Practical Technology

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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The faster a computer goes, the more likely is to have Linux at its heart. The most recent Top500 list of supercomputers shows that, if anything, Linux is becoming even more popular at computing’s high end. In the latest Top500 Supercomputer list, you’ll find when you dig into the supercomputer statistics that Linux runs 457 [...]

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If you follow my work, you won’t be surprised to know that I really dislike Windows 8’s proposed new interface, Metro. That’s not because I hate everything from Microsoft. It’s because I hate anything that’s a bad design, and it’s not just Microsoft that’s guilty of that. So are open-source groups such as GNOME. Unlike [...]

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When you turn on your computer, a primitive system that dates back more than 30 years, the basic input/output system (BIOS), turns your cold hardware into a functioning system that your operating system can then boot from. Alas, it’s sadly out of date. PC makers have slowly been replacing BIOS with the Unified Extensible Firmware [...]

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Freak snowstorm reported in hell. Tea party agrees Obama is the best candidate for 2012 presidential election. Microsoft submits open-source code under the GPLv3 to Samba. Those are all pretty unlikely, but Microsoft really did submit code to the Samba file server open-source project. This might not strike you as too amazing. After all, Microsoft [...]

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