Posts tagged with: linux

Links of interest for 2 Sep 2009 - 24 Sep 2009: IBM Throws Out Microsoft Office - Welcome to the party IBM. Sun did this years ago. 99% of people don't use half the functionality in MS Office anyway. Linus calls Linux 'bloated and huge' - ... and it's suffered on average a 2% decrease in performance per release over the last 10 releases making a cumulative drop of 12%. How are the Linux advocates in the corporate world substantiating this drop in performance? Solaris customers certainly wouldn't accept it. Ellison: Sunacle is an IBM killer - `Ellison was adamant:... Continue reading ►

Links of interest for 20 Jul 2009 - 15 Aug 2009: HTML5 Canvas and Audio Experiment - This is a brilliant display of some of the cool things you can do in HTML5 (Requires a browser that supports HTML5 like Firefox 3.5) How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World' - Oooops. Just as well I don't have an iPhone. Why does 1.6 beat 4.7? - BestPerf - People always forget the details, and it's often these details that competitors deliberately leave out too. Triple-Parity RAID-Z : Adam Leventhal's Weblog - ZFS has just got triple-parity RAID-Z support. Why? Alan... Continue reading ►

I work with a couple of guys who are quite stuck in their ways and are quite reliant on old tools, one of which is xclipboard(1). Unfortunately, Gnome comes with it's own clipboard manager, so when you try to run xclipboard, you get the following: $ xclipboard Error: another clipboard is already running $ Of course, ps(1M) will show no clipboard related processes running. This is because the functionality is performed by Gnome itself, I believe, as part of the functionality of gnome-settings-daemon. One of my colleagues gave me the challenge of getting xclipboard working on Gnome on OpenSolaris/Nevada, ie Gnome 2.6, and I found it quite easy to do in the end. The trick is to tell Gnome not to perform this functionality anymore as follows: Continue reading ►

Whilst I'm primarily a Solaris/OpenSolaris man, I do like to keep myself in touch with the Linux world - partly out of necessity and partly out of curiosity. I run Ubuntu (sticking with my African roots and because it's the best distro I've used) on my very very very old laptop (need) and also within VirtualBox on my Mac (curiosity). Well, it's that time of year again: it's time to update to the latest and greatest as Jaunty Jackalope is now ready for all to download, install and enjoy. Along with the usual latest and greatest features, I'm particularly... Continue reading ►

The time right now, in seconds since epoch, is exactly... 1234567890 If you're visiting after the event, it's Friday 13 February 2009 @ 23:31:30 GMT (aka UCT).

Links of interest for 14 Nov 2008 - 1 Dec 2008: Replacing high-end Unix with enterprise Linux? Not so fast - It's nice to see some people are actually looking at the merits of Solaris 10 and it's Containers (aka zones with provisioning) in comparison to a Linux/VMware alternative. Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks - Interesting benchmarking of these 3 popular operating systems, and believe it or not OpenSolaris (or Slow-aris as it was once coined) does pretty well. Code Instructions: Java Performance - A good read if you still have doubts about Java's performance. Java is much much... Continue reading ►

As you will have no doubt heard today, Adobe are making available a 64-bit version of the Flash Player for Linux to those who want to be on the cutting edge (it's still alpha). When I heard this, I couldn't help but ask myself "Why? Why on earth do you need a 64-bit Flash player?". I don't think there is a single Flash application out there that has reached the constraints of a 32-bit environment and I doubt a single Flash developer has wished he had a full 64-bit address space, nor do I think they ever will. What's more, Firefox, in which you're likely to be running the Flash player is only 64-bit if you compile it yourself. Why do you need a 64-bit version of Firefox anyway? Are there plans for it to gobble up even more memory than it used to? Anyway, I headed over to the Adobe Flash Player 10 labs site to see what this was all about, and then I found my answer, I think: Continue reading ►

Links of interest for 14 Oct 2008 - 1 Nov 2008: Multicore Bollocks - Hmmm, for someone who's head of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, he certainly talks a load of old cobblers about multicore CPUs. Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009 - Sounds like there will be more need for ZFS then, that's why Sun are working on some awesome storage products coming to market very soon. Watch this space. Anatomy of an attack: The New York Times on Solaris - Blowing that NYT and Computerworld article to pieces in an analytical manner. Good read, regardless of which side... Continue reading ►

Links of interest for 10 Apr 2008 - 29 Apr 2008: easySMF at OpenSolaris.org - Cool. A web based tool for easy SMF manifest creation. Simply enter the various bits of information, generate the XML file and import it into SMF. Much quicker and easier than writing it all out by hand. Sun: Trying to do the right thing - It's nice to see someone actually seeing things from Sun's point of view, without actually being a Sun employee. Well done. Sun looks to free up the rest of Java - Nice one. Ultimate HTML Color HEX Code List by... Continue reading ►

Links of interest for 21 Mar 2008 - 25 Mar 2008: Paper Enigma Machine - What a brilliant idea, and a great teaching tool too. Sun turns to lasers to speed up computer chips - Now this would be brilliant if Sun research proves to be a success. Sun's continually proving it is light years (excuse the pun) ahead of everyone else in the processor business and this is just another example. Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology as "miserable failure" - I wonder how many more people are going to come forward now and bring their problems to light. All... Continue reading ►