I propose here my four commandments of PORTABILITY:
1.- System shall be in an other partition than data, thus making data to be independent of the OS: In practice this means to make a partition for the OS and another for data or at least to have the data in a pendrive in a safe place far away where OS is working. Implications: You may transPORT data to another computer in an easy way. You can recover your OS with Ghost or Partimage, without touching or deleting a single data of yours. Data must be independent of data itself: It is good idea to have a mirror of all your important data included in your hard drive to an external drive. In case os crash you can always recover your data from the mirror.
2.- Data shall be independent of the application that has produced them: Data must be easily exPORTED or imPORTED between programs and also between OSs. In this way you may edit a document at the office with MSWindows and reopen it after with Linux or viceversa.
3.- Programs shall be independent of the OS: This is the main approach of this site (programs that can be run in any computer, PORTED in a pendrive or other PORTABLE mean). The best of the best are programs that can run in a PORTABLE manner under emulation in other OSs (Example: Programs for M$ run in Linux with Wine).
4.- Software shall be independent of the computer: The total PORTABILITY is reached when you may run your OS in any computer or in the limit without any hard disk. This is the case of a live Linux or the UBCD4Win.
Four commandments are summarized in just one: PORTABILITY is equal to INDEPENDENCE.
Some discipline must be put at work and the eyes must be wide open to maintain the four independence rules, but it worths the while: Making so I have never lost any important data. Ideal case (In fact a very real case): Imagine a computer that run a Live Linux, that has no hard drive, and that has a pendrive as a data stock. The Live Linux runs booting from the USB pendrive itself. All data saved in PORTABLE formats. This is a real PORTABLE (and could be very cheap) computer.
*JT.
The four commandments
-
teobromina
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
- Location: Spain
Re: ...
Thank younycjv321 wrote:hmmm nice
/home ftw
you linux freak! nice doc
well hmmmm I think ultimate portability is reached when one uses a laptop.... I dont think we should focus on portabity at the home rather then out in the real world....
( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ftw )
A laptop is portable by hardware design (you port all, computer along with software and data). But does not solve the real portability between different computers or OSs. Nor the best relation between hard and soft...
My commandments are a way to include portability in computing by method, no matter what computer you use, no matther what soft you use...
*JT.
-
teobromina
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
- Location: Spain
Nice to hear again from you, nycjv321.
Perhaps it seems that I am focusing portability only at home? Not at all. I am dealing with total portability in any circumstance:
-I always have my data apart from the system, mirrored in different places;
-the format of my data is always portable;
-they (data) are produced with portable programs;
-and when I can, I run my (or other) computer without any hard drive dependence.
If the above doesnt answer your comment, perhaps I didnt understand what you mean. Could you please to extend a little more your point of view?
*JT.
Perhaps it seems that I am focusing portability only at home? Not at all. I am dealing with total portability in any circumstance:
-I always have my data apart from the system, mirrored in different places;
-the format of my data is always portable;
-they (data) are produced with portable programs;
-and when I can, I run my (or other) computer without any hard drive dependence.
If the above doesnt answer your comment, perhaps I didnt understand what you mean. Could you please to extend a little more your point of view?
*JT.
-
Andrew Lee
- Posts: 3083
- Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:19 am
- Contact:
... until you have to change to a new laptop.well hmmmm I think ultimate portability is reached when one uses a laptop.... I dont think we should focus on portabity at the home rather then out in the real world
I recently had to change to a new laptop at work, and I spent the ENTIRE FRIGGING DAY updating WinXP and installing certain apps that cannot be portablized eg. Microsoft Office, Visual Studio etc.
When it comes to the personal apps that I use (eg. Firefox, Thunderbird, XnView etc.), all I had to do was plug in my USB HDD! Well, I had to resize the app windows due to screen resolution changes, but that was pretty much it. I was up and running in no time.
Data portability is also important when you have to access them on multiple devices. Synchronization is at best a crude workaround, especially when there are more than two devices involved (eg. cell phone, PDA, laptop, home PC). For me, I am still waiting for the day when all my devices can access data (eg. address book, calendar) wirelessly from a small memory gadget that I carry around. No need for synchronization, no need for format import/export...
-
teobromina
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
- Location: Spain
USB Drive = Score: 3 of 4
Dear Andrew: I totally agree with you with regard to the quote above.Andrew Lee wrote: ... Data portability is also important when you have to access them on multiple devices. Synchronization is at best a crude workaround, especially when there are more than two devices involved (eg. cell phone, PDA, laptop, home PC). For me, I am still waiting for the day when all my devices can access data (eg. address book, calendar) wirelessly from a small memory gadget that I carry around. No need for synchronization, no need for format import/export...
To bring our portable apps in a USB pendrive, is in practice 3/4 of my 4 commandments. But to reach the perfection, that is like you say, "ll my devices can access data (eg. address book, calendar) wirelessly from a small memory gadget that I carry around. No need for synchronization, no need for format import/export...", the only thing we would still need is that the mobile telephones were able to treat USB pendrives as the PC do: Like a peripheric of their own. If we could plug our pendrive to the mobile, and reach our portable data, directly for the schedule and agenda of the mobile, total portability would be solved. But the industry of mobiles has evolved in parallel to the industry of PDAs, considering the mobile not as a PC but as a peripheric...
May be we can have in the future USB pendrives with a sort of bluetooth 
able to connect to PCs and to mobiles indistictly...More comments are welcomed.
Regards.
*JT.
-
teobromina
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
- Location: Spain
Slax passed my test
Yesterday I downloaded the just released v6 of Slax Linux
http://www.slax.org/
Remember my posts on Portable programs for Windows that run under emulation.
http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... um.php?f=7
Most of them were based on Slax, enabled with Wine -Windows Emulator-.
Now I am writting in a Slax session, running after having booted from a USB pendrive.
Version 6 has been released in two flawors, CDRom and USB pendrive.
http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php
The later can be made bootable from Windows, in a non destructive process (in fact the files to boot the OS were there before to run the script that makes bootable the pendrive).
In five minutes you get your OS bootable from the USB pendrive where you bring all your portable apps and data. If you see the links section in my page, you will find a selection of portable programs that can run in Linux using Wine.
http://www.telefonica.net/web2/ttk/lnk.htm
I have used a Wine module to enable Slax to run Wine. It is usual to find those extension modules in the page of Slax.
http://www.slax.org/modules.php
Since the OS is launched from a writtable mean it will keep my settings and files in Linux too. Since it is a pendrive, it is faster than booting from a CDRom. The filesystem of my pendrive is FAT32, so it does not needs any particular filesystem. Therefore everything is done in order to have a real sensation of portability. Just a pendrive and you do not need more...
Thaks to this sort of solutions it could be possible to fulfill the four commandments (Data apart -distinguible- from the OS, data not dependant of any particular program, program not dependant of any OSs and software not dependant of any particular computer).
*JT.
http://www.slax.org/
Remember my posts on Portable programs for Windows that run under emulation.
http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... um.php?f=7
Most of them were based on Slax, enabled with Wine -Windows Emulator-.
Now I am writting in a Slax session, running after having booted from a USB pendrive.
Version 6 has been released in two flawors, CDRom and USB pendrive.
http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php
The later can be made bootable from Windows, in a non destructive process (in fact the files to boot the OS were there before to run the script that makes bootable the pendrive).
In five minutes you get your OS bootable from the USB pendrive where you bring all your portable apps and data. If you see the links section in my page, you will find a selection of portable programs that can run in Linux using Wine.
http://www.telefonica.net/web2/ttk/lnk.htm
I have used a Wine module to enable Slax to run Wine. It is usual to find those extension modules in the page of Slax.
http://www.slax.org/modules.php
Since the OS is launched from a writtable mean it will keep my settings and files in Linux too. Since it is a pendrive, it is faster than booting from a CDRom. The filesystem of my pendrive is FAT32, so it does not needs any particular filesystem. Therefore everything is done in order to have a real sensation of portability. Just a pendrive and you do not need more...
Thaks to this sort of solutions it could be possible to fulfill the four commandments (Data apart -distinguible- from the OS, data not dependant of any particular program, program not dependant of any OSs and software not dependant of any particular computer).
*JT.
-
teobromina
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:12 pm
- Location: Spain
And now, the fifth
My friend txusbeck says that there has to be proclamed another fifth commandment:
1.- System shall be in an other partition than data, thus making data to be independent of the OS.
2.- Data shall be independent of the application that has produced them. Data must be easily exPORTED or imPORTED between programs.
3.- Programs shall be independent of the OS. PORTED in a pendrive or other PORTABLE mean.
4.- Software shall be independent of the computer. You may run your OS any hard disk.
and now:
5.- Data must be on a remote place, for instance the web. In this way data can be shared by some one else.
*JT.
1.- System shall be in an other partition than data, thus making data to be independent of the OS.
2.- Data shall be independent of the application that has produced them. Data must be easily exPORTED or imPORTED between programs.
3.- Programs shall be independent of the OS. PORTED in a pendrive or other PORTABLE mean.
4.- Software shall be independent of the computer. You may run your OS any hard disk.
and now:
5.- Data must be on a remote place, for instance the web. In this way data can be shared by some one else.
*JT.