[conspire] Utility to rescue formatted EXT3 partition & distribution, choice?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Daniel Gimpelevich (daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us):

> True, but orthogonal.

Is it?  

In part, I was sneaking in a related point, that it's counterproductive
to start with the kitchen sink, in Debian, and should be regarded as
deprecated -- unlike the case with many other distributions, on which
people cultivate that very habit after learning the hard way (on those 
other distros) that, if you try to start small and build up as needed,
you'll come to regret it.

I suffered that very misconception, when I first attempted to do a
Debian 2.1 "slink" installation, while still accustomed to the Scarlet
Chapeau way of doing things.  I immediately bogged down in dselect, and
didn't fight my way out for a couple of days of intermittantly trying.

So, years later, I can't help noticing that the people who get into
trouble during Debian installations, and who complain about long
package download and installation times at the end of the CD install, 
tend to be indulging _exactly_ those habits.  Whereas, people who
deliberately start with the minimal system that meets their needs, and
then apt-get (or alternative) -fetch additions as required, have no such
problems and find broadband or (in a pinch) 33.6 kbps dialup perfectly 
fine.

On a related note, I ended up burning the multi-cd (i386, x86_64, PPC)
netinst of "etch" RC2, and then the XFCE-flavour Disk 1 full-CD images
for i386 and x86_64.  I'm undecided whether it's worthwhile downloading
the default GNOME Disk 1 or optional KDE Disk 1 for any architecture.
(If anyone has strong preferences, please speak up.)

> Mmmm. This was just too much to resist. Here's the least of what I could
> come up with:
> 
> http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xO4vcCjJYQgJ:vancouver.metblogs.com/archives/2007/01/because_my_hair_will_never_be.phtml+beekeeping+edgar-allan-poe&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Nicely demonstrating the difference between reference and inclusion.  ;->