Mint Saves the Day: Linux vs. Windows

I haven't written anything for a while.  I think I have missed a few Fedora releases since my last post. Currently, I am running Fedora 20 64 bit with KDE.  I am not against other distributions and actually I recently used Linux Mint to rescue data on one of my home computers.

The computer was actually my son's box.  He was running W7 at the time.  His main hard-drive developed a glitch and became unreadable.  I took an extra SATA drive and loaded Mint.  I was able to rescue his critical data to a back-up drive.  He ran Mint for a few weeks until he could purchase a new and larger drive.  After he installed W7 on the new drive, I transferred is data to the new drive.  And since he is a W7 guy, Mint went back on the shelf awaiting another opportunity to save the day.

I tried to install Fedora to his computer but it didn't take.  Mint had no problem installing and reading the old drives.  I was actually surprised. And, he was actually able to continue with his video editing on Mint while waiting for his new drive.  Mint truly saved the day.

This brings up topic.  Why can Linux read drives that Windows rejects?  Since I am not a hacker (or a cracker) I have no idea how to answer that.  What I do know is if a NTFS partition becomes unreadable, Linux may be able to read and recover the data.

Fedora and Mac

So, we have PC, Mac and Linux.  Right?  Nope.  We have PC's and Mac, and Linux can be on both.  Yes, tis true.  Both can have the best OS in the world (IMHO).  With a PC, just slide the ISO disk in and reboot.  Installation is as easy as pushing the icon on the desktop.

For Mac, the following is an example of how to install Fedora on a later Mac.  Not sure if this works for PPC, but we'll address that later.  Anyways:

"The easiest way is to install "Refit" in your macbook leopard. "Refit" is like a bootloader and it shows a menu which allows any bootable CD or DVD to boot when you hit the option key after system power on. After you get past this menu its a normal Fedora [or Linux] installation, nothing new. There is a disk utility to shrink the volume of the hard disk for mac and thereafter you can use it format and install any OS you want. I am not sure whether you can format the entire hard disk and remove the macintosh OS ."

(This was quoted from the Fedora Forum.   It is an example of one of many threads on the forum suggesting the use of Refit)

So, basically, for all us newbees out here in the world of end users, Refit helps the Mac set up a boot manager so the Mac can dual boot the Mac OS and Linux as well as Window's 7 I believe.

That's all I know.  If you have used Refit on your own Mac,  I would be totally interested in your feedback.   Macintosh Computers are awesome machines.  Why not be able to load the OS of your choice on them as well.