Practical Technology

Every uear, The Linux Foundation compiles an analysis of who actually contributes the most to Linux’s code (PDF Link). In the last year, 2011, besides the usual suspects, which includes Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Samsung, Oracle and Google, you’ll also find some you didn’t expect to see such from such as Nokia and, drum-roll [...]

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We all know that technologies come and go. Sometimes, technology companies do the same thing. I’ve long thought that VMware’s days were numbered, and not because there’s anything wrong with its technology. VMware has dominated the virtualization market ever since that market came into being. It has done so the old-fashioned way: by offering good [...]

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With the Windows 8 beta, excuse me Consumer Preview, due out on February 29th it’s time for those of who love bleeding-edge operating systems to consider how to test it. Now, you can run the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on its own PC, but this is beta software. While I have PCs just for software [...]

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Ace Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley swears she’s not drinking. Microsoft really is getting ready to enable customers to make Linux and Windows virtual machines (VMs) persistent on Windows Azure, its public platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud service. That Microsoft was going to enable users to set up persistent VMs on Azure came as no surprise. While [...]

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For decades now, we’ve been fussing about operating systems. “Mac OS X is better than Windows!” “Why upgrade to Windows 7 when XP works just fine?” “You’re all wrong. Linux rules.” Such arguments are about to become history. Thanks to advances in virtualization, cloud technology and the Web, it matters less and less to users [...]

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