the long trawl 
for the Win98 drivers for it.

Got it all working and he broke it 2 weeks later:)

Regards, Ian

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