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Berst Says it May be Time for Linux
yelvington writes "'Throw Away Windows? When -- and Whether -- to Switch to Linux' is the headline of today's Berst Alert. He's come around to recommending Linux on high-end servers and departmental file/print servers; he's more cautious about desktops. His justification is more industry support, more technical support, and more applications. Cynical take on it: Jesse's back from vacation, and he's looking for a cheap ride from the slashdot effect to get things rolling again."
Imagine trying to support linux over the phone....what fricking nightmare.
Phone support is difficult under the best of circumstances, but, IMNSHO, linux phone support is *WAY* easier than Windows.
For one thing, "type this:" is much easier to express clearly over the phone than "find an icon that looks like a computer and is labeled 'System', then click on the tab labeled 'Device Manager', then look for a picture of a..."
But the real big win for Linux is that, if the network is up, a remote techincal support person can actually log in there and see for himself, directly what the problem is. Linux just dominates Windows when it comes to remote administration.
If I were a large PC vendor and wanted to ship supported Linux desktops to newbies, I'd install an admin account on each machine which would allow tech support to log in and identify problems. This would allow tech support not only to fix problems, but also to do periodic maintainence, sanity checks, and upgrades according to a service contract selected by the customer. (Customers would, of course, be able to disable such an account at any time.)
A small boot partition on the hard disk could be reserved to boot the system with a standard configuration which would guarentee that the system would retain enough functionality to dial into the tech support network regardless of the abuses the user applies to the operating system.
Think of the ads: Having problems? Just type "fixme" at the lilo prompt and our expert technical support staff will be connected to your machine in minutes!
I think this sort of thing will eventually become the norm, once people get used to the idea. Hackers will always take care of their own machines, but the masses will let someone else do the dirty work. I don't see this happening with Windows anytime soon, though.
Somewhere I saw a chronological collection of Jesse Berst quotes about Linux - it was pretty funny to see him twist in the wind as Linux gained in popularity and he had to change his tune. Anyone know where that list is?
It isn't a bad article for ZDnet. Little technical details, but thats ZDnet. If they did have any technical details you can be assured they'd be wrong. I don't know what a 'general workhorse server' is and it would've been useful to see what services he feels a 'general workhorse server' requires.
Chances are he was just talking through his hat, that for balance reasons he needed a counterpoint. Not being particularily competent he invented 'general workhorse servers' and figured nobody would task him on a definition.
In defense of ZD I do like the way Linux has been treated for years on the ZDTV lineup (and on the Screen Savers in particular -- I knew I was watching a good show when I saw the huge-sized stuffed tux sitting in the corner).
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
At least one version is here, at http://www.lwn.net/1999/features/199 8timeline.
Who said it was? Jesse Berst? You're supposed to ignore him, anyhow. People love to rant and rave about things the "Linux community" is supposedly doing. 9 times out of 10, though, the "Linux community" is doing no such thing.
Linus has said he is interested in improving Linux's scalablity; he certainly hasn't said that Linux can be used on massive machines now. He also has said repeatedly that his core interest is the desktop.
Linux will be eventually scale up pretty far, but, yes, for the time being, Solaris is the way to go for relatively high-end stuff.
Of course, the Sun machines I work with run what would be more accrately described as GNU/Solaris... :-)
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This is an example of theoretising to death, at the expense of good and sound PRACTICAL options. We have no OS today that is so clean and logical in its design and so well abstracted in its interface that there is no dirty work, so any discussion of Linux on the desktops is about comparing it to what Joe-Shmoe is using today: Windows.
I would kill to be in a situation where everyone who calls me when there computers "break" would have systems that I could log into remotely...
There are really only a few fonts we need:
- Arial/Helvitica
- Times/Times New Roman
- Courier New
Manually hinted fonts typically seperate each font type into seperate files. Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Italic, Arial Bold Italic are all really seperate fonts under Windows and MacOS.This gives a much higher quality font that what you see if you try to apply Bold and Italic to a font.
Creating fonts with those little font creation programs doesn't cut it, going in and manually hinting the font file will always give you better results. There are very few people who can manually hint a font and make it look good, it is truly an art.
Microsoft has made a few fonts available for free download, but you still have to agree to their license.
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The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Yes, but the law concerns what Gates was Doing, not what is going on right now. If I'm charged with going 55 in a 45 mile an hour zone, then they change the sign to read 55 the next day, that doesn't let me off the hook. Gates had a monopoly, he abused the monopoly he had, breaking the law. Gates has to pay the legal recourse (I say throw the company in jail (you can't throw a company in jail, but the equvilent would be to remove its buisness license) for a year!).
God, that's sure the truth. I've been home sick watching CNN for a couple of these major events (TWA was one) and it is unbeleivable the inane questions they ask.
Investigator: "We've prepared a statement - we have just begun the investigation, we will give you hourly breifings on what we know, when we know it, theis is ongoing, will thake weeks or months to piece together what happened here, so if you'll all just bear with us. At this time we have only recovered small sections of the plane that were floating on the surface, no indications at this point that there was an explosion, but it is too early to rule anything out at this point."
Cluelss Reporter: "Can you comment on wild speculation we've heard that an Iraqi gunboat fired a surface to air missle that struck the plane in the left wing?"
Investigator: "No, as I've said, we have only very preliminary information at this time - the plane appears to have crashed into the water, we are looking for survivors as well as any pieces of wreckage that may give us some clue as to if this is some mechanical malfunction or some type of elposive or sabotage, but it is too early to tell and I'm not going to speculate..."
Clueless Reporter #2: "Can you say anything about the possibility that this was some kind of terrorist attack timed to coincide with the Olympics in Atlanta?"
Investigator: "No, as I've said..."
I don't know how these guys are able to put up with these stupid questions for hours at a time without screaming "God, can't you hear? We don't know yet!"
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Just an observation, but I think Jesse's hairstyle changes more frequently than his opinion does.
I'll have you know not all MCSE's are Redmond's bootlicking toadies.
Yeah, but there's a huge population of grunts with enough rote memorization skills to pass "Windows NT Server in the Enterprise" on the third try. Somewhere, in the back of their brains, they know that the value of their paper MS Certificates are about to get flushed down the toliet, and the first stage of loss is Denial. But don't worry, a few years from now, these folks will be your freindly neighborhood inexpensive Linux fuckups.
(Same thing happened with CNE certs when NT came in a few years ago.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It's only a matter of time before Linux does to Windows what the PC did to the Mac. The Mac, in the late 80s/early 90s was a quite obviously superior piece of hardware to your run-of-the-mill PC. But it cost a lot more. The mass market went for the cheaper alternative, because the case for the Mac was not sufficiently compelling to make up for the higher cost.
The same thing is about to happen to Windows.
As soon as hardware vendors think they can get away with it (read: as soon as Linux will allow people to deal with Word documents and play some games), they will bundle Linux instead of Windows, to try to get that extra edge on the competition. It will save them $40-80 per unit, a not-inconsiderable sum in the razor-thin-margin PC market.
Think about the following trends:
- KDE moving to version 2.0 and including an office suite
- The beginnings of mainstream gaming support
- Corel's end-user Linux distribution
- Very-low-end clone vendors beginning to ship Linux as their default OS
and you can see that Windows' days as the ubiquitous desktop OS are indeed numbered.The preloads are coming; it's just a matter of time.
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Linux according to Jesse Berst
"I think it's great if you are willing to promote Linux to your boss. As long as you are aware of the risk you are taking. The risk of getting fired." (Feb. 16).
"Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not." (June 23).
"I personally think Windows NT will be the mainstream operating system within a few years." [...] "My belief: Linux will never go mainstream" (Sep. 9).
"I've always said that Linux could become a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows NT." Sep. 28).
I want to try the TrueType servers out there... but I can't quite figure out how. There's not a "Font HOWTO" hiding somewhere out there anywhere?