Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 10, 2014
by sjvn01
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Say hi to Windows 8.2 — er, 10

Windows 8 is quite possibly the worst desktop operating system that Microsoft ever released. Since Windows 8 is going up against such all-time flop-a-doodles as Vista and Windows ME, that’s saying something.

And it’s not just me saying that. The marketplace agrees. Look at NetMarketShare’s October 2014 operating system market share numbers. Windows 8 and 8.1 had a combined share of 16.8%. How bad is that? Bad enough to lag behind the long officially dead and buried Windows XP, even after it suffered an unexplainable drop of 6.7% in one month.

Two years into the Windows 8 debacle, what could Microsoft do? Rush out a replacement. And try to distance it from Windows 8 as much as possible by calling it Windows 10 rather than the sequentially logical Windows 9. But when you actually use it, what it feels like is Windows 8.2.

Say hi to Windows 8.2 — er, 10

November 6, 2014
by sjvn01
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OpenStack: Distribution or service?

PARIS — OpenStack, the open-source, private-cloud answer to Amazon Web Services and other public clouds, is growing fast. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask BMW, GoDaddy, Wells-Fargo, Time-Warner Cable, or any of the other 46 percent of OpenStack companies that have moved it into production.
OpenStack: Distribution or service? More>

November 5, 2014
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu LXD: Not a Docker replacement, a Docker enhancement

PARIS — Sometimes it seems that Canonical, Ubuntu‘s parent company, can’t win for losing. Often accused of trying to force other open-source groups to follow their lead by keeping projects internal until they feel it’s ready to be shared with others, when Ubuntu announced its intention to build LXD, a hypervisor for containers at the OpenStack Summit, the company was immediately accused of announcing vaporware (!); of shoving LXD down other programmers’ throats; and of trying to replace Docker.

Please!

I spoke with Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu’s founder, and Dustin Kirkland, Canonical’s product manager, at the conference, and here’s really what’s going on with LXD.

Ubuntu LXD: Not a Docker replacement, a Docker enhancement. More>

November 5, 2014
by sjvn01
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Fedora 21 beta finally arrives

It’s a bit late, but the Fedora 21 betais now out and ready to download.

Previously, Fedora was first and foremost a desktop distribution that also contained server elements. If all went well, the new features introduced in Fedora would eventually appear in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This go-around, there are three Fedora spins: one for the cloud, one for the server, and one for the workstation.

Fedora 21 beta finally arrives. More>

October 15, 2014
by sjvn01
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Sexism is alive and well in the tech world

When I first heard what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had said at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, I assumed it had been misreported.

Yeah, I know, me giving a Microsoft honcho the benefit of the doubt! What is the world coming to?

But it was difficult to believe that Nadella, when asked what advice he would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises, would tell his audience of mostly technically savvy women, “It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise.”

Sexism is alive and well in the tech world. More>

October 3, 2014
by sjvn01
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A shout out for the introverts

Developers like to think they’re extroverted. Chances are they’re not. A recent IDG study, Introverts vs. Extroverts: Is There an IT Personality?, found that just over half of IT workers are introverts. Only those engineers who mistakenly think they’re extroverted would find that surprising.

Now, before you take offense, to say that most IT workers are introverts (as defined by HR’s favorite personality inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI) isn’t to say that they are the stereotypical computer nerd.

You know the stereotype I mean: An extremely bright, badly dressed, pudgy man with all the social graces of a bad-tempered alligator, who plays Dungeons and Dragons twice a week, can recite Monty Python skits and Star Wars scenes from memory, and can passionately argue that vi is better than EMACS and that only lusers run Linux since FreeBSD is the one true geek operating system.

A shout out for the introverts. More>