I have a dual boot on some of my machines using Windows 7 and OpenSuse 12.3. Most of them just run OpenSuse Linux though. I really like Mint too, but my preferred UI is KDE. I only boot Windows now when I have to. I have mostly had an uneasy relationship with Microsoft for years. I kept spending and upgrading the OS, the utilities and other add-ons. I was convinced I needed to stay with Windows. But after being asked to help my friends, family and colleagues with their trashed Windows installations, I decided to tell them I would only help them if I could install Linux. First of all, everybody wants a copy of my damn software. I fricken paid for it and it was getting old and annoying with all the friends, family and colleagues that were asking me to give them the copies I paid for. My reply to a plea for help has been, call the local computer guy and give him your card number or agree to trying Linux. The first reason to install Linux for them is that it is legal and doesn't affect my licenses. Second, it is FREE and that was hard for them to argue with. Third, doing a full Linux install to a fraction of the time that a Windows install too. My kid's behavior online kept pounding their Windows installations. They didn't obey my rules for the Internet. But they needed it for school work too. Fine, now their installations don't break and even if they did, it would be free and less timely to fix. Another benefit is my kids are now grown and the Linux experience I forced on them, has enhanced their career opportunities and resumes. At the office I replaced the server and workstation OS's and everything still runs great. My computers also are easier to deal with. Linux uses all human readable config files. I don't like regedit or "win.ini" edits. Yes, there still are some decent Windows products. But the reason to use them is because others annoy you to keep them in the fold and you aren't motivated enough to try something else yourself. Microsoft will always be with us and a force to be aware of, but they're relevance is in decline. They might have their "Coca Cola" moment with Windows 8 and 8.1, but the horses have already left the barn. Most young people use mobile phones more so than anything else. They will be more familiar with a UI like that at the desktop at work, and so will their eyes when they age. None of them are using Windows on phones. Of all the people I have helped, only 2 have gone back to Windows. Some that have bought new computers with Windows 8 have begged me to come over again and get rid of it. The handwriting is on the wall.
It really took a pile of government money to fund some geniuses at a university to figure that out, huh? And people wonder why the planet is going broke!
I lost patience with Adobe long ago. I know Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop. But it does 98% of the stuff I need to do and it's hard to argue with FREE. Inkscape is coming along very nicely now too. Getting off of their upgrade treadmill is a relief.
Steven Sinofsky was the head of the Windows division of Microsoft. He was probably fired. But he says he left for his own reasons. Yeah, sure. That should tell us that even Microsoft realizes they pooched this deal. Everybody I know that got a computer with 8 on it has begged me to put 7 on it for them. But I actually put OpenSuse 12.3 on a bunch of machines lately. UEFI is a pain in the a$$ too.
I was making a joke. But I actually have an HP XW8600 as my desktop machine. It has 2 quad core Xeons with 12M cache running at 3Ghz. I also have 32G of ram and an Nvidia GT520 graphics card with 2G ram. It runs games pretty nice. I have a dual boot with Win7 Ult 64-bit and OpenSuse 12.3 64-bit. Most of my games are now on Steam for Linux. Actually works quite well. But those big burly Xeons arouse my techno lust.;-) Oh, and Windows 8 is just stupid.
Hey, I want a pair of these new CPU chips from Intel with 10 cores each and 30M of cache in my next PC. These CPU's will now directly access a measly 12TB of ram. Heck, they're only $4616 each. Why not use them to run Far Cry 3 real fast?;-)
Windows 8 takes a decent interface and hoses it up. But Microsoft had to change something to keep you on the upgrade treadmill. It's not about better, its about money. Told ya so.
Shakespeare, in Henry IV, Part One, 1596: Falstaff: 'The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.'
I'm with Billy Boy on this one. If there was one inkling of a national security issue, I would opt for a different choice than these Chinese companies.
Okay, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist. But if there isn't a good chance of a backdoor in their software, I'm a monkey's uncle. Aren't these companies partly owned by the People's Liberation Army?
I think Unions have been one of the biggest sources of Luddite thinking in many fields. I'm just guessing. But I'll bet the teacher's unions would not support a path of innovation that allowed for fewer instructors. Heck, if banks were unionized there wouldn't be any such thing as an ATM.
I now do much of my shopping online. If I want a pair of Levi 501's, it doesn''t matter where they come from. As long as it is convenient and cheap. This is what has been dooming many brick and mortar stores. If this is true for stores, it may be more so for brick and mortar schools. With online courses and lectures, much of the need to waste gas money and driving time has evaporated too. My youngest son is taking college math classes and more online from an good University. The cost is far lower for him and class size is almost irrelevant. This goes way beyond white boards and tablets.
The older I get, the harder it gets to fight off becoming a cynical old coot. I have wondered why the USA is militarily involved in a country like Afghanistan. On the surface it does not appear to have anything in the national interest. Sure there were some terrorist training camps there. From the sparse media coverage of this war, the country appears to be run by 7th century goat herders. The drone war has been flattening those bases and the bad guys over there for a while though. What has been peculiar is this:
Why do we have boots on the ground when drones are working so well? Why are we spending so much effort at "Nation Building".
Well well well. It appears there is a huge deposit of rare earths that were discovered by some of our geologists. Try Googling "rare earths Afganistan". Some reports claim a trillion dollar cache of the stuff has been discovered. I suspect there maybe a larger deposit than that. Check out just this one article.
The system you have detailed could be inadequate. But I just read that the development system will have this:
The development-stage system in question is known as “Piston,” and it’s based on Xi3s X7A modular system. That system has a quad-core processor, up to 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to a terabyte of solid state storage and support for three monitors. The starting price for the X7A is $999. Again, those specs don’t necessarily reflect what’s inside of Piston, or what the price would be if it hit the market.
There are lots of people claiming that the little SFF computer called the Piston does not have the power to adequately run Steam games under Linux. But I have Linux Mint KDE 14 AMD64 installed on an HP nx9420 laptop which is 5 years old. It only has a dual core 2.16GHz processor, the equivalent of an Nvidia GT 7900 GPU and 4GB of ram. I was playing Dark Descent, Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor all weekend. It worked great. If this laptop will do this well, I'm sure that little SFF computer will be just fine also. I wonder if Valve will release them with a subscription like mobile phone companies do.
Granted, the license terms of FLOSS definitely has the look and feel of a socialist ideology. And yes, the military is very conservative. I actually am the father of two sons in the USMC. But aside from the politics (which makes me cringe) FLOSS is "open". One is free to dissect the code and alter it on a whim. I actually also think Windows 7 is a decent product.. I do not like 8 at all. But right now I am doing this reply using Linux Mint 14 KDE. With Microsoft as a partner, the software also becomes an extra security risk from an outside source. I wonder how much code is actually written in the US now and not outsourced to India or another county.
I am also not a Microsoft hater, as is fashionable in many circles. I just think this is a poor and expensive choice. It is not the job of the military to subsidize US companies either. Their job is to kill people and break things. I know this sounds brutal. But it is what it is.
I am in the semiconductor business. Of course we know how heavily dependent the military is on this technology. But yet, often times when a piece of military hardware is built, there is a requirement for a second source. This is in case the first source should falter in delivery. It's a security issue based on that. Why is this any different with software? If the military were to commit themselves to free open source software, they would be more soundly in control of their own security and destiny. This Microsoft deal doesn't make sense at all.
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I have a dual boot on some of my machines using Windows 7 and OpenSuse 12.3. Most of them just run OpenSuse Linux though. I really like Mint too, but my preferred UI is KDE. I only boot Windows now when I have to. I have mostly had an uneasy relationship with Microsoft for years. I kept spending and upgrading the OS, the utilities and other add-ons. I was convinced I needed to stay with Windows. But after being asked to help my friends, family and colleagues with their trashed Windows installations, I decided to tell them I would only help them if I could install Linux. First of all, everybody wants a copy of my damn software. I fricken paid for it and it was getting old and annoying with all the friends, family and colleagues that were asking me to give them the copies I paid for. My reply to a plea for help has been, call the local computer guy and give him your card number or agree to trying Linux. The first reason to install Linux for them is that it is legal and doesn't affect my licenses. Second, it is FREE and that was hard for them to argue with. Third, doing a full Linux install to a fraction of the time that a Windows install too. My kid's behavior online kept pounding their Windows installations. They didn't obey my rules for the Internet. But they needed it for school work too. Fine, now their installations don't break and even if they did, it would be free and less timely to fix. Another benefit is my kids are now grown and the Linux experience I forced on them, has enhanced their career opportunities and resumes. At the office I replaced the server and workstation OS's and everything still runs great. My computers also are easier to deal with. Linux uses all human readable config files. I don't like regedit or "win.ini" edits. Yes, there still are some decent Windows products. But the reason to use them is because others annoy you to keep them in the fold and you aren't motivated enough to try something else yourself. Microsoft will always be with us and a force to be aware of, but they're relevance is in decline. They might have their "Coca Cola" moment with Windows 8 and 8.1, but the horses have already left the barn. Most young people use mobile phones more so than anything else. They will be more familiar with a UI like that at the desktop at work, and so will their eyes when they age. None of them are using Windows on phones. Of all the people I have helped, only 2 have gone back to Windows. Some that have bought new computers with Windows 8 have begged me to come over again and get rid of it. The handwriting is on the wall.
Golly, Mr Wizard. I'm gonna pitch Firefox now.
That's the same thing that I thought. The CO2 at Mammoth Mountain here in California has been so high it's killing trees. It's all volcanic too.
It really took a pile of government money to fund some geniuses at a university to figure that out, huh? And people wonder why the planet is going broke!
I lost patience with Adobe long ago. I know Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop. But it does 98% of the stuff I need to do and it's hard to argue with FREE. Inkscape is coming along very nicely now too. Getting off of their upgrade treadmill is a relief.
Steven Sinofsky was the head of the Windows division of Microsoft. He was probably fired. But he says he left for his own reasons. Yeah, sure. That should tell us that even Microsoft realizes they pooched this deal. Everybody I know that got a computer with 8 on it has begged me to put 7 on it for them. But I actually put OpenSuse 12.3 on a bunch of machines lately. UEFI is a pain in the a$$ too.
I was making a joke. But I actually have an HP XW8600 as my desktop machine. It has 2 quad core Xeons with 12M cache running at 3Ghz. I also have 32G of ram and an Nvidia GT520 graphics card with 2G ram. It runs games pretty nice. I have a dual boot with Win7 Ult 64-bit and OpenSuse 12.3 64-bit. Most of my games are now on Steam for Linux. Actually works quite well. But those big burly Xeons arouse my techno lust. ;-) Oh, and Windows 8 is just stupid.
Hey, I want a pair of these new CPU chips from Intel with 10 cores each and 30M of cache in my next PC. These CPU's will now directly access a measly 12TB of ram. Heck, they're only $4616 each. Why not use them to run Far Cry 3 real fast? ;-)
http://ark.intel.com/products/53580/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8870-30M-Cache-2_40-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI
Windows 8 takes a decent interface and hoses it up. But Microsoft had to change something to keep you on the upgrade treadmill. It's not about better, its about money. Told ya so.
These people spend all their time trying to deny other people of freedom. If we need any kind of control, it's Senator control.
Geez.
If it was gaining in Botswana, Outer Mongolia or Paraguay it might have been believable. Nah.
Since Microsoft is so good at ripping off other ideas, they might as well be consistent. Why not steal KDE for their next brilliant idea.
The latest Mint is a Debian based distro too. Much better than that crazy Ubuntu distro.
OpenSuse has as the default desktop KDE 4.10.1. It's a stable UI and very customizable too. I love it. I just installed it on a bunch of computers.
Shakespeare, in Henry IV, Part One, 1596:
Falstaff: 'The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.'
I'm with Billy Boy on this one. If there was one inkling of a national security issue, I would opt for a different choice than these Chinese companies.
Okay, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist. But if there isn't a good chance of a backdoor in their software, I'm a monkey's uncle. Aren't these companies partly owned by the People's Liberation Army?
Yeah, I know. But it is an improvement from the way things used to be. I only see this gaining inertia too.
I think Unions have been one of the biggest sources of Luddite thinking in many fields. I'm just guessing. But I'll bet the teacher's unions would not support a path of innovation that allowed for fewer instructors. Heck, if banks were unionized there wouldn't be any such thing as an ATM.
I now do much of my shopping online. If I want a pair of Levi 501's, it doesn''t matter where they come from. As long as it is convenient and cheap. This is what has been dooming many brick and mortar stores. If this is true for stores, it may be more so for brick and mortar schools. With online courses and lectures, much of the need to waste gas money and driving time has evaporated too. My youngest son is taking college math classes and more online from an good University. The cost is far lower for him and class size is almost irrelevant. This goes way beyond white boards and tablets.
The older I get, the harder it gets to fight off becoming a cynical old coot. I have wondered why the USA is militarily involved in a country like Afghanistan. On the surface it does not appear to have anything in the national interest. Sure there were some terrorist training camps there. From the sparse media coverage of this war, the country appears to be run by 7th century goat herders. The drone war has been flattening those bases and the bad guys over there for a while though. What has been peculiar is this:
Why do we have boots on the ground when drones are working so well?
Why are we spending so much effort at "Nation Building".
Well well well. It appears there is a huge deposit of rare earths that were discovered by some of our geologists. Try Googling "rare earths Afganistan". Some reports claim a trillion dollar cache of the stuff has been discovered. I suspect there maybe a larger deposit than that. Check out just this one article.
http://www.livescience.com/16315-rare-earth-elements-afghanistan.html
Me cynical? Naaaa.
I control my oven using DOS and DESQview with the command line. Weasels!
The system you have detailed could be inadequate. But I just read that the development system will have this:
The development-stage system in question is known as “Piston,” and it’s based on Xi3s X7A modular system. That system has a quad-core processor, up to 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to a terabyte of solid state storage and support for three monitors. The starting price for the X7A is $999. Again, those specs don’t necessarily reflect what’s inside of Piston, or what the price would be if it hit the market.
http://techland.time.com/2013/01/08/xi3s-piston-a-steam-box-emerges-sort-of/
There are lots of people claiming that the little SFF computer called the Piston does not have the power to adequately run Steam games under Linux. But I have Linux Mint KDE 14 AMD64 installed on an HP nx9420 laptop which is 5 years old. It only has a dual core 2.16GHz processor, the equivalent of an Nvidia GT 7900 GPU and 4GB of ram. I was playing Dark Descent, Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor all weekend. It worked great. If this laptop will do this well, I'm sure that little SFF computer will be just fine also. I wonder if Valve will release them with a subscription like mobile phone companies do.
Granted, the license terms of FLOSS definitely has the look and feel of a socialist ideology. And yes, the military is very conservative. I actually am the father of two sons in the USMC. But aside from the politics (which makes me cringe) FLOSS is "open". One is free to dissect the code and alter it on a whim. I actually also think Windows 7 is a decent product.. I do not like 8 at all. But right now I am doing this reply using Linux Mint 14 KDE. With Microsoft as a partner, the software also becomes an extra security risk from an outside source. I wonder how much code is actually written in the US now and not outsourced to India or another county.
I am also not a Microsoft hater, as is fashionable in many circles. I just think this is a poor and expensive choice. It is not the job of the military to subsidize US companies either. Their job is to kill people and break things. I know this sounds brutal. But it is what it is.
I am in the semiconductor business. Of course we know how heavily dependent the military is on this technology. But yet, often times when a piece of military hardware is built, there is a requirement for a second source. This is in case the first source should falter in delivery. It's a security issue based on that. Why is this any different with software? If the military were to commit themselves to free open source software, they would be more soundly in control of their own security and destiny. This Microsoft deal doesn't make sense at all.