Semsem, on Feb 7 2010, 09:52 AM, said:
Now, I want to know why you WANT Vista!!
In fact I do not *want* Vista, or any other Windows version for that matter. But since I (without having a choice) paid for the license I might as well have a real installation disk, just to add to my collection
In some cases it *might* be useful to have such disk, even though at the moment I can't really think of any! And first of all it's just out of curiosity, to see if and how it can be done.
To be honest I would expect a more straightforward way, if not some official help from MS, to perform this "basic" operation. The reason behind such a way not being straightforward might well be an attempt to discourage installation on multiple computer, or maybe just the fact that most people ultimately don't care whether they have a real installation disk or just a restore disk. Both will get the job done when it comes to reinstalling your OS.
I have been using Linux based (or I should say GNU/Linux) operating systems for some time now. I wouldn't say they are absolutely better than Windows, but sure they are in many ways. One of things I appreciate most is the ability of understanding what's really going on behind the doors and therefore being able to understand more about computers in general. Another noticeable difference, and this goes back to the topic of this thread, is the ability of customizing nearly everything, not necessarily resorting to advanced programming skills in order to do so. To the specific case, any Linux OS will make your life very easy when it comes to creating a bootable disk from which you can run the operating system directly. In fact most Linux distributions comes in a bootable disk (or live disk) format.
It is not all nice and sweet, in some cases half finished applications or partially compatible drivers will get you think that Windows after all was not such a bad place. Your sound may or may not work and so your wi-fi card. But then you come to think of how much additional (or 3rd party) software you need to get in order to do even something as basic as opening a pdf file when you are running Windows. Or the fact that you have to remember the make of your sound/display/wifi card in order to get proper drivers every time you need them. And ultimately your system will still crash and it will still not work 100% fine and in any case not for too long. While things might not work 100% on a Linux system either you can be pretty confident that a fresh install of any distributions will provide you with everything you need for a basic computing experience. You can open a pdf file, edit a picture, work on a spreadsheet, browse safely and have pleasing graphical visual effects pretty much out of the box. Over time you will learn which applications work and which ones do not, and, just like for Windows, you will have your own set of tools that you can use to get the job done. Not to mentions the ability to manage your hard disk partitioning scheme, which is in my opinion unparalleled on Linux systems. There is not need to install (often commercial) 3rd party software, the basic partitioning tools which are included in most Linux distros will let you quickly get a hang of your hard drive, including providing other operating systems with their own filesystems and booting preferences.
I am aware this thread went a bit off topic, but I believe this is a good example to illustrate some of the advantages of using GNU/Linux operating systems over Windows. Linux is not just free (meaning you don't need to pay for it) and thus inherently free of license key issues. It is also free in the way you can play with it, tweak it to suit your needs and get basic things solved the way they should. With a simple straightforward solution.
, Please 
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