[nzlug] Migrating desktop

[Martin Bähr]

On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 07:38:02PM +1200, Mark Foster wrote:
> In my limited experience, people citing the migration of 'settings' as a 
> reason not to move, are falling into the 'can't be bothered' category... 
> settings tend to be something you can restore in a few minutes and 

i disagree.
restoring settings is most definetly NOT something to be restored in a
matter of minutes.

when i do a fresh install somewhere, it sometimes takes weeks or even
months to go through the tweaks that i had done previously.

the reason for that is that i don't bother to document every change that
i make to the defaults, so i tend to forget and have to research them
again every time. (i am getting better with that, making config backups
of my homedir, etc) 

also, every setting needs to be checked if it is still relevant, as the
defaults tend to change, or new features make it obsolete. 

i am to busy trying to get work done, i can't afford the downtime of
reconfiguring things.

and i am here only talking about linux upgrades/installs, i don't even
want to think about how much worse a windows/linux migration would be.

> something which are application-specific anyway...

that only makes it worse, as it means that for all new application i need 
to first learn which settings need changing and how they are changed.

> (or have I missed a point somewhere?)

you are missing the fear of the unknown, the fear of loss of
productivity by having to relearn and change your habits.

it is what keeps me from trying out alternatives to applications that i
am using. i usually don't look at something new until the pain to work
with some application is large enough that i desperately need a
replacement.

i suspect this is similar for many people who are not using the computer
for fun and to explore and learn new things about it.

greetings, martin.
-- 
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Martin Bähr       http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/