Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 12, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

World without Linux

DATELINE: WindowsWorld 2008: Microsoft CEO and President, Steve Ballmer was happy as a clam today at his WindowsWorld keynote in San Francisco’s Gates Center. “Nothing can make me happier to tell you that, Larry Page CEO of Google,” a niche AOL search engine, “has agreed to run their search engine on Windows Server 2004.”

Ballmer continued, “It can only be good that even Google’s customers finally have access to a real server. Unix had its place, but, come on, that old command-line driven thing? Unix hasn’t been businesses’ operating system of choice since NT was introduced.”

Ballmer also announced that Windows Longhorn for Personal Computers would be released, after nine years of development, “sometime in 2011 for a list price of $799.” This made the fourth time in the 21st century that Ballmer had announced that Longhorn would be release soon. In the meantime, users will have to make the best of Windows 98 XP.

At this point in his keynote speech, there was a disturbance in the front as a group of demonstrators started shouting “GNU-HURD! GNU-HURD! GNU-HURD!” The police quickly hustled them away.

More >

November 11, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

The big Windows 7 lie

You’ve read the early reviews with comments like Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista and Windows 7 is wicked fast. Sounds great doesn’t it? On closer inspection though Windows 7 M3 (Milestone 3) is being revealed as being just a “slightly tweaked version of Vista.”

When I said recently that early Windows 7 reviews based on handpicked bribes, ah high-end laptops, to reviewers and bloggers could only give results that were not a lot different from those of a rigged demo I was more right than I knew. Randall Kennedy put the Windows 7 engine on a real test-bench and discovered that, at the kernel level, “When viewed side by side in Performance Monitor, Vista and Windows 7 were virtually indistinguishable.”

In case you haven’t used Vista, that means you can expect Windows 7 performance to be lousy. Kennedy ran the same application performance tests comparing XP and Vista and found that Vista ran 40% slower than XP. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, if you must run Windows, run XP SP3.

Application tests underlined Windows 7’s more than skin-deep resemblance to Vista. Kennedy found, “In a nutshell, Windows 7 M3 is a virtual twin of Vista when it comes to performance.” There are also peas in a pod when it comes to being resource hogs. Microsoft can talk about how Windows 7 will work great on netbooks and some people can claim that Windows 7 will run desktop Linux off netbooks, but Windows 7 is no more suitable than Vista is for a netbook.

More >

November 10, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Linux software installation myths

In a recent story about Microsoft running scared of Linux, I got a lot of mail saying things like, “when installing programs becomes as easy as Windows then Microsoft will be in trouble….most people couldn’t be bothered stuffing around trying to find programs that will work and then figuring out how to install [them].” Ah, hello, it’s actually easier to install software in Linux than it is in Windows.

There is, however, a key difference that it appears many Windows users don’t get. In Windows, every program has its own installation routine. Usually, but not always, it requires you to click on some variety or the other of individualized setup program. In mainstream Linux distributions you use one program, often called a package manager, to install all your programs.

Personally, I find the Linux method easier because not only do package managers install the programs, they also enable you to search for a program. Say you want a program to display Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) files. In Windows, you need to find out what program you’ll need-Adobe Acrobat Reader, then download it, and then install it. Easy enough, but it could be easier.

With openSUSE, for example, I select Install Software from my main KDE menu. Install Software is part of openSUSE’s YaST administration program. I’m then presented with a menu where one of my options is to search for software. I put in ‘PDF,’ you see I don’t even need to know the name of the program that can handle PDF, and it shows me a listing of programs and their descriptions. At the top of the list is AcroRead from Adobe. I click on it and YaST takes care of downloading and installing it.

So, in short, with Linux I don’t need to even know the name of a program, I just search for what I need with the package manager and once I find something I like I just give it one click and that’s it. With Windows, searching, downloading and installing software is three separate operations. Advantage: Linux.

More >

November 10, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

The next Windows: 7Up (the Un-Vista) or New Vista?

Running away as fast as it can from Vista, Microsoft rolled out an alpha version of Windows 7 at its recent Professional Developers Conference. But is Windows 7 going to be 7Up, the Un-Vista, or is it going to be (gag) New Vista?

Microsoft would like you to believe that Windows 7 is going to be the next great desktop operating system. It’s not. The company would also like you to please forget that it said the same things about Vista. Remember how Windows 98 was followed by Windows 98 Second Edition? That’s what we have here: Windows 7 is Vista SE.

That’s not an altogether bad thing. Windows 98 SE was a big improvement on Windows 98, and at this very early stage, it looks like Windows 7 will also be a major step up from Vista Service Pack 1. Of course, that’s not saying much. Frankly, I think Windows XP Pro SP3 is a step up for Vista users.

Under the hood, Windows 7 uses the Vista engine. However, at the PDC, Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live, promised that Microsoft would be tuning up this notoriously slow and cranky motor. It’s too early to tell how successful that effort will be, but at least Sinofsky’s team is tossing out Windows Mail and Windows Photo Gallery, which have no business being in an operating system.

More >

November 9, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Hotmail does work–badly–with Linux

Linux-Watch has reported that at least one Linux user was unable to use the newly redesigned Windows Live Hotmail. Other Linux desktop users have also reported problems with the new Hotmail.

However, a closer look reveals that the problem isn’t with Linux and Hotmail’s interoperability, but with how Hotmail handles browsers with “UserAgent” settings that it doesn’t recognize. The User-Agent string is sent by your browser to the Web server hosting the site you’re visiting. This character string, at the least, identifies your Web browser to the server. It usually also contains optional details, which are called tokens. These typically include your operating system, language, and hardware. For example, my UserString at my main desktop is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008091700 SUSE/3.0.3-1.1 Firefox/3.0.3

That tells the Web server that I’m using a Mozilla 5.0 compatible Web browser, on a PC with X11 windowing running on a 64-bit SUSE Linux system using the Gecko Web rendering engine and the Firefox 3.03 Web browser.

You can see what your browser is reporting to servers by visiting the, What is my User Agent Web site. Notice I didn’t say ‘what your browser actually is,’ I said. ‘what it’s reporting itself to be to servers.’ It’s a big difference and that’s where the fix for the Hotmail problem comes from.

More >

November 7, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Why Microsoft is running scared of Linux

icrosoft is frightened. Even Ballmer is telling users that they can skip Vista, which tells you everything you need to know about Vista’s failure. In the past, Microsoft wouldn’t have sweated this kind of flop. “What can users do?” they’d say. “Move to Linux or Macs? Ha!” That was then. This is now.

Today, major PC vendors are selling netbooks like hotcakes on a cold Vermont morning and three out of ten of those are running Linux. As my comrade in arms, Preston Gralla observes, “Microsoft isn’t just worried about ceding 30 percent of the netbook market to Linux. It’s also worried that if people get used to Linux on netbooks, they’ll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs. Here’s what Dickie Chang, an analyst at research firm IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg about that: ‘It’s a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative.'”

Exactly, and that’s why Microsoft is rushing out Windows 7, which is a stripped down Vista SP2, as fast as they can and jerking out features so it will run on netbooks with minimal hardware. Gralla thinks Windows 7 will kill Linux on the netbook, I don’t see that.

More >