ZFS has other exciting problems. Like the bug where if your file system gets too full, ZFS will start using 70-80% of CPU to try to allocate the blocks absolutely perfectly rather than just getting on with allocating the damn things.
(Sun have acknowledged the bug. "Yeah, we'll have a fix next update, six months. Probably." Their workaround in the meantime? "Keep your disks below 70% full." Yeah, that's why we bought huge disks and believed your lies about the brilliance of ZFS. We are not best pleased.)
The Edsel is a remarkably apt comparison for Vista. A huge development effort, a lot of hype, some great new ideas, some terrible new ideas, rather too pricey, not as reliable as it should have been, some appalling design flaws and a name that has resonated through culture since as synonymous with "lemon by design."
The Comet - which was an Edsel by design, make no mistake, but polished and usable - was a huge hit because they disassociated it with the Edsel and corected the most glaring Edsel design flaws, so its qualities could come out.
I've been trying the Windows 7 beta. I'm not a fan of Microsoft by a long shot, but it's not too bad. It's very responsive and usable, and it's SO PRETTY. It's damn fat, and it's painfully slow to boot... but it's not quite the lemon Vista was.
Wine is excellent for this sort of thing. Its strong point is the sort of ancient crapware that your business just happens to rely on, where you can't find the original company that developed it, let alone ask for an updated version. It's worth a try.
For comparison, a MIPS notebook is currently available and doing reasonably well in the UK and the Netherlands: http://littlelinuxlaptop.com/ - the firmware is ass, but the haxx0rs have come up with their own distro which is presently at early-beta stage.
(I've tried typing on one. I can actually touchtype properly on it, which I can't on an Eee 701.)
A MIPS or ARM chip of a given processing power will always give better results with less heat than an x86, because RISC is actually better for that sort of thing. I realise all modern x86s are RISC inside with an x86 microcode interpreter on the front, but that interpreter's still fat enough to make the difference.
And Windows will never run on them ever (though I wouldn't mind trying NT4 for MIPS on the little laptop;-) but GNU/Linux is exactly the same.
It worked for Ford! The Edsel was the Vista of its day and bombed horribly. Its successor, the Ford Comet, was a huge success... after they changed its name from the original "Edsel Comet" and refrained from talking about its Edsel design roots.
No. I was amazed to find it was on the same server as my stuff, and that my stuff is in such esteemed company. The guy who actually runs the server told me it was Linux, but it appears it's actually TFA 2006.
Note that Microsoft knows this and this is why they were heavily pushing the US Government to fund the bailout. They don't want people being squeezed and looking at cutting back on Microsoft licenses.
Iceland is indeed tiny. However, it's a sovereign first-world European country. (Not part of the EU, but part of the EEA, and culturally European.) Also, they all speak perfect English (including, as evidenced, fluent "fuck you.") So the danger to Microsoft is a whole country of smart, literate people leaving and telling everyone else they have and how they did it. Fucking over Icelanders is not a generally good strategy.
(Status: doesn't actually, er, compile as yet. And even if it did, the program launcher wouldn't work. But more people to at least solve the inability to compile would be most welcome. Current block: Cygwin's header files are on crack.)
It's actually pretty easy if you approach it in a Unix way.
I've worked in this sort of setup with Solaris. We had a pile of geologists - scientists who couldn't work computers - with super-powerful Solaris workstations.
Their logins were served via NIS. Their home directories were served via NFS. The application directories were served via NFS. The machines ran the software locally, but it was loaded from the remote directories. Their home directories were backed up reliably. Any machine could be jumpstarted at any time, on the rare occasions we needed to tweak the local OS. Anyone could log in at any machine and have THEIR environment.
The most annoying part is that no machine used more than a few gig of disk (for Solaris 8), so we had hundreds of gigs of unused space. We'd make it into scratch disk for those who asked nicely. "This is NOT recoverable or backed up. It could be DELETED IN AN HOUR." Of course, some bozos kept stuff there for weeks and complained when their machine failed that we hadn't backed it up...
So, precis: * Apps over NFS * Homes over NFS * User logins over NIS * Jumpstart/Kickstart all boxes.
Bollocks it's making huge strides toward reducing boot time. You wouldn't be saying that if you'd actually tried the beta (I'm presuming you haven't from "apparently," which implies you don't actually know hands-on). It's responsive and usable once booted, but takes bloody forever to actually get there.
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Or they could just use Debian. Getting Ubuntu to work wouldn't be hard from there.
ZFS has other exciting problems. Like the bug where if your file system gets too full, ZFS will start using 70-80% of CPU to try to allocate the blocks absolutely perfectly rather than just getting on with allocating the damn things.
(Sun have acknowledged the bug. "Yeah, we'll have a fix next update, six months. Probably." Their workaround in the meantime? "Keep your disks below 70% full." Yeah, that's why we bought huge disks and believed your lies about the brilliance of ZFS. We are not best pleased.)
All hardware sucks. All software sucks.
Well, you can hardly trust Wikipedia, given it runs on MySQL.
Because even a 12" laptop is too heavy and unwieldy to carry *everywhere*. A 9" laptop is another matter.
No, that was Windows ME ;-)
The Edsel is a remarkably apt comparison for Vista. A huge development effort, a lot of hype, some great new ideas, some terrible new ideas, rather too pricey, not as reliable as it should have been, some appalling design flaws and a name that has resonated through culture since as synonymous with "lemon by design."
The Comet - which was an Edsel by design, make no mistake, but polished and usable - was a huge hit because they disassociated it with the Edsel and corected the most glaring Edsel design flaws, so its qualities could come out.
I've been trying the Windows 7 beta. I'm not a fan of Microsoft by a long shot, but it's not too bad. It's very responsive and usable, and it's SO PRETTY. It's damn fat, and it's painfully slow to boot ... but it's not quite the lemon Vista was.
Wine is excellent for this sort of thing. Its strong point is the sort of ancient crapware that your business just happens to rely on, where you can't find the original company that developed it, let alone ask for an updated version. It's worth a try.
They've already stated they will: Windows XP to compete with Win 7 in netbook market.
For comparison, a MIPS notebook is currently available and doing reasonably well in the UK and the Netherlands: http://littlelinuxlaptop.com/ - the firmware is ass, but the haxx0rs have come up with their own distro which is presently at early-beta stage.
(I've tried typing on one. I can actually touchtype properly on it, which I can't on an Eee 701.)
A MIPS or ARM chip of a given processing power will always give better results with less heat than an x86, because RISC is actually better for that sort of thing. I realise all modern x86s are RISC inside with an x86 microcode interpreter on the front, but that interpreter's still fat enough to make the difference.
And Windows will never run on them ever (though I wouldn't mind trying NT4 for MIPS on the little laptop ;-) but GNU/Linux is exactly the same.
Microsoft has stated Windows 7 Starter Edition will be available to US OEMs.
It worked for Ford! The Edsel was the Vista of its day and bombed horribly. Its successor, the Ford Comet, was a huge success ... after they changed its name from the original "Edsel Comet" and refrained from talking about its Edsel design roots.
I'd say it'd be well worth it.
Remember: they can't lock up what they do any more.
No. I was amazed to find it was on the same server as my stuff, and that my stuff is in such esteemed company. The guy who actually runs the server told me it was Linux, but it appears it's actually TFA 2006.
At least Intel fix Wine-induced crashes, unlike Nvidia.
It's tiny, but it's a literate, first-world European country. The danger would be them being a model for others.
Note that Microsoft knows this and this is why they were heavily pushing the US Government to fund the bailout. They don't want people being squeezed and looking at cutting back on Microsoft licenses.
Iceland is indeed tiny. However, it's a sovereign first-world European country. (Not part of the EU, but part of the EEA, and culturally European.) Also, they all speak perfect English (including, as evidenced, fluent "fuck you.") So the danger to Microsoft is a whole country of smart, literate people leaving and telling everyone else they have and how they did it. Fucking over Icelanders is not a generally good strategy.
I assume you've reported the problems as bugs?
Of course, it's a problem getting obscure proprietary games that are difficult to obtain to work.
Working on it!
(Status: doesn't actually, er, compile as yet. And even if it did, the program launcher wouldn't work. But more people to at least solve the inability to compile would be most welcome. Current block: Cygwin's header files are on crack.)
So where are the links to your patches that were rejected?
1. sounds more like NIS.
It's actually pretty easy if you approach it in a Unix way.
I've worked in this sort of setup with Solaris. We had a pile of geologists - scientists who couldn't work computers - with super-powerful Solaris workstations.
Their logins were served via NIS. Their home directories were served via NFS. The application directories were served via NFS. The machines ran the software locally, but it was loaded from the remote directories. Their home directories were backed up reliably. Any machine could be jumpstarted at any time, on the rare occasions we needed to tweak the local OS. Anyone could log in at any machine and have THEIR environment.
The most annoying part is that no machine used more than a few gig of disk (for Solaris 8), so we had hundreds of gigs of unused space. We'd make it into scratch disk for those who asked nicely. "This is NOT recoverable or backed up. It could be DELETED IN AN HOUR." Of course, some bozos kept stuff there for weeks and complained when their machine failed that we hadn't backed it up ...
So, precis:
* Apps over NFS
* Homes over NFS
* User logins over NIS
* Jumpstart/Kickstart all boxes.
Linspire is now part of Xandros. This is them.
It's Linspire's "click'n'run" app store.
Bollocks it's making huge strides toward reducing boot time. You wouldn't be saying that if you'd actually tried the beta (I'm presuming you haven't from "apparently," which implies you don't actually know hands-on). It's responsive and usable once booted, but takes bloody forever to actually get there.
No, Presto installs to the hard disk. The motherboard version is in the BIOS.