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AT&T Chooses Ubuntu Linux Instead of Microsoft Windows (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: one of the largest cellular providers is the venerable AT&T. While it sells many Linux-powered Android devices, it is now embracing the open source kernel in a new way. You see, the company has partnered with Canonical to utilize Ubuntu for cloud, network, and enterprise applications. That's right, AT&T did not choose Microsoft's Windows when exploring options. Canonical will provide continued engineering support too.
It's for hosting services, not for client use. In the cloud, the competition is pretty even between everything that isn't based on Mac OS. Why does this decision surprise anyone?
Heck, it's one of the reasons Azure supports *nix etc. in the first place.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
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To me it appears that Microsoft is no longer a trustworthy partner, in business or in the home.
Going back to its roots in Unix,
With what Microsoft has been doing in the consumer world with the Windows 10 installation nagging (~how many times do I have to tell Microsoft that I do not want to install Windows 10~) and the unwanted Windows 10 downloading, it is no surprise that AT&T is looking elsewhere for solutions.
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To me it appears that Microsoft is no longer a trustworthy partner, in business or in the home.
Umm, where have you been the past 30ish years?
Microsoft has NEVER been a "trusted partner" - "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run!" and all that.
You mean AT&T will switch back to M$ when M$ pays them to. M$ will do a multi year commitment where the first half is 3/4 of what the services are valued at, and the 2nd half is 6/4s of what they are valued at, then slip in fine print charges that double the prices of both.
After all, that is what AT&T does via DirecTV
Obligatory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/c...
AT&T Bell Labs invented Unix. Yeah, I know that's not quite the same AT&T as we see today (Bell Labs is part of Alcatel-Lucent-Nokia) but nonetheless today's AT&T is a direct descendant of the AT&T of the 1970s the developed Unix for it's own use. Heck, so they should be using Unix rather than Linux.. but they don't actually own it any more.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Enterprise Linux is a different beast altogether from desktop Linux. When someone can pay for professional support, that's typically what they get. If you think Linux is inherently inconsistent and unstable, it shows your own lack of knowledge of the platform.
Sincerely speaking, when I read the headline, I thought the choice was for the desktop.
Alas was I wrong!
Is there anyone else who thought the same?
Which major enterprise is using Linux on the desktop is I may ask?
Man that's why there are so many Windows server on the net... OH WAIT. It's okay, posting while pissed. I won't hold it against you.
http://chimpbox.us
If and when open Linux development becomes chaotic AT&T can fork and maintain its own distro. Imagine, AT&T maintaining its own version of *nix? ;-)
birds of a feather flock together.. at&t and microsoft should be best buddies. both shit on their customers and customer data.
Who is logo?
Are you that cunt who keeps phoning me about problems with my computer?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow! 2016 really is the year of Linux on the server stack!
Oh wait.....
(recently heard at a MS board meeting)
Allright, spill it, who dropped the ball and didn't invite the AT&T board to the golf resort?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well get the flock off my lawn... and the customers need to raise a little more hell if they want better treatment.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A better headline might have been:
Canonical lands huge contract with AT&T
AT&T is a $200 billion organization, Canonical is about $10 billion. This deal might boost Canonical's revenue by 50%.
Also, it's a major credibility boost on Canonical's corporate resume. AT&T is a major, major company full of network experts, so it's a very significant endorsement of Canonical supporting large-scale applications. Consider Canonical trying to sell a new a customer, maybe Fisher Price or Nabisco:
Fisher Price: How do we have confidence that your team can support services at the scale Fisher Price needs?
Canonical rep: We run AT&T's systems, at the much larger scale they require.
> Canonical will provide continued engineering support too.
Looks like Canonical found its business model.
Yea that corp server needs wpa-supplicant. Oh yea it' doesnt not ever.
No sir I dont like it.
. The unprofessional nature of Windows, its poor quality and performance
FTFY.
Enterprise customers pay big money for support regardless of the OS. The only advantage there for Linux is that there is no licensing costs for the software itself. The disadvantage is that people that know Linux are usually more expensive. We've got Windows where I work and our IT support is under a constant struggle to keep it going. It's 1000% better since we got Win7 to replace Vista but still there are always problems. That's why tech support is so profitable. Strangely every day when I log in I get a nag window for windows 10. It's annoying to have to click it off every fucking time I log on. That just makes me so much happier to use Linux at home.
Lol wpa supplicant fighting has been solved about a decade ago. I deploy RPis fully automated with wifi in a commercial setting, not a problem regardless of the wifi config. Back in the day the only wpa fighting I did was with devices that didn't correctly support wpa and even Windows needed drivers for both wifi cards and APs. This hasn't been an issue since wpa was standardized and there are even nice GUIs (X, shell scripts and ncurses).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
And we are talking about a company who can afford enterprise grade support.
@perpenso: "Linux could be replaced with BSD and few would care or notice"
Android is the Linux kernel with a Java implementation running on top.
So because you can't see Linux means it doesn't run Linux? So a lot of these Servers, NAS, routers and search engines do not run Linux then.
That's what surprised me as well. Doesn't AT&T have any ownership of Unix anymore, or is it all gone to Lucent/USL/Bell Labs/SCO/Open Group/whatever? Also, GP mentioned that it's for hosting services, but for that, isn't it more of the establishment guys who are the real deal here - be it Red Hat, Suse, Debian, as opposed to Ubuntu? Looking at it any which way, AT&T made a strange decision, and the alternative was not Windows (Server), but something like either one of the old Unixes, like Solaris, or one of the established Linux distros, like Red Hat or Debian.
I think the bigger news is AT&T or anybody picking Canonical for their servers, instead of Red Hat or Debian
A year ago, that's what I did w/ this Dell, which had come new w/ Windows 8. I tried it for a couple of weeks, but even w/ Classic shell, I had a miserable time typing due to hot corners. Then I happened to get my hands on a PC-BSD DVD after visiting a Linux Expo, and installed it. Except for WiFi, it was a breeze.
In telcos, Linux is the successor to Sun/Solaris. It's been happening for a while now, and it really sped up a lot when Oracle bought Sun. Windows was never a real option here.
Linux could be replaced with BSD and few would care or notice.
And that statement will hold only until you realize the plethora of architectures and devices the Linux kernel has been ported to, which can't really be said about the BSD kernel.
People who know anything are more expensive, the problem is that there are many people who claim to know windows but in reality know very little about it, and these people are the ones who have a constant struggle.. A lot of this is also down to MS' traditional marketing which claimed you didn't need expensive and well trained staff to run windows. That simply isn't true, incompetent staff can struggle along but they could with modern linux too if they wanted to, but the end result will never be any good...
When people claim to know linux, that usually means that they actually do - and this is why such people cost more.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I supposed the important difference is called 'Support'.
Linux has for many years proven itself as a great Kernel and with good support of the GNU stuff it makes a great OS.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Enquiring minds might be interested to know that there are effectively 3 main BSDs: FreeBSD - the fastest and most stable, but mostly on Intel Achitectures
OpenBSD - the most secure and with solid support for a range of architectures popular for security and infrastructure, like Sparc,
NetBSD - the most portable (and, in my experience, the least stable).
They are not like Linux distros, they are completely different from the ground up, although code is often ported from one to another because the licence is identical.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You are sooo unfashionable, these days even camera's have WIFI to share their pics.
Between phone and laptop we use KDEConnect over WIFI.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
As a matter of fact, this can be done with Win 8(.1) too these days, even though I only did once: The laptop I am typing this on. Came with OEM Win 8, but I didn't want to use it, so I installed Ubuntu without making a backup of anything. Now, in order to secure the 10 license, I did a dd of the disk, installed Win 8 from the installation media I got from Microsoft and then upgraded to 10. After that, I did a dd in order to restore it to the original configuration. This way, should I want to give it away or sell it in a few years, I can give the future owner what they might want: Windows 10.
To get back to my point: Windows now provides usable installation media. No need for restore media, or hoping you find a OEM disk that works with your machine and key... There is now an official way, and that is the only positive thing that Windows 10 brought us.
Your Envy can be reinstalled from scratch if you are inclined to do so. Get the ISO here. Now, my personal opinion is that you're better off with staying with Linux, but don't kid yourself. You *can* have a clean Windows installation these days.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Windows has a lot of easy GUI tools to help with management. That makes it possible to mostly get by with half trained monkeys. The problem of course is when things go beyond the capability of those tools. Then you actually have to know how things work. Our organization has one or two of those guys. I don't know how many times I've seen a couple of dudes show up, get their ass handed to them by our problem and they end up calling one of the real IT guys.
For such large enterprise environments, once they've picked something, they will generally be very careful not to have to change their minds that much. Maybe Red Hat could have a shot, but any further from Ubuntu would be a really tough sell.
Also, MS's ambitions are more bread and likely to conflict with AT&T goals. Canonical and SuSE are probably the two remotely viable companies that are the furthest from competing with AT&T in any conceivable way.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I wouldn't call NetBSD the least stable. Porting an OS to many different architectures shakes out a lot of bugs that you don't see with an architecture that plods along running on only one or a few platforms.
The BSDs, particularly NetBSD and FreeBSD, are very compact, and there's only one 'distribution' of them. When a tag is laid down for a new version, it's not just a kernel, it's an entire core userland that can be checked out, updated, and built consistently. BSD isn't a 'distro' because it's not composed of whatever dogs breakfast of utilities and toolchains one particular person or group kludged all together to call a 'distribution.' And the core installer for a BSD is compact and quick to install. The NetBSD 7.0 i386 installer iso is only 414,408 KB.
So because you can't see Linux means it doesn't run Linux?.
How is hosted on Linux not "running on" Linux? What was said is that if Linux were to be replaced with BSD very few would know or care, and that includes most Android developers. To imply that Android is some sort of Linux environment is very misleading, Android is in reality its own OS to its developers and users.
That may be so because Linux is a kernel. The fact that very few users and developers interact with the kernel is a fact of any operating system, actually.
I wasn't referring to Linux merely in the kernel sense, I was referring to it in the operating system sense. To users and most developers Android is their operating system, what Android is hosted upon is irrelevant to them.
I don't think the current AT&T is the same as the former AT&T. The current one is a merger between Cingular and SBC I'm pretty sure.
M$ is a callback to its origin as a publisher of BASIC interpreters. In the line number era, before Dim ... As String, all string variables' names ended with a dollar sign.
10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"
20 PRINT M$;" introduces Windows"
30 END
GNU/Linux on servers and desktops has been so smooth since, let's be conservative, 2012
Servers yes. Desktops yes. Purpose-built laptops yes (source: System76). Random laptops not so much, as a lot of manufacturers of laptops that ship with Windows cut corners by using chipsets for which one or more of audio, WLAN, or suspend is unsupported on Linux.
Especially because GNU's Not UNIX. As far as I can tell, OS X is the only widely used desktop operating system to be certified as a UNIX® system.
Chrome OS by default is locked down not to run any app other than the Chrome web browser. If you put it in developer mode to install Crouton (a chroot with GNU and X11), it'll beg you every time it starts up to reenable operating system verification, which wipes the entire drive. Most other PC operating systems allow someone with physical access to wipe the drive but don't exactly encourage it. So you'd need to keep reinstallation media handy at all times and never save files to internal storage.
bought a skylake based HP Envy 17t last week. There is no bloatware-free install of Windows 10 Pro provided by any means that I found (the "minimal image" install that previously appeared with HP laptops is gone, apparently). After de-crapping Window 10 as best I could I shrank a partition and installed Ubuntu 15.10.
I built a Skylake i7-6700 based desktop recently and all including keyboard & mouse, 1 x SSD, 1 x 3TB HDD and monitor came to nine modules, so it was like putting together up market Lego. Basically all I did was to pre-prepare an installable USB key with Fedora 23 - KDE spin (see the web for info on how to do this - it's easy), inset the USB key in one of the USB slots in the case then. When the install info appears on the screen set-up (what I normally do) or just accept the defaults (for new users) and within 30 minutes I had a working Linux distribution.
The only thing that was out of the ordinary was to upgrade the BIOS Z170 motherboard which was stupidly easy. This fixed a HDMI signal stability issue with the on-board graphics of the motherboard.
Since I am not into PC games I am quite happy to use the on-board graphics of the Z170 motherboard which can support upto 2160p and if I am just surfing the web an/or doing any downloads my system consumes just under 60W and of that 20W is consumed by my IPS monitor. All up I actually use less power than most higher end laptops. Of course if I put in a powerful graphics card then my system would consume allot more power.
BTW. I installed Fedora but I would be very confident that pretty much any current Linux distribution would work well. Of course if the particular user need MS Windows because "Linux is not like Windows" then my commiserations.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Now if the next step is Ubuntu on AT&T workstations that will be a huge change but hardly surprising should it be that it was the main reason AT&T went with Ubuntu in the first place. Many Internet companies will change as they baulk at the idea of M$ harvesting the networks for information free of charge and there will be more and more pressure to force out M$'s privacy invasion of the entire internet.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I think I finally put my finger on what, for me, is the big difference.
Let's be honest. Windows systems need work. Linux systems need work. There's some customization, some number of problems to be solved, some usability issues, etc., on both platforms.
But what I find different is that I have to work against Windows, while I'm able to work with Linux.
For instance, on new machines for some reason I always seem to end up with Nvidia. On my Linux Mint installs, that usually means adding a boot parameter and/or putting in a different video card driver. But there's a mechanism for doing that. That mechanism is understood and documented and is a part of the system. It requires some effort, but things are set up in a way that it's meant to be done and can be done when needed.
On Windows 8.1, I had trouble finding things and had to look for a 3rd party "classic menu" add-on. On Mint, I customize my menus using the tools provided for that very purpose.
On Windows, if I want (say) LibreOffice, I have to go download it and install it, and since it's not part of the Microsoft ecosystem, I have to keep it updated--- manually. On Mint, it came preinstalled, but if it hadn't, or if I want the latest version, I add a PPA using mechanisms built-in for that very purpose; and then I don't have to manually update. Updates are made available automatically and I just have to click "go" effectively.
When I have a hardware compatibility issue on Linux, I do have to look things up. But generally I can again use processes and installation methods that are part of the system. Does the Windows store offer anything like what I can get from my Mint package manager, especially if I'm willing to add PPAs?
On Windows, I have to work against the system to make sure Microsoft's telemetry isn't reporting on every time I sip my coffee. On Linux Mint, it's a non-issue in the first place. On Windows 8.1, I have to work against the system to prevent being forced into downloading Windows 10. On Linux Mint, I'm offered an upgrade button but it's completely up to me and I can make the button go away using provided mechanisms.
I don't deny that there's work in setting up Linux, and that there are sometimes issues (I do deny that Windows "just works"). But Linux provides the tools and mechanisms to get things going and get them set up the way I want them. I work with Linux. I work against Windows.
Makes sense really, Even with Enterprise licensing, Microsoft gets expensive quick, $800 for server, etc... With the number of machines they are likely to be deploying its a HUGE savings. And the Linux systems tend to have better uptimes in my experience. I see "some" windows systems that need monthly or quarterly reboots yet have Linux and Solaris systems that have been up for over 400 days, and last reboot was only to update the kernel... Even other Service providers are using *nix on their backend service devices. Occasionally when Comcast is acting up and you connect to a cable channel or on demand it momentarily flashes the login screen for a Fedora system. (though making that "available" is silly)
Hardware wise: They went with IBM.
They are as serious as can be concerning " The Cloud ". Putting an enormous amount of emphasis on it company wide.
...As in Lenovo X86-64 servers? If they went with Ubuntu, then it must be X86-64, right? Sure, IBM will still be providing support for the X Server for years to come...
True, Canonical's current revenue in no way justifies a $10 billion valuation. Talk of that kind of valuation is based on their growth potential. By revenue, the importance of the AT&T deal is even more significant- AT&T is a huge customer, for a company the size of Canonical.
On Windows when you have some hardware trouble you can go to the Device Manager, whose GUI hasn't changed for 20 years.
Download CPU-Z and GPU-Z to get fine details on some of your hardware if you're curious (you can know about used and empty RAM slots without opening the machine)
Importantly, with any third party software tool you can view all temperatures and voltages reported by sensors, whereas linux will show you one to three temperatures and no voltage. This means you can't diagnose the PSU, although it was more important in the early 2000s when quality of PSU was much lower. (as a partial workaround you may stick a voltmeter into the 12V)
The valuation isn't justified by their 2014/2015 revenue, but this one sale may have just doubled that revenue and more deals like it (and many smaller ones) are likely. So discussion is of a value somewhere in that general neighborhood. _I_ am not trying to buy 20% of Canonical for a billion dollars or so, but someone might, so I was generous in my comparison vs AT&T. (My point was how -small- Canonical is compared to AT&T, so I trade not to exaggerate how small they are.)
You can find it out using Linux:
sudo hexdump -s 56 -e '"MSDM key: " /29 "%s\n"' /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
(Source)
Now, it is true that there are pre-activated keys for OEMs disks like HP, Dell, etc.. At least for Windows 7 it was like that. They have so called SLP Keys (System Locked Pre-Installation Key) and they are not the same as the one printed on your Windows 7 machine. SLP keys only work on a certain range of machines, but also have the advantage as working like generic OEM DVDs. I've had this case where a Windows Vista machine (Vista Key sticker) from Dell and I used the a Windows 7 Dell OEM disk, and ... it activated itself. Technically it didn't have the rights to do so and I was totally surprised it did. Use the same OEM disk on an Acer and it will install but not be activated, at which point you use the sticker on the machine. When I started to mess around with these things, I realized that in the Windows 7 era, all machines shipped with two keys: the SLP license and the (recovery) sticker license.
Given that from Windows 8 on the licenses are embedded in the firmware, this is over.
Personally, I think reinstalling from scratch is always the right option. With decrapifying you might miss something, and if you're routined, you have a reinstallation done rather quickly. If you stick with big brand machines, getting drivers is no Herculean task any more. Back in the day, oh, yes, I remember... Hard to find, need to use shady places, take drivers from different machines and try to see whether they work. Today, it's "go to manufacturer website", download what is *missing* and use what Windows gives you as default drivers for all the rest, with the notable exception of the graphics card.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Sorry for the (partially) offtopic reply, but I just saw your question about Trusted Network Connect here.
I haven't been hearing much new news about Trusted Computing or Trusted Network Connect recently. Ordinarily I'd consider that a good sign that it wasn't moving forwards, however it's looking more like a successful slow-quiet-rollout strategy. Both Microsoft and Google make the Trust chip mandatory on phones, and Microsoft has declared that it's mandatory on all desktops and other devices in a few months. all new devices and computers must implement TPM 2.0 and ship with TPM support enabled , starting one year after the Win10 release. (Apparently August of this year.) The whole design of Win10 is to force rolling updates. It could get ugly if Microsoft simply pushes out all sorts of Trusted Computing crap as non-declinable "routine updates".
The phone lockdowns are definitely leading the way. Microsoft says phone manufacturers must prohibit users from turning off secureboot, and it looks like Google is also enforcing enforcing secure boot which (so far) permitting you to then drop to an eternal-nag non-Trusted mode. Sigh. Not good. I wouldn't be surprised if desktops also use a transition step of enforcing an eternal-nag-mode if you try to opt-out of Trusted Computing. At some point support can simply be ended for the nag-mode option. Then there's no opt-out at all.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
With what Microsoft has been doing in the consumer world with the Windows 10 installation nagging (~how many times do I have to tell Microsoft that I do not want to install Windows 10~) and the unwanted Windows 10 downloading, it is no surprise that AT&T is looking elsewhere for solutions.
Yeah some consumer OS issue which doesn't affect the scenario is what drove a mega corporation who can't give a shit about consumers to ditch another mega corporation's cloud service.
More likely scenario: Azure was more expensive. And it IS more expensive.
I understand competition between Canonical and RedHat, but is the Debian Foundation a full service provider? I've only ever heard of Debian as an OS and without the additional service it wouldn't be a contender save for companies which have a fully staffed Linux admin team.
whereas linux will show you one to three temperatures and no voltage. This means you can't diagnose the PSU
Don't blame Linux because you chose shitty hardware. On my Linux desktop, I get a bunch of temps and voltages, and on my FreeBSD server it emails me if the power supply volt stats get out of spec.
But then, I chose quality hardware and not bottom-of-the-barrel consumer-grade "enthusiast" crap. And it didn't cost me much more... a price difference I was more than willing to pay for better reliability and functionality.
It doesn't have separate OS and data storage?
Even if it did, the data storage is encrypted, and the master key for the volume changes when the device is switched between developer mode and not-developer mode.
Wow talk about being on a high horse.
So you can see voltages on server hardware, that's a good thing. I've never seen voltages reported on a desktop. And I like low end, reliable boards with a ton of BIOS options and firmware upgrades available i.e. mine runs a CPU that came three years after the board first came out on the market.
Do you have a Supermicro board or something? Tyan, etc. If so you likely paid more for the motherboard that I did for motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply.
The sensors library on linux supports like 10-20% sensors out there whereas a Windows monitoring program supports more like 95-99%. That looks more like a failure of linux (or BSD etc.) to support the hardware rather than a problem with the quality of hardware.
⦠so long as you don't want a compressing filesystem, or mind the system locking up if a disk goes bad.
And I like low end
Well there you go.
If so you likely paid more for the motherboard that I did for motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply.
Yes, if you want better than low-end, Windows-only hardware then you're going to have to pay a bit more for quality.
The sensors library on linux supports like 10-20% sensors out there whereas a Windows monitoring program supports more like 95-99%. That looks more like a failure of linux (or BSD etc.) to support the hardware rather than a problem with the quality of hardware.
No, it looks like you fell for buying Windows-only hardware in an attempt to save money. There are lots of printers that fall into this category as well, and back in the day modems. If Microsoft can have their way, there'll be even more full-out computers that refuse to run anything but Windows. If that's not the world you want, then you need to start voting with your dollars... not sourcing the cheapest low-end stuff you can find then complaining that your non-Windows OS doesn't work well on it.
When The Bell System split up in the 1980s, AT&T got to keep Unix and most of the Labs, and the 7 Baby Bells owned most of the Bell telcos.
When AT&T split up into AT&T, Lucent, and NCR back in the 1990s, Lucent got most of Bell Labs, including ownership of Unix.
SBC (aka Southwestern Bell, the Texas Baby Bell branch) in the late 2000s and early 2010s bought Pacific Bell, Southern Bell, Ameritech, old-AT&T, and renamed itself AT&T because that had more brand value than SBC. The wireless businesses that were variously named Cingular and Cellular One and AT&T Wireless had their own complicated sets of ownership changes, but effectively SBC bought them. (Pacific Bell sometimes owned half of them, sometimes old-AT&T did, sometimes both, sometimes you really needed to know whether you had an "orange" or "blue" wireless service from the same company, etc.)
(Disclaimer: This is my own interpretation, not the official position of AT&T, many pieces of which I've worked for over the last few decades.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've Granpa story you.
Maynge year ago, I'd used Unix (from IBM as I recall.) We didn't have much cooling so the place smelled of onions, which we wore on our bets at the time.
Eventually, I graduated with a PHP in Applied Mathematic (math for retards.) But I eventually noted a book, and older tome, where subject matter still had tnformattion for horse travel. And I learned that such book had been the goto book.
So, I decided on this and went to work begging every still project of figuring out what the actual restless.
Please allow me to finish...
We did "traffic modeling on a computer Unlike the other companies - we actually collected data. Pedestrian and Vehicles. Thad data was pushed to a bunch of server that were clustered and made beep nose. Again, costly SUN.
I guess it's time to revel that I was a MSP (Shell/IE/OE).
As a lark, and as goal install over everything. Yup. The only window device that I own is my mobile. It's not as hard as it seems, just look at like it isn't Winows
Or, keep doing what you are doing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Remember that this announcement is about Cloud Stuff - no matter what client operating systems you're using, the host environment is almost certainly either controlled by VMware or OpenStack or Amazon or Azure, and the servers are almost certainly Intel-ish CPUs running VMware ESXi or KVM (on some Linux platform) or maybe Windows Hyper-V. There are some exceptions (Docker's busy disrupting and overlapping with that space, and there's a bit of Xen left, and some switching/routing platforms like ODL or *NFV* things), and there are a lot of players trying to provide management and operations services, bare-metal-as-a-service provisioning where that makes sense, bare-metal-as-a-server-setup-method provisioning, etc.
A year or two ago, the field looked a bit simpler - either you ran VMware (with a high software price tag on every CPU or server, and services that worked, with mature support systems), or OpenStack (Free! With lots of services that didn't work yet, documentation you were free to write yourself and donate to the community, and an ecosystem of vendors whose products actually worked on VMware and were going to be working on OpenStack Real Soon Now. And Free!) It's a lot messier today, and lots more things actually work.
(Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but this is purely my personal commentary on the industry, not company statements, and AT&T is such a big company that for any well-known technology we've probably got two or three different groups using it and a dozen more who've evaluated it and have much better informed opinions than I do.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
(Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but this is just my personal opinion, not an official corporate position.)
This announcement is about infrastructure for some of AT&T's cloud services; it's really separate from anything about laptop or consumer OS's. Basically everything in the world that used to run on servers seems to be migrating to cloud-type architectures, and I couldn't tell from the article which part of the business this was about (AT&T runs a wide range of cloud and hosting services for customers, some public, some custom, plus a lot of internal computing services for corporate functions, or it could be a corporate support deal of some kind as opposed to a specific set of systems.)
My work laptop, managed by the desktop support IT department, runs some professional-license version of Win7-64, and they manage what updates get shipped and when, so I don't get nagged about Win10. They also manage hosted virtual desktops, so people who want the Win7 environment for corporate apps and Outlook mail can have that running on top of whatever other OS (Mac, Linux, iPad, and older Windows hardware are all fairly popular for that.) (I also have VMware Player on the Windows machine, with a few different Linux guests on top when I need them.) My development machines mostly run Ubuntu, either on bare metal or with ESXi or OpenStack underneath; other popular environments I run into include CentOS and licensed RedHat.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't think the current AT&T is the same as the former AT&T. The current one is a merger between Cingular and SBC I'm pretty sure.
No its the same beast. Remember Cingular and SBC were part of ATT before the big split. ATT is like some beast out of a horror film you hack it up and then all the pieces come back together to rise up again.
The spy network needed ATT to come back together again it is easier dealing with one big company that you have in your back pocket and dealing with a bunch of smaller ones that might not play ball when you want to wire tap. Ask the old CEO of Quest about that.
Maybe you're right in some sense but you're discarding 99% of desktop hardware. Few are interested into getting server hardware to run a desktop. Or skimping on food, clothing and transportation for that (not everyone is US middle class)
Not sure how voting dollars work if you're representing 0.0001% of the market.
Maybe you're right in some sense but you're discarding 99% of desktop hardware.
Not sure how voting dollars work if you're representing 0.0001% of the market.
And 87.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
It's hardly 99% of desktop hardware, and I can assure Windows does not control 99.9999% of the desktop market. And it's not always "server hardware". And since you mentioned SuperMicro, you can get a SuperMicro board for under $100 if you'd like. If you spend less than $100 total on your MB+CPU+PS then you're really asking for trouble.
Do most desktop users run Windows? I wouldn't even give you that, considering how many Macs I see. But even if they did... at the end of the day:
A) Windows-only hardware is going to be cheaper (due to deals made with the devel, aspects normally handled by hardware being pushed into software, and them being willing to compensate for shitty hardware by putting lots of work into software drivers for the largest market)
B) You buy hardware to match what software/OS you mean to run. You don't try to run intense Photoshop-work on 2GB RAM, likewise if you need special Linux-driver support or care about sensors, then you don't buy stuff where the motherboard-manufacturer has skimped-out and used chips for which there is only Windows drivers.
C) You're going to have to pay a bit more for B, but it's not as much more as your exaggerations suggest.
And you really need to stop blaming Linux developers for lack of driver support when in reality it's the hardware-manufacturers' fault for not releasing specs and data. You'll find that Good Mfrs who do so actually get Linux drivers. The only drivers that get made for the others are the ones where a dev gets lucky reverse-engineering. Even popular hardware won't get drivers if the mfr keeps the specs closed and proprietary.
Again, vote with your wallet if you want change. Otherwise there's no audience for your complaining and your continued action is just working against your desires, as the mfrs selling stuff are getting the impression that people will keep buying their Windows-only crap. I can assure you, they're only looking at their sales sheet and NOT Slashdot forums.
I've sort of wanted to retract my comment, as the discussion seemed a bit heated, well I think I sounded aggressive and don't want to.
In the news there is Supermicro moving into consumer hardware (Z170 motherboards) and consumer brands (Asus, Gigabyte) doing motherboards with C2xx chipsets. But not sure if they'll further the cause of sensors support.
I might have the motherboard brands in too high esteem ; I've always thought that's where you found "freedom", that is much more freedom that with OEM PCs. I do and advise to buy motherboards rather than OEM usually. Spent over a decade on DOS/Windows though (I still do firmware upgrades from raw DOS as much as I can)
Ubuntu supported architectures list says that it easily could be IBM servers - the P-series boxes are pretty powerful machines.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.