When I installed Microsoft Windows 7 beta on one of my computers, one things I’ve noticed was that it was a quick and rather painless install. It seems light with less “bloatware”. It reminded me of a linux install way back when Linux didn’t try to be “use-friendly”. Back then when you install Linux, [...]]]> [ad#inline-ad-in-article]

windows 7 desktop

HomeGroup password

When I installed Microsoft Windows 7 beta on one of my computers, one things I’ve noticed was that it was a quick and rather painless install. It seems light with less “bloatware”. It reminded me of a linux install way back when Linux didn’t try to be “use-friendly”. Back then when you install Linux, you install an OS, nothing else. After installing the OS, you then go about installing what you want applications and tools to go with the OS. It looked like a majority of people, I guess because most are either busy or lazy and not wanting to deal with something “they don’t have to” didn’t like going through this and most didn’t even consider Linux. This made Linux the OS of geeks.

From the beginning, Bill Gates realized this and he capitalized on it. Success. People loved it because it was “user-friendly”. Microsoft began adding more and more stuff into its OS and it showed in the Windows OS that started coming out of Redmond. Together with flashy, epic naming schemes (remember Millenium Edition? ugh), Windows became increasingly bloated with each version. But because hardware because increasingly powerful and better, the bloat didn’t pose any significant problem to users. Adding more memory and faster peripherals seems to make the bloat a non-issue. Until Vista, when Microsoft found the straw that broke the camel’s back. I didn’t even installed Vista because the horror stories scared me. So I’m one of the many XP holdouts.

As I was saying, the install went well and the next few personalization setup were pretty easy as well. But then I tried working with networks and this is where a few issues were found. Can you believe it? This OS wants you to remember (it actually ask you to write it down) a series of alphanumeric characters because IT assigns a password you rather than just allowing you to create one, an easy to remember one. So primitive in my opinion.

And one more very important thing which really got into my nerve. You CAN’T upgrade a Windows XP computer. Yep, you have to wipe out the entire system and install fresh. In a few computers you would really want to do this but for some, a simple upgrade is the simplest and preferable way moving from one OS to another.

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Oracle buys Sun for $7.4 billion, making it a direct competitor to HP and IBM.

What I’m wondering now is [...]]]>

Oracle

Big news today in tech is the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. Sun, powerhouse during the dot-com era finally gets gobbled another Silicon Valley gorilla, Oracle, who’s been on a buying spree of late.

Oracle buys Sun for $7.4 billion, making it a direct competitor to HP and IBM.

MySQL

What I’m wondering now is would this be the end of the free database wonder MySQL. In 2007, Oracle tried to buy MySQL for $850 million. MySQL was acquired by Sun in 2008 for $1 billion.  With this acquisition, Oracle effectively got MySQL for free. Would this be the end of the free MySQL? That is the question.

Sun Microsystems

I started my tech career on a Sun Microsystems SPARCstation and moved up from there. It was also on a SPARC where I was introduced to Unix with it’s multi-user, multi-session capability, and from there to linux and BSD.

SUSE

It was also because of my introduction to a SPARC station that I started installing and playing with Solaris on a PC, which was not an easy thing to do. After that experiment Slackware and SUSE  seemed like a cakewalk. So for those of you who are still complaining about OS installations, count your blessings. Compared Solaris and Slackware/SUSE, well there’s no comparison.

Sun was founder by Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla, and Scott McNealy in 1982 at Staford University. Tow years later, they had an annual revenue of $1 billion.