yeah no thanks. Can get a cheapo android tablet for less than 100 and a bluetooth keyboard for like 30. Netbooks disappeared because the hardware simply wasn't good enough at the time; i should know i have an asus atom netbook gathering dust in a drawer. Once the hardware caught up, was powerful enough without killing the battery within 45 minutes, android tablets took over the market and there doesn't seem any point in going back. If you want a mobile workstation then get a laptop/ultrabook.
I got a $50 7" Android 6 tablet + a $10 bluetooth universal 7" keyboard & stand. I added a bluetooth mouse. You can add USB OTG for plugging in storage, keyboard, mouse. I can ssh & tunnel to home from Wifi, do google docs, run chrome, ebooks, youtube.
If it had > 1GB RAM, it'd be enough for a remote access laptop. With only 1GB of RAM, it lags when running more than 1 app at a time. Any tablet with more RAM seems to cost as much as a chromebook which I could run Linux on and do more.
specs?, piece of shit machines that were locked to having max 2 gb ram, who the fuck thought that was ever a good idea
Microsoft thought it was a good idea to limit netbooks.
The 1st netbooks ran Linux. People found out that they didn't need Windows. Just a browser mainly. Manufacturers found they could reduce a large % of the cost by not putting Windows on it.
MS had discontinued XP and netbooks couldn't run 7. So they brought XP back for netbooks. They created a spec it that limited the screen resolution, ram and cpu.
And that ultimately killed netbooks. It saved MS's Windows revenue for a number of years.
When the iPad and Android tablets came out, that trick wouldn't work anymore. Millions learned that they could do "internet" just fine without Windows. They could Google, Facebook, do google docs, listen to music, watch videos, take photos to put up on the web, chat, and surf the web.
Google Chromebooks are probably the closest we have to a Netbook now. For those of us that want to, Linux wll run on most of them too.
I used to read usenet. My reader had killfiles that could exclude specific authors, subjects, content, etc. I'd skim the subject line then dive into the articles if I was interested.
Now I use an rss reader. I'd love to have anything like killfiles.
And what sucks is that if you're not doing that on the job, taking classes or learning on your own means nothing. You have to have on the job experience to get a job.
This is something that really pissed me off early in my career. It didn't matter how much I learned/tinkered/grew on my own. My knowledge and ability was basically irrelevant unless I could qualify it by related job experience. This was even more frustrating at the time, because I had a stable job I didn't want to leave, but which wasn't giving me that "qualified" experience necessary to get the job I actually wanted.
I've always learned at home as well as at work. The key is to be able to get noticed so you can sell your non-job experience to your future employer. You also need to apply to places that value new skills.
If you want to keep learning, why are you trying to work at a company that doesn't value that?
When I started wearing one everyday, you had to wind it. Everyday. They had self winding ones. Later, they had LED models you had to press a button to see. I eventually had some kind of waterproof w/ alarm, stopwatch, countdown (casio or timex ironman). I tried the Timex Datalink (beam your calendar from outlook to your watch) and followed all the reverse engineering to get it working with Linux. After the case started getting eaten away, I switched back.
Then my RSI started & my wrist would hurt so I took it off at work sometimes. The strap broke & I got another. That broke a week later.
By that time, I was carrying a phone on my hip. I no longer have something on my wrist. I use the pocket watch (phone) now. I got a fit bit for Xmas. I don't think I care to put it on.
There are farmers making a living supplying farmers markets and local restaurants with vegetables. They don't need 100 acres. They might only need 5 acres and 2-4 people to work it. For that size farm, a 4 wheel tractor is stupid expensive and it can't maneuver.
As a consumer, I go to the farmer's market. I belong to a CSA. And I have a garden.
My garden is ~ 20' x 50' and I don't have much time for it. I have automated watering and mulch the heck out of it to keep weeds from getting going. I barely have time to harvest, let alone weed, fertilize and pick out pests. Much of the reason I garden is to minimize pesticides so I avoid that too,
If I was more knowledgeable and had more time, I could eliminate the CSA . The CSAs in our area probably run $500/summer up to $700. That could pay for a lot of robot!
Little Leaf Farms' bagged lettuce lasts longer (a least a week longer!) than the other brands in the stores. Probably because it doesn't spend a week being shipped from CA or FL to MA.
I have a Fire HD 7" 4th gen. I like the Digiland better. The *only* advantage the Fire has is to run Prime Video. The screen might be slightly higher resolution. It doesn't have Google Play so there are many apps I can't get on it.
I had an earlier tablet (ASUS transformer) with only 1GB. The only way B&N could entice me is more RAM. My phone has 2GB and seems to make a big difference to Android.
* Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris
* Can run headless and detached from GUI
* can teleport VMs between hosts, even if they run different OSs
* free and easy to install/use.
I don't find that VMware workstation is any better in general. VMware can run virtualize ESXi easily and work as in interface to a full ESXi though.
KVM with Virt-Manager is comparable to VirtualBox IMO. It can be extended with oVirt and OpenStack. It's Linux only which hurts it for desktop, but not servers.
In general, if you need something quick on your desktop, VirtualBox is great. As you get into details, different hypervisors offer different advantages.
At home, I turn off all the beeping on the UPS. On some, I had to remove the speaker.
If I'm home, I know the power is out. I don't need a beep to tell me. If I'm away, my UPS shutdown the systems and it was logged that it went down.
I write shell and will copy code from my scripts to paste & run. Leading spaces are no problem.
Tabs will invoke bash completion. No tabs!
No capes! Remember Thunderhead? Sucked into a vortex!
I develop a DVD to install Linux + Openstack on a system. We distribute as.iso and test as a physical DVD with instructions on burning on Win 7 w/ the included isoburn.
Some customers can use iDrac/iLo/IPMI to mount the.iso for install or convert the.iso to a USB stick to boot that. Not all BIOS can and they're all different. We leave that up to the clueful users and lead the neophytes down the easy path with a burned.iso.
I've found that burning an ISO takes less time than ubootin. On that note, is there a way to verify the DVD matches the.iso? We md5 the.iso, but the isoburn verify doesn't really verify:-( It needs to be on Windows & distributable too.
Maybe the enterprise of saving lives shouldn't be put entirely on the police? Obviously they have a role to play, but when we are talking about prevention, other institutions also have a huge role to play.
For example, many killings are the result of mental health problems that are going untreated. Part of the problem there is that the necessary care can be expensive. So....let's do something about that. What does the government-funded health care landscape look like these days? And what about educational grants (NOT LOANS) for mental health practitioners?
There is also still a strong social stigma against seeking mental health. Nobody is embarrassed to say something like "My arm was broke so I went to see the doctor," but the moment someone utters the phrase "mental health" everyone thinks of him as crazy, weak, and pathetic. This is ridiculous, and we need to put more social engineering to the task of fixing that (for example, a lot more television and movies can include scenes and dialogue implicating that the popular characters are seeing mental health professionals...and the attitude is that this is just a given that normal people do this sort of thing on a routine basis).
...
There is quite a lot that can be done, and the police can't be left alone to do it all.
Keep Sound Minds is trying to reduce the stigma of mental health issues and work toward policies that help people get help before damage is done.
I'd worry more about how to save games between sessions. How can they do that? Without leaving a browser window open forever? These Amiga games...there are a few shoot-em-up arcade style games, but most of them are in-depth experiences that take weeks or months to finish. You need to save your game and come back later.
I think they don't/won't/can't implement this functionality and thus this playable Amiga archive is worthless.
I have a 20' x 50 plot and work for a living with kids. Garden maintenance time is limited and sometimes gets skipped.
I have drip irrigation on an automatic timer. It will water in the morning when I'm at work or on vacation. I don't have to remember.
I'd love something automated that could weed, pick off pests, chase away things that eat my plants while I'm at work & at night, tell me when I have to harvest the lettuce before it bolts/gets bitter, wind the tomato/squash/beans/peas/cucumber onto vertical strings.
Not at all. The ideas behind farmbot include precision planting, precision watering, and the ability to more easily weed since you know exactly where the plants are. All of these things are increasingly important in agriculture. why are they important? Well precision planting allows mechanical weed control, and it also means water need not be wasted where there is no plant planted. Think of it as drip irrigation without the hoses and a lot more precise.
When it comes to precision planting, that's actually possible on a large scale right now, almost to the same precision the farmbot can do. I've seen 40' wide corn planters that can place a seed to within an inch of the same spot year after year (if that's what you really wanted to do). Rows of corn are perfectly spaced so that the plants are exactly the same distance apart. Automatic section control means there is absolutely no overlap even when driving back across already-planted soil. It's pretty remarkable!
Planting evenly in rows helps at all scales. In a garden, it means you can run a wheel hoe in between the plants and cut the weeds. On a larger scale, you tow a cultivator behind a tractor to to cut weeds. A nearby CSA uses a 1930's tractor & cultivator setup. Farmbot is scaling down from that.
Microsoft decided one UI should work everywhere. WinCE was the Windows desktop put onto phones. Windows 7 was the pinnacle of Desktop UI for Microsoft. Windows 8 was a tablet release, as is Windows 10. No more desktop, they want to compete with the iPad and iPhone.
You know what? The tablet UI works well on a phone. It's great for casual web, email and games. Or really anything you run one at a time like the days of DOS. If you're switching apps or running multiple apps, like the typical office worker, it's not as good. The desktop UI is great there. For a software developer the tablet is going to be harder for most.
Even *Apple*, the one choice no upgrades everything sealed Steve Jobs knows best, offers 2 interfaces. macOS for desktops, iOS for handhelds.
Microsoft needs to stop thinking one size fits all or start offering their core Enterprise apps on other platforms. Outlook (not OWA!), Skype Business, Office and Sharepoint clients for Linux and macOS. Full AD client. If they don't, enterprises will migrate away from AD, Exchange, Sharepoint to something else with a UI that works for their users.
I got my engineering degree with DOS. Everyone was issued a Z100 (non msdos!) with an 8088, Fortran and Basic. Some other programs such as CAD, PC-TeX were available. Russ Nelson worked at my college and created Freemacs, the word processor and the spelling checker and many other utilties in use at Clarkson
Some classes gave you a VMS or Unix account. When it was in heavy use at the end of the semester , it was faster to edit in DOS and upload than to scroll down the file in VMS. The DOS FORTRAN didn't have the extensions or libraries. Sometimes its math wasn't as accurate.
After I got a 286 and had gotten a Unix account (w/ Usenet access), I started trying to learn Unix things. Turbo C, GNUish utilities, Freemacs, Elvis and shell clones helped me. Minix was almost as helpful.
A 486 w/ 8mb lead to Linux replacing DOS and work as a Unix sysadmin. The DOS intro to C, awk, vi, lex, yacc (via "The Unix Programming Environment" was extremely helpful. Linux at home helped me continue learning. It could single task better than my Sparcstation 1+ running SunOS.
The 8088, 80286 and 486 systems probably cost ~ $5k each back in the day where a Unix workstation was ~ $20k if you could get one.
I told my 7 year old nephew that he couldn't have anything sharper than a twinkie after he dropped something. He said "What's a twinkie?" which is way funnier I think.
Believe it or not, Linux is not the end all & be all OS. There are things that other OSes do differently from Linux that might have application for real use cases.
vxWorks is a commercial real time OS uses on the mars rovers. NASA had a reason to choose it. Contiki is another embedded OS that does things Linux cannot. OpenBSD does security and code review. Some of it has trickled to other OSes. (W^X) OSX runs a Mach microkernel with a BSD derived OS. Minix is still around too. VMware and Android both use a Linux derived kernel but do not look like Linux. Even Windows has its place.
I currently work with OpenStack which (mostly) means Linux. I've been using Linux since '92. But I was a Solaris admin until recently and even installed Solaris 11 a few times. There are some things Solaris does better than Linux.
I've found Solaris to be more stable and better at handling loads. I had apps that ran fine on Solaris that crashed Linux on the port. Dtrace is an awesome tool to see what is really going on with your app. Systemtap might get there. Zones are secure, reliable containers. It's nice to finally see them get used in Linux. It will be good if they get the security up to the level of Zones. ZFS, well it's already on FreeBSD and I've been using it for years with ZFS on Linux. I'd like to see btrfs at the same reliability. I wish *every* CLI had as good a UI as ZFS does. I'd love a GUI that was as good! Solaris switched to SMF from SystemV type startup a long time ago. I liked it better than upstart. Systemd has been a bit smoother than SMF was at first.
Would I use Solaris for a desktop? NO! unless I had no choice. I bet most users stopped using RHEL/CentOS in favor of Ubuntu or something else a long time ago.
Oh, forgot KVM inside Zones for OpenIndiana.
Run Linux on KVM inside a Zone. Use dtrace on your Linux binaries.
Hardware gets ported by the vendor to Windows. Sometimes Linux, but there are lots of people that will also do it. For Macintosh, Apple has to licence a port, but is specific about which hardware is supported. And sells a decent number of units to make it not much more $$ than the Windows version.
Solaris has so few users that the cost of the port for a graphics card doesn't get spread across many units. The driver is the cost. If Oracle doesn't sell the hardware, you will rarely see a driver for it.
Many common (scsi) cards in Solaris had 32 bit support and never got 64 bit support.
If you pick your hardware before you install Solaris, it will likely work very well on Linux.
Believe it or not, Linux is not the end all & be all OS. There are things that other OSes do differently from Linux that might have application for real use cases.
vxWorks is a commercial real time OS uses on the mars rovers. NASA had a reason to choose it. Contiki is another embedded OS that does things Linux cannot. OpenBSD does security and code review. Some of it has trickled to other OSes. (W^X) OSX runs a Mach microkernel with a BSD derived OS. Minix is still around too. VMware and Android both use a Linux derived kernel but do not look like Linux. Even Windows has its place.
I currently work with OpenStack which (mostly) means Linux. I've been using Linux since '92. But I was a Solaris admin until recently and even installed Solaris 11 a few times. There are some things Solaris does better than Linux.
I've found Solaris to be more stable and better at handling loads. I had apps that ran fine on Solaris that crashed Linux on the port. Dtrace is an awesome tool to see what is really going on with your app. Systemtap might get there. Zones are secure, reliable containers. It's nice to finally see them get used in Linux. It will be good if they get the security up to the level of Zones. ZFS, well it's already on FreeBSD and I've been using it for years with ZFS on Linux. I'd like to see btrfs at the same reliability. I wish *every* CLI had as good a UI as ZFS does. I'd love a GUI that was as good! Solaris switched to SMF from SystemV type startup a long time ago. I liked it better than upstart. Systemd has been a bit smoother than SMF was at first.
Would I use Solaris for a desktop? NO! unless I had no choice. I bet most users stopped using RHEL/CentOS in favor of Ubuntu or something else a long time ago.
Yes, Linux has USB/IP support. There's a kernel module to handle it on the Linux host, and there's a client driver available for Windows (although I'm not sure how well it works as I've never used it myself).
I had a need to get a USB scanner into a Windows 7 VM that I connected to via RDP. I put Linux USB/IP on a raspberry PI and plugged the scanner in. The Windows box got the client. I could scan. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah no thanks. Can get a cheapo android tablet for less than 100 and a bluetooth keyboard for like 30.
Netbooks disappeared because the hardware simply wasn't good enough at the time; i should know i have an asus atom netbook gathering dust in a drawer. Once the hardware caught up, was powerful enough without killing the battery within 45 minutes, android tablets took over the market and there doesn't seem any point in going back.
If you want a mobile workstation then get a laptop/ultrabook.
I got a $50 7" Android 6 tablet + a $10 bluetooth universal 7" keyboard & stand. I added a bluetooth mouse. You can add USB OTG for plugging in storage, keyboard, mouse. I can ssh & tunnel to home from Wifi, do google docs, run chrome, ebooks, youtube.
If it had > 1GB RAM, it'd be enough for a remote access laptop. With only 1GB of RAM, it lags when running more than 1 app at a time. Any tablet with more RAM seems to cost as much as a chromebook which I could run Linux on and do more.
If only they had 7" chromebooks.
specs?, piece of shit machines that were locked to having max 2 gb ram, who the fuck thought that was ever a good idea
Microsoft thought it was a good idea to limit netbooks.
The 1st netbooks ran Linux. People found out that they didn't need Windows. Just a browser mainly. Manufacturers found they could reduce a large % of the cost by not putting Windows on it.
MS had discontinued XP and netbooks couldn't run 7. So they brought XP back for netbooks. They created a spec it that limited the screen resolution, ram and cpu.
And that ultimately killed netbooks. It saved MS's Windows revenue for a number of years.
When the iPad and Android tablets came out, that trick wouldn't work anymore. Millions learned that they could do "internet" just fine without Windows. They could Google, Facebook, do google docs, listen to music, watch videos, take photos to put up on the web, chat, and surf the web.
Google Chromebooks are probably the closest we have to a Netbook now. For those of us that want to, Linux wll run on most of them too.
I used to read usenet. My reader had killfiles that could exclude specific authors, subjects, content, etc. I'd skim the subject line then dive into the articles if I was interested.
Now I use an rss reader. I'd love to have anything like killfiles.
And what sucks is that if you're not doing that on the job, taking classes or learning on your own means nothing. You have to have on the job experience to get a job.
This is something that really pissed me off early in my career. It didn't matter how much I learned/tinkered/grew on my own. My knowledge and ability was basically irrelevant unless I could qualify it by related job experience. This was even more frustrating at the time, because I had a stable job I didn't want to leave, but which wasn't giving me that "qualified" experience necessary to get the job I actually wanted.
I've always learned at home as well as at work. The key is to be able to get noticed so you can sell your non-job experience to your future employer. You also need to apply to places that value new skills.
If you want to keep learning, why are you trying to work at a company that doesn't value that?
If you get a phone via Google Fi, you give up your Google Voice account and that number goes to the phone.
When I started wearing one everyday, you had to wind it. Everyday. They had self winding ones.
Later, they had LED models you had to press a button to see.
I eventually had some kind of waterproof w/ alarm, stopwatch, countdown (casio or timex ironman).
I tried the Timex Datalink (beam your calendar from outlook to your watch) and followed all the reverse engineering to get it working with Linux. After the case started getting eaten away, I switched back.
Then my RSI started & my wrist would hurt so I took it off at work sometimes. The strap broke & I got another. That broke a week later.
By that time, I was carrying a phone on my hip. I no longer have something on my wrist. I use the pocket watch (phone) now.
I got a fit bit for Xmas. I don't think I care to put it on.
Many Farmers do need scale. Some don't.
There are farmers making a living supplying farmers markets and local restaurants with vegetables. They don't need 100 acres. They might only need 5 acres and 2-4 people to work it. For that size farm, a 4 wheel tractor is stupid expensive and it can't maneuver.
As a consumer, I go to the farmer's market. I belong to a CSA. And I have a garden.
My garden is ~ 20' x 50' and I don't have much time for it. I have automated watering and mulch the heck out of it to keep weeds from getting going. I barely have time to harvest, let alone weed, fertilize and pick out pests. Much of the reason I garden is to minimize pesticides so I avoid that too,
If I was more knowledgeable and had more time, I could eliminate the CSA . The CSAs in our area probably run $500/summer up to $700. That could pay for a lot of robot!
http://passionatefoodie.blogsp...
Little Leaf Farms' bagged lettuce lasts longer (a least a week longer!) than the other brands in the stores. Probably because it doesn't spend a week being shipped from CA or FL to MA.
BestBuy sells a Digiland tablet for $50. 7" screen, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, quad core, SD slot, Vanilla Android 6, bluetooth, camera.
I have a Fire HD 7" 4th gen. I like the Digiland better. The *only* advantage the Fire has is to run Prime Video. The screen might be slightly higher resolution. It doesn't have Google Play so there are many apps I can't get on it.
I had an earlier tablet (ASUS transformer) with only 1GB. The only way B&N could entice me is more RAM. My phone has 2GB and seems to make a big difference to Android.
* Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris
* Can run headless and detached from GUI
* can teleport VMs between hosts, even if they run different OSs
* free and easy to install/use.
I don't find that VMware workstation is any better in general. VMware can run virtualize ESXi easily and work as in interface to a full ESXi though.
KVM with Virt-Manager is comparable to VirtualBox IMO. It can be extended with oVirt and OpenStack. It's Linux only which hurts it for desktop, but not servers.
In general, if you need something quick on your desktop, VirtualBox is great. As you get into details, different hypervisors offer different advantages.
At home, I turn off all the beeping on the UPS. On some, I had to remove the speaker. If I'm home, I know the power is out. I don't need a beep to tell me. If I'm away, my UPS shutdown the systems and it was logged that it went down.
I write shell and will copy code from my scripts to paste & run. Leading spaces are no problem. Tabs will invoke bash completion. No tabs! No capes! Remember Thunderhead? Sucked into a vortex!
I develop a DVD to install Linux + Openstack on a system. We distribute as .iso and test as a physical DVD with instructions on burning on Win 7 w/ the included isoburn.
Some customers can use iDrac/iLo/IPMI to mount the .iso for install or convert the .iso to a USB stick to boot that. Not all BIOS can and they're all different. We leave that up to the clueful users and lead the neophytes down the easy path with a burned .iso.
I've found that burning an ISO takes less time than ubootin. On that note, is there a way to verify the DVD matches the .iso? We md5 the .iso, but the isoburn verify doesn't really verify :-( It needs to be on Windows & distributable too.
Maybe the enterprise of saving lives shouldn't be put entirely on the police? Obviously they have a role to play, but when we are talking about prevention, other institutions also have a huge role to play.
For example, many killings are the result of mental health problems that are going untreated. Part of the problem there is that the necessary care can be expensive. So....let's do something about that. What does the government-funded health care landscape look like these days? And what about educational grants (NOT LOANS) for mental health practitioners?
There is also still a strong social stigma against seeking mental health. Nobody is embarrassed to say something like "My arm was broke so I went to see the doctor," but the moment someone utters the phrase "mental health" everyone thinks of him as crazy, weak, and pathetic. This is ridiculous, and we need to put more social engineering to the task of fixing that (for example, a lot more television and movies can include scenes and dialogue implicating that the popular characters are seeing mental health professionals...and the attitude is that this is just a given that normal people do this sort of thing on a routine basis).
There is quite a lot that can be done, and the police can't be left alone to do it all.
Keep Sound Minds is trying to reduce the stigma of mental health issues and work toward policies that help people get help before damage is done.
Ludicrous. I wonder who will have the honor of being the first country to exact the death penalty for file sharing.
Accessing files by working around the state protected gate keeper? DEATH!
Larry Niven wrote The Jigsaw Man about escalating penaties for crimes.
I'd worry more about how to save games between sessions. How can they do that? Without leaving a browser window open forever? These Amiga games...there are a few shoot-em-up arcade style games, but most of them are in-depth experiences that take weeks or months to finish. You need to save your game and come back later.
I think they don't/won't/can't implement this functionality and thus this playable Amiga archive is worthless.
The dosbox emulator they use does save games. http://ascii.textfiles.com/arc.... It might be possible (or is already done!) for SAE
I have a 20' x 50 plot and work for a living with kids. Garden maintenance time is limited and sometimes gets skipped.
I have drip irrigation on an automatic timer. It will water in the morning when I'm at work or on vacation. I don't have to remember.
I'd love something automated that could weed, pick off pests, chase away things that eat my plants while I'm at work & at night, tell me when I have to harvest the lettuce before it bolts/gets bitter, wind the tomato/squash/beans/peas/cucumber onto vertical strings.
Not at all. The ideas behind farmbot include precision planting, precision watering, and the ability to more easily weed since you know exactly where the plants are. All of these things are increasingly important in agriculture. why are they important? Well precision planting allows mechanical weed control, and it also means water need not be wasted where there is no plant planted. Think of it as drip irrigation without the hoses and a lot more precise.
When it comes to precision planting, that's actually possible on a large scale right now, almost to the same precision the farmbot can do. I've seen 40' wide corn planters that can place a seed to within an inch of the same spot year after year (if that's what you really wanted to do). Rows of corn are perfectly spaced so that the plants are exactly the same distance apart. Automatic section control means there is absolutely no overlap even when driving back across already-planted soil. It's pretty remarkable!
Planting evenly in rows helps at all scales. In a garden, it means you can run a wheel hoe in between the plants and cut the weeds. On a larger scale, you tow a cultivator behind a tractor to to cut weeds. A nearby CSA uses a 1930's tractor & cultivator setup. Farmbot is scaling down from that.
Microsoft decided one UI should work everywhere. WinCE was the Windows desktop put onto phones. Windows 7 was the pinnacle of Desktop UI for Microsoft. Windows 8 was a tablet release, as is Windows 10. No more desktop, they want to compete with the iPad and iPhone.
You know what? The tablet UI works well on a phone. It's great for casual web, email and games. Or really anything you run one at a time like the days of DOS. If you're switching apps or running multiple apps, like the typical office worker, it's not as good. The desktop UI is great there. For a software developer the tablet is going to be harder for most.
Even *Apple*, the one choice no upgrades everything sealed Steve Jobs knows best, offers 2 interfaces. macOS for desktops, iOS for handhelds.
Microsoft needs to stop thinking one size fits all or start offering their core Enterprise apps on other platforms. Outlook (not OWA!), Skype Business, Office and Sharepoint clients for Linux and macOS. Full AD client. If they don't, enterprises will migrate away from AD, Exchange, Sharepoint to something else with a UI that works for their users.
I got my engineering degree with DOS. Everyone was issued a Z100 (non msdos!) with an 8088, Fortran and Basic. Some other programs such as CAD, PC-TeX were available. Russ Nelson worked at my college and created Freemacs, the word processor and the spelling checker and many other utilties in use at Clarkson
Some classes gave you a VMS or Unix account. When it was in heavy use at the end of the semester , it was faster to edit in DOS and upload than to scroll down the file in VMS. The DOS FORTRAN didn't have the extensions or libraries. Sometimes its math wasn't as accurate.
After I got a 286 and had gotten a Unix account (w/ Usenet access), I started trying to learn Unix things. Turbo C, GNUish utilities, Freemacs, Elvis and shell clones helped me. Minix was almost as helpful.
A 486 w/ 8mb lead to Linux replacing DOS and work as a Unix sysadmin. The DOS intro to C, awk, vi, lex, yacc (via "The Unix Programming Environment" was extremely helpful. Linux at home helped me continue learning. It could single task better than my Sparcstation 1+ running SunOS.
The 8088, 80286 and 486 systems probably cost ~ $5k each back in the day where a Unix workstation was ~ $20k if you could get one.
I told my 7 year old nephew that he couldn't have anything sharper than a twinkie after he dropped something. He said "What's a twinkie?" which is way funnier I think.
x86_64 and no SPARC.
Believe it or not, Linux is not the end all & be all OS. There are things that other OSes do differently from Linux that might have application for real use cases.
vxWorks is a commercial real time OS uses on the mars rovers. NASA had a reason to choose it.
Contiki is another embedded OS that does things Linux cannot.
OpenBSD does security and code review. Some of it has trickled to other OSes. (W^X)
OSX runs a Mach microkernel with a BSD derived OS.
Minix is still around too.
VMware and Android both use a Linux derived kernel but do not look like Linux.
Even Windows has its place.
I currently work with OpenStack which (mostly) means Linux. I've been using Linux since '92. But I was a Solaris admin until recently and even installed Solaris 11 a few times. There are some things Solaris does better than Linux.
I've found Solaris to be more stable and better at handling loads. I had apps that ran fine on Solaris that crashed Linux on the port.
Dtrace is an awesome tool to see what is really going on with your app. Systemtap might get there.
Zones are secure, reliable containers. It's nice to finally see them get used in Linux. It will be good if they get the security up to the level of Zones.
ZFS, well it's already on FreeBSD and I've been using it for years with ZFS on Linux. I'd like to see btrfs at the same reliability. I wish *every* CLI had as good a UI as ZFS does. I'd love a GUI that was as good!
Solaris switched to SMF from SystemV type startup a long time ago. I liked it better than upstart. Systemd has been a bit smoother than SMF was at first.
Would I use Solaris for a desktop? NO! unless I had no choice. I bet most users stopped using RHEL/CentOS in favor of Ubuntu or something else a long time ago.
Oh, forgot KVM inside Zones for OpenIndiana.
Run Linux on KVM inside a Zone. Use dtrace on your Linux binaries.
Solaris is pickier about hardware than Linux.
Hardware gets ported by the vendor to Windows. Sometimes Linux, but there are lots of people that will also do it.
For Macintosh, Apple has to licence a port, but is specific about which hardware is supported. And sells a decent number of units to make it not much more $$ than the Windows version.
Solaris has so few users that the cost of the port for a graphics card doesn't get spread across many units. The driver is the cost. If Oracle doesn't sell the hardware, you will rarely see a driver for it.
Many common (scsi) cards in Solaris had 32 bit support and never got 64 bit support.
If you pick your hardware before you install Solaris, it will likely work very well on Linux.
x86_64 and no SPARC.
Believe it or not, Linux is not the end all & be all OS. There are things that other OSes do differently from Linux that might have application for real use cases.
vxWorks is a commercial real time OS uses on the mars rovers. NASA had a reason to choose it.
Contiki is another embedded OS that does things Linux cannot.
OpenBSD does security and code review. Some of it has trickled to other OSes. (W^X)
OSX runs a Mach microkernel with a BSD derived OS.
Minix is still around too.
VMware and Android both use a Linux derived kernel but do not look like Linux.
Even Windows has its place.
I currently work with OpenStack which (mostly) means Linux. I've been using Linux since '92. But I was a Solaris admin until recently and even installed Solaris 11 a few times. There are some things Solaris does better than Linux.
I've found Solaris to be more stable and better at handling loads. I had apps that ran fine on Solaris that crashed Linux on the port.
Dtrace is an awesome tool to see what is really going on with your app. Systemtap might get there.
Zones are secure, reliable containers. It's nice to finally see them get used in Linux. It will be good if they get the security up to the level of Zones.
ZFS, well it's already on FreeBSD and I've been using it for years with ZFS on Linux. I'd like to see btrfs at the same reliability. I wish *every* CLI had as good a UI as ZFS does. I'd love a GUI that was as good!
Solaris switched to SMF from SystemV type startup a long time ago. I liked it better than upstart. Systemd has been a bit smoother than SMF was at first.
Would I use Solaris for a desktop? NO! unless I had no choice. I bet most users stopped using RHEL/CentOS in favor of Ubuntu or something else a long time ago.
Yes, Linux has USB/IP support. There's a kernel module to handle it on the Linux host, and there's a client driver available for Windows (although I'm not sure how well it works as I've never used it myself).
I had a need to get a USB scanner into a Windows 7 VM that I connected to via RDP. I put Linux USB/IP on a raspberry PI and plugged the scanner in. The Windows box got the client. I could scan. Problem solved.