Linux

Microsoft Patch 955020 This patch will ensure that Friendster and Obama are added to your dictionary on Vista and 2008 Server. No big deal right? This brings up a few questions for me: Why does my server have a GUI? Why does this patch require a reboot? Who is typing the words Friendster or Obama on their 2008 Server? At the root of the issue is that I will never deploy Hyper-V for enviroments I admin. I understand patching for core issues and security but this is stupid. If this server was in fact running my virtual server farm I would now be rebooting for Friendster and Obama. Yikes!

Why Linux and which one? Let me take a second to review: Debian Stable 4.0 – Too old! You can’t expect me to be spoiled on my x86 architecture with the latest GNOME and Firefox and then jump back to Debian stable Debian Testing “Lenny” – Too new! The kernel is a step ahead of the Mac-On-Linux folks and therefore negates my ability to still run MacOS in Linux. Also had a heck of a time with my 6200 Nvidia Card in framebuffer. ...

Back at the tender age of 12 I picked up a magazine at the Base Exchange. This magazine contained a CD. This CD contained Debian 1.3. All was well in the world… I remember reading with such excitement about this amazing new Linux (yes I pronouced it wrong, I was a geek living in Germany) and how it was free. Free you say!? I had just spent the past year lusting for Windows NT for no other reason that it was enterprise ready. I had no clue what that meant but I knew it was something I couldn’t learn. Much in the same way as I would look with much glee on the SGI pictures in magazines with no hope of ever affording the 12,000 dollar machine. Such was life for a youngster. That is what made Linux so exciting for me. It looked kind of like those funny Sun boxes and it was what HACKERS used so it had to be cool. With no understanding of what installing Linux met I dropped that CD in and used rawrite for the first time to create the boot floppy. Then it died. My perfectly working Windows 95b edition machine died. Well I thought it had died when really all I did was blank the partition table attempting to do an install. All of this came back vividly today as I retraced that install on my MacBook Pro in vmware. —————————————- ...

The Good: Bringing it up to level of workstation/fusion virtual machine compatibility? Vix if you are into the innards of virtualization. The Bad: Wow I mean where do you start? Let me walk you through my install process. I upgraded from the original vmware server to beta on an Ubuntu Gutsy box. The install process was smooth as butter and worked like a champ. I expect the smoothness because VMware is the benchmark for easy installs on Linux (only behind Google for using the Loki Installer) and has always shown that. What I never expected was the actual usage of the software. Gone is your GUI console. Hold on to that for a minute. It is gone, totally non-existstent. The GUI was replaced by a Web interface using AJAX. It all feels very Web 2.0 which is great for when I log into Digg or Facebook (Ooohh Shinny!) but this is enterprise software. What makes the web interface unbearable is the speed. Has anyone used Yahoo! Mail beta AJAX interface? It has brought this quad-processor 4GiB RAM machine to its knees. That is how the VMware Web console feels. VMware! WAKE UP! Web interfaces are great and when you make it optional like you always have with WebUI packages. Optional, it only adds to the flexibility your company has given admins and architects everywhere. I understand the reasoning, web runs everywhere and gives you a lot of options for using thin clients and PDA’s. ...

Skype (or ebay) have been killing me for years now. I am a huge Skype user and always loved the video chat option. I have gone back and installed webcams for most of my family in order to keep track of everyone on my crazy travel days. The one issue I had was the conflict of skype and my desire to convert my family to Linux. Skype on Linux was always a second-class citizen. I resorted to using aMSN which worked, albeit on a very poor performance level. Yesterday though I awoke to an excitment I hadn’t seen in months. My RSS feed showed one topic new in the Skype folder. I preemptively booted my Ubuntu laptop and sure enough I was right, video support. After a quick download and install I had video chat on my Linux box. This of course initiated a victory dance. The great thing was the victory dance was captured from 2 different angles thus solidifying my lack of dancing skills for all to see :) ...