Posts by Maventi

GitHub.io killed the distro star: Why are people so bored with the top Linux makers?

Re: Gnome? Unity?

I agree that Mint is pretty popular, but for some reason I've just never been able to grow to like it. The first impression always draws me in but after a few weeks I get frustrated. I can't even put my finger on the reason why, it just feels a little bit scratchy.

By the same token I don't find Unity hideous at all these days. It's pretty good on large monitors and while the workflow is quite different to the old Gnome 2 interface I find it very efficient. It's also very stable.

That said everyone has different tastes and it seems these days we are all spoiled by lot of very good choices out there. So much so that most folks just go grab their favourite distro, install it and then get on with life. It's rare to have to search for help to get things working now. On that basis I think the only way to really get some good stats on Linux adoption would be to somehow track hits against all the repository mirrors out there.

Intel's Raspberry Pi rival Galileo can now run Windows

Re: Standard Windows timings

Well said Steve! You really hit all the nails on the head there!

Speaking as someone who manages corporate deployments of Windows 7 (via PXE/WDS/WSUS), Ubuntu (via PXE/Preseed/APT) and RHEL (PXE/Kickstart/YUM) desktops, the severe shortcomings in the Windows installation and patch process become painfully obvious.

I concur with your 40 minute Windows deployment, although I notice that patching still takes a bit longer and a few reboots on top of that (despite the machine being functional from the first boot). Did you include third party apps in there too?

I find that by comparison a typical Ubuntu deployment by comparison takes around 15 minutes on a modern machine with an SSD. All the latest patches are automatically included during installation for both OS and applications (right down to the Adobe Flash plugin) so on the first boot it really just does work.

This is when hosting a local APT mirror via HTTP and using PXE boot with an appropriately written preseed file. If you don't want to mirror an entire APT repository then using apt-cacher as a proxy does a pretty good job too - once you build the first machine the rest are just as fast as using a local mirror.

RHEL is pretty similar and the fact you can use Python scripts for Kickstart more than makes up for having to live with YUM over APT. :)

My biggest gripe with the Linux side is still having to figure out a few things manually, e.g. some preseed options are easier to find by trial and error after installation using debconf utils than reading documentation.

Going back to the original topic, I'm not sure what Microsoft are trying to achieve by venturing into Galileo territory. Despite making for a reasonable desktop experience, Windows is close to useless without a video output. RDP just seems silly in this case and Windows abstracts hardware a lot further away from the userland then Unix-like OS's do, e.g. no equivalent to /dev or /sys. When hardware interfacing is exactly what the board is aimed at I just can't see why anyone would want to use anything else.

Munich considers dumping Linux for ... GULP ... Windows!

Re: Thanks for that

"Microsoft showed back when the contract was being fought over that they really didnt care about loosing such a small customer - and that they wouldnt go in at a loss."

Cared so little in fact that the CEO of Microsoft personally flew in and visited the mayor of the time to specifically talk about it. I'd like to see you (or anyone else here) convince Satya to spend even five minutes with them.

Hackers' Paradise: The rise of soft options and the demise of hard choices

Re: Learning curve

"When someone is able to dictate how everybody should think, and enforce it with some aptly designed tortures and executions, you can't have any type of progress."

Hmm, why does that sound a little familiar?

You've got three days to patch Adobe Flash, Air, Reader

Re: Update management

It's sad how the Windows package management and updating systems are so terrible unless one forks up mega cash for SSCM (and wants to deal with the extra complexity). Binary executable installers need to die but they are sadly an ingrained part of the Windows culture. Even MS Office (once a poster child for this) hasn't supported GPO/MSI deployment since 2007 which means writing ugly scripts to do all the work.

Believe it or not it is actually possible to roll out Reader and Flash via GPO but it's by no means straightfoward.

One small business setup I work with uses Ubuntu and these sorts of problems just don't exist as everything gets patched daily via Apt. It's pure bliss by comparison.

Time to move away from Windows 7 ... whoa, whoa, who said anything about Windows 8?

Re: How many zeros?

Couldn't agree more xenny! It creates a lot less training burden too - users don't have to worry about so many changes in one enormous step.

Have an upvote! I feel that a huge shift any time soon is pretty unlikely, but I concur with all of your points nonetheless.

Re: Linux maybe, but OSX.. You'd need to be off your tree.

"Apple phase out support for older OS's a hell of a lot quicker than MS do."

Yes, but the changes aren't as radical. Half the reason Windows upgrades are so slow are due to significant changes to interfaces and general architecture. Add to that the fact that IE and Office version changes are normally included (with associated compatibility problems with existing documents and websites) and it becomes an immense effort to move to new versions.

More gradual and incremental changes such as seen with OS X and many Linux distros mean upgrading more often, but that prevents things becoming more firmly rooted and difficult to move when the time does come. All it takes is a shift in mindset and that's probably the hardest of all.

No more turning over a USB thing, then turning it over again to plug it in: Reversible socket ready for lift off

Why so much hate folks? Pushing USB 3.0 into existing legacy USB connectors was an ugly hack at best (especially the micro ones) and this seems like a good plan to move forward with. Heck, it's still electrically compatible with all the existing stuff we have!

USB cables of any description are such a commodity these days that even having full size/mini/micro B connectors is rarely an issue anywhere I've ended up. I doubt it would take long at all for these C-type connectors to be just as ubiquitous.

Top Ten 802.11ac routers: Time for a Wi-Fi makeover?

Re: I mostly agree with this article

"When I see an Airport router, I immediately begin swearing..."

Concur, even though I own a Mac. Most of the situations I've been in where I've had to configure AirPort gear I've either been on Ubuntu at the time or the gear has been old enough that the AirPort client on my Mac doesn't support it.

I understand Apple's philosophy behind it all but a web-based admin option really wouldn't go amiss. 'Someone nearby will have a Mac or iPad' isn't a sufficient excuse when every other brand of device has an admin interface that doesn't discriminate.

On the plus side it's pretty solid kit once it's set up, so it's rare that the admin interface should be needed again until it's passed onto someone else.

Yes, we know Active Directory cloud sync is a MESS, says Microsoft

Re: But does it work?

Have you looked at XenServer for a single instance host? It's pretty darn good. Management tools seem to be Windows-only for the time being but it's free, robust and easy to install and manage.

Re: But does it work?

I second your thoughts on Zentyal, Steve. It's simply brilliant! As an SBS advocate in a past life I find it fills the gap that Microsoft left quite nicely, and it seems to require much less stroking to keep running reliably.

I've been using Zentyal in a number of small production environments now and there have been no complaints thus far. The only thing really missing is GPO support, but at the same time that would be really just more overhead to worry about for small offices so it's far from a show-stopper.

Windows Registry-infecting malware has no files, survives reboots

Re: "a tool Microsoft uses to hide its source code from being copied"

"...alternative of an endless amount of different config... ..in locations of variable consistency, using formatting and structures sometimes similar, sometimes very different to each other..."

One could be forgiven for thinking you were describing the Windows registry! I agree that in the various 'nixes that various settings can be inconsistent between applications and such, but I certainly wouldn't be holding up the registry as a shining example of how to do it better. Heck, if it were that good, .Net applications wouldn't be so obsessed with XML files for a start.

Re: "a tool Microsoft uses to hide its source code from being copied"

There are some good concepts with the registry but I can't help but find it a bloated mess that's grown fairly organically since Windows 95. It's far from logical, especially when things are buried under layers of obscure UUIDs.

"Ability to push changes to users or machines on a per-value basis without worrying about changing other values by overwriting an entire file, or having to deal with merging changes to an existing file."

Like configuration directories, often found in Debian and its derivatives? These are such a breeze to work with. Text files are particularly brilliant if things go wrong as they don't have to be mounted in order to check them - there's a lot to be said for simplicity sometimes.

"User/machine setting separation, with the user settings able to move with the user between machines as a single, trivially synchronised file."

While not a single file, 'ix home directories do this reasonably well. In most cases I've found it creates much less headache than in Windows (e.g. restoring personal data and configuration on a reinstalled machine), but both are far from perfect. Sure sounds good in theory though!

Microsoft stands on shore as tablet-laden boat sails away

Re: Microsofts problem is the OS

"Once they start getting malware"

Far more of an issue for Android than Windows these days.

I'll believe the day that I stop getting requests from friends and family to fix their infested Windows machines and start getting such requests for their Android, et al devices instead (of which there are many). Oh and for any of my colleagues to experience this change as well.

July 14, 2015. Tuesday. No more support for Windows Server 2003. Good luck

Re: Perfect opportunity

Windows 2003 is being desupported after twelve years. How many Linux releases has been supported for so long?

Red Hat supports their enterprise OS for ten years standard, with the option for thirteen if required.

That said I think such long support runs are half the cause for the migration troubles we so often see on both sides of the fence. The changes to an OS after ten years are often so dramatic to applications that the step becomes too big to move.

UK government officially adopts Open Document Format

Re: Better but still a bit of a pigs ear

Have you ever tried opening a simple and fully standards-compliant ODT document in Word? It ain't pretty and the resulting warning messages wouldn't inspire much confidence in the average end use.

Re: Better but still a bit of a pigs ear

This. We need to get out of that paper mentality as it's just so restrictive, especially for content that rarely (if ever) leaves a display.

Redmond may buy security company it says is wrong about AD flaw

Re: Or upgrade

"It's covered under Software Assurance."

And what about the labour for planning, testing, deploying and such?

That AMAZING Windows comeback: Wow – 0.5% growth in 2015

"complex non scalable management based on text files"

It's extremely scalable and also simple to document. It's also makes version control nice and easy using Git or whatever you prefer. Try that with group policies!

"...with an order of magnitude more patches to evaluate."

On the plus they come in a consistent and well documented package format, are easy to deploy and they almost never break things unexpectedly so the evaluation process is much easier. At least in my real world experience anyway, but what does that matter?

Sorry, chaps! We didn't mean to steamroller legit No-IP users – Microsoft

Re: A thought just crossed my mind

"It seems rather unlikely that scalability is the issue. ... Most likely they simply screwed up the config..."

That's entirely possible, but no matter which of those is true Microsoft have demonstrated a significant lack of competence and caused a lot of disruption as a result. Even if they couldn't test it in advance the time it took to sort things out shows that they were really struggling to figure this out.

No matter how you look at it this was very poorly executed and they deserve the hit in reputation they have received.