Mission Critical

An interesting quote from an article found at linux-watch.com, reporting the events at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit held a few weeks ago.

"The bottom line: Linux is continuing to become the life's blood of many businesses. Or, as in the case of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, an early Linux adopter, it already is. A representative of the Exchange at the Summit said, 'We're already doing a trillion dollars of trades on the exchange.' What part of mission-critical ready do you not understand?"

You can read the full article here.

Linux Distros Family

I wrote about what is a Linux distro a few weeks back, and this is a follow up article that hopes to give you a better understanding of the vast number of distros.

First thing first, here's a link to the "family tree" of the Linux distros. Of course it is already outdated as the moment you read this blog, another 5 new distros are borned :-)

Some distros are developed for specific purpose, eg., Knoppmyth and Mythbuntu are 2 distros that focus on configuring your hardware to be a Home Theathre PC (HTPC). There are also some distros that are bent on squeezing the last drop out of the CPU without much concern on ease of use; while some general purpose distros aim to be Windows replecament.

Here is a popular website that keep track of the top 100 most popular distros and news about releases. Ya, sometimes too much choices can be a bane for would be converts, chose the wrong distro, and will drive the person away (probably forever).

I will write more to talk about on how to choose a distro, stay tuned.

Back to Vista

I bought a Toshiba U3 thumbdrive recently, and installed thunderbird, firefox, opera, and tons of other applications on it. I want to carry my browser favourites, settings, and emails with me to different offices & sites.

Laptop is not an option, besides being too heavy to lug it all day, it is a highly restrictive item in some of my customers' premises. If there is one reason for me to stay with Windows, it is this portable applications. I have grown so much in love in it, so much so that, I booted up Windows Vista for the first time in months at home.

Ah... reminded me why I abandon it in the first place. Incompatibility.

Just like you can't blame Linux for lack of software, you can't exactly blame Vista for this, the software has yet to catch up with it, thus contributing part of the numerous issues. Some still need administrator priviledge to run, and I believe many users are turning off UAC and thus back to the security hole.

I looked at Vista for another moment. It is pretty. Much prettier than XP and Linux. The gadgets graphics is so much nicer than those found in Gnome desklets. What lies beyond the superficial look? The WGA, the DRM, and the dirty tricks like the recent OOXML case. All these are Microsoft's own doing, you can't blame anyone else.

I shut it down for another time, sorry Vista. I walked away a little hardened on my decision to drop Microsoft products, and to evangelize Linux whenever I have the opportunity.

What is Linux Distro?

So you are keen to explore Linux, but where to start and what is this distro thingy people are talking about?

Distro is short for Distribution, make more sense now?

There is a humorous article on bbspot.com that makes fun of the number of Linux distributions surpassed the number of Linux users. While one can brush it off as humour relief, there is a some truth to it, that is, there are really many different Linux distributions.

When you cross over to the light, you will find that you are suddenly overwhelmed by the vast variety of choices; you will also find that there is no Linux Operating System per se, but a whole full list of the variants (or we call it distributions, in short, distros). You can do a Google search or visit Wikipedia for more detailed history of Linux or the GNU/Linux. Here's a brief:

Linux, like Mac OSX, is an UNIX like operating system. It was originally created by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Most worked done by Linus and gang at that time was limited to the kernel (you can view kernel as the engine of the operating system). Almost parallel to the Linux development, there was another free software movement started by Richard Stallman on another free UNIX OS called GNU, which had already completed many of the UNIX utilities and applications, but without a kernel. The two projects decided to merge and thus forming the framework of today's GNU/Linux.

Due to Linux's Open Source nature, it attracted many developers, and some packaged it with more applications and distribute the new "packages" under different names. Some early distibutions include Red Hat (commercial release), Debian, and SLS. These distributions in turn spawned many other distributions. Eg., Debian Linux spawned some popular distributions such as Ubuntu and Knoppix; and Ubuntu in turn acted as a spring board for many other distributions such as the gOS and Linux Mint. You can create your own distribution if you want to, and no one is going to stop you :)

Let me use an analogy to help you understand Linux and the various distributions:

Imagine GNU/Linux as a car engine maker such as Honda, BMW, Mercedes, Ford & etc. The distribution such as Redhat is a car maker who designs the car, and use the engine from Linux --> some Protons use Mitsubishi engines. There are other distributions that are built ontop of another distribution, example, Ubuntu is based on Debian. You can consider Ubuntu as AMG who tunes and modifies Mercedes Benz or Mugen who tunes Honda cars.

Upgrading to Windows XP

Have you upgraded yet?

Excerpt:

To be honest there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft has really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly.

Read full article here.

Well done Microsoft!