Status-Q

Realised today that it is well over a year since I used Windows. The Mac has done everything I need, and I use Linux for a few servers, experiments etc that I run. I’ve hardly touched a Windows machine in the last 18 months and I haven’t missed it one bit.

[Original Link] A nice story by Jonathan Gennick.

[Original Link] Got a Linux box and an OS X box? Michael Dales’ handy utility may save you desk space.

Having recently created quite a large document in OpenOffice, I must say I’m quite a fan. There are several features which I much prefer to their Microsoft equivalents. And if, occasionally, things seem not to be quite as intuitive as they might, I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve used Microsoft Word, on and off, for about 14 years, and that’s quite a legacy/mental rut to get out of.

If, by the way, you’ve tried it under Mac OS X and have been disappointed by the ugly fonts currently supported by the X server, you might want to try
this. Slow, on my elderly Mac, but much prettier. Make sure you turn off ‘Preview in font lists’ in the View options if selecting fonts is too time-consuming!

[Original Link] RedHat 8 is a nice version of Linux. It’s good to have antialiased fonts, OpenOffice & Evolution installed as standard, and it even detected the graphics card and monitor correctly on one of the two machines I installed it on. 50% is a better hit rate than I’ve had in the past.

I even quite like the way they’ve tried to merge Gnome and KDE so you hardly know which one you’re using. But it does mean there’s a lot of confusion about how to configure certain aspects of the User Interface. Should I be using KDE tools, Gnome tools, or some RedHat special thing which tries to configure both?

What seems to be lacking, unless I’ve missed it somewhere, is any way to add and remove items from the main system menu. This is a major failing, but Michael Knepher tells you how to do it with a text editor. A useful article, which shows there’s quite a sophisticated system underneath now. And what’s wrong with emacs? We wouldn’t want to let ordinary users customize their own desktops, would we…?

[Original Link] A little glamour for those who have been working on Mobile IP for so long! And great advertising for RedHat.

I’m starting to come up with new Star Trek movie plots.
“What is it, Uhura?”
“Well, Captain, I’m receiving reports that Earth has been targetted by a SQL Server-related virus, thought to be coming from somewhere near the Horsehead Nebula. They’re shutting down the terrestrial firewall, and all global critical systems are being rebooted. We’re going to lose all contact with Earth for the next 18 hours…”

[Original Link] The thrust of this article, despite the title, is that Linux is causing more problems for traditional Unix vendors at present than for Microsoft. Interestingly, however, the largest Unix vendor is now Apple, and is perhaps the only one winning converts from Linux.

If I had to take away one thought form LinuxWorld this time, a common theme which occurred in several talks I attended, it would be this: Open Source software gives you back control over your business decisions.

With proprietary software, it is often somebody else who tells you when you need to upgrade your hardware, when you need to switch operating systems, when you must re-train your staff. If you have a network now which runs very happily on Windows 3.1, or NT 3.51, or even NT 4, you will not be able to keep it that way for long. What about Office 95? Try buying extra new licenses for these systems. Try getting support for software that runs on them.

With Linux & Open Source, you have no need to upgrade until you want to. If you have a very old system and the original suppliers won’t support it for you, you can maintain it yourself or pay somebody else to do so. The point is that the choice is yours.

[Original Link] Doc Searls quotes Vint Cerf: “The history of the Net is the history of its protocols”.

And then in this Linux Journal article he emphasises

…that the real virtue of Linux and other forms of infrastructural software…is not only that it’s open and free, but that it’s transparent. It is see-thru infrastructure. In fact, what makes it infrastructural is the fact that you can see through it. You can trust it because it has no secrets.

…Bill [Gates] says, “Trustworthy Computing is computing that is as available, reliable and secure as electricity, water services and telephony.” We should note that all those services are pure infrastructure whose workings are mostly transparent.