Archive for December, 2011
Making the Ultimate All-In-One Installation Flash Drive
Super Users often find ourselves installing operating systems. Whether you run your own computer shop, manage an army of thousands of corporate workstations, or are just the tech-savvy friend everyone you know calls for help, you’ve probably had to install various flavors of Windows over and over again. Most of us have also spent a fair amount of time installing different Linux distros, running data recovery disks, and using various live CDs.
The problem that presents itself is managing all of the required disks. There are at least 6 common flavors of Windows 7 alone (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate for both x86 and x64, plus Enterprise for you corporate types). Add in various distros of Linux and you start to see why some computer techs carry around whole folders of CDs.
I’ve been aware of Pendrive Linux for a while, which lets you setup a flash drive with multiboot Linux software, and can add a single Windows installation. But what if you wanted to have a single flash drive with all versions of Windows 7, as well as all the standard Linux boot disks? It took some work, but I decided to do this and the final result is impressive.
WWWhat’s in a Name?
A recent question asked:
“What does wwws mean? Is it to do with Security?“
I’ve seen a couple of sites that use wwws in their domain, for example: wwws.mint.com and wwws.whitehouse.gov. I’m sure it has something to do with an extra layer of security. What does it mean and what is it used for? Why do only a handful of sites use it?
Some Updates to the FAQ
The next time you’re taking a look at our Frequently Asked Questions list, you may notice some small changes:
A few months ago, we had some discussion on meta about whether home networking questions were within the scope of Super User. The community proposed via Super User Meta that we update the FAQ to more directly represent that home networking questions are allowed on Super User, and always have been – it just hadn’t been specifically mentioned in the FAQ.
In the course of this discussion, it was also agreed that we should include a statement to the effect of questions dealing with corporate networks and support being off-topic, as they are more appropriate for Server Fault.
After some editing and discussion, the following changes were decided upon:
- Adding to the “If you have a question about” section: personal and home computer networking
- Adding to the “question is not about” section: issues specific to corporate IT support and networks
Please note that these changes to the FAQ do not represent a change in policy for Super User — questions which were previously on-topic are still on-topic. We just changed the language to make the site’s policies more explicit.
Several people have already asked about the distinction of professional IT support and corporate networking. Increasingly, the line between “business” and “consumer” computers is blurring. Indeed, the definition of what constitutes a computer is itself a topic of debate.
To clarify: any question where the answer would be essentially the same whether you asked it about your workplace computer or home computer is perfectly valid on Super User. Data recovery, installing operating systems, connecting between computers, and so forth are all still welcome. The types of IT questions we discourage are things like volume licensing, active directory, business-grade routers, mass image deployment, and other issues which are irrelevant to non-corporate users. These are the sorts of thing we mean by “issues specific to corporate IT support”.
If you have any further questions, feel free to leave them in the comments on this post, and the Super User moderation team will respond to your queries. You can also reach us in the Ask a Moderator Chat Room.