[Info-vax] [OT] Linux vs Windows vs OS X. Was Re: Unix on A DEC Vax?

[Paul Sture]

In article <am2f2gFhdhmU1 at mid.individual.net>,
 billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:

> In article <nospam-3395ED.21543919012013 at news.chingola.ch>,
> 	Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
> > In article <am0ap2F23lrU1 at mid.individual.net>,
> >  billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> 
> >> In the past week I have done a 2008 Server and a Ubuntu.  Which one
> >> do you think was harder?
> > 
> > It's been a couple of years since I installed Ubuntu but I'd reckon 
> > Ubuntu is the harder of the two.
> 
> Damn, I thought that question was rhetorical.  No, Ubuntu was trivial.
> My father could have installed it.  :-)

OK. I just tried it with the 12.04 CD in a virtual machine.  For some 
reason the download site insisted on giving me the 32 bit version when I 
had asked for the 64 bit version so I went digging into the full array 
of downloadable images.  That reminded me that if you are going for a 
double boot solution or want to install the likes of LVM at 
installation, what you really need is the "alternative" Ubuntu 
distribution.

The vanilla installation was much better than my experience with 11.04 
in 2011, but I wouldn't say it is any easier than Windows Server 2008.

Getting Ubuntu up to date post installation is a lot easier of course :-)

> >> My last Ubuntu install asked only one question: Do you want to use the
> >> whole disk?  In the average users desktop install I can think of no
> >> reason to ever answer no.
> > 
> > OK, I'm not the average user, and was doinbg dual boot installations.
> 
> Yes, that makes it into something even a pro wil likely have a hard
> time with.  But, getting back to competing with Windows, how many of
> the average Windows users have multi-boot systems?

Not average Windows users, but I gather that Apple make this quite 
simple to do with Boot Camp, though I cannot speak from first hand 
experience.

> > 
> > I did find Ubuntu a swine when I wanted to do something as simple as 
> > change the desktop image, 
> 
> really?  I don't usually mess with stuff like that as it is non-functional
> and PC's to me, regardless of which OS they run, are just tools and all I
> care about is functionality.  I'll take a look at it later.  But, to be
> honest, I don't know how to do it on Windows either.  I seem to recall
> seeing it in a menu somewhere (tiled or stretched to fit) but I tend to
> not change it there either.

I've just looked that up and realise I meant login screen image.  I 
found the default one unpleasantly garish.  Here was what I found for 
11.04:

http://www.sture.ch/node/180

> >                           and particularly when I wanted a non-US date 
> > format (which seems strange when you consider that Canonical is a UK 
> > company).
> 
> I can't believe that is that difficult.  Date format where?  Wouldn't that
> be application specific rather than something the OS does?  Date in the
> OS is always ticks since the epoch.

On 12.04 it is relatively easy to find the date format and apply it 
system wide.  For some reason though, trying to change the default 
language for menus etc only offered options like Australian English, not 
British English.  That fixed itself once I had the patches up to date.

>> 
> >> Some rags are questioning how much longer the Apple domain will last.
> > 
> > They are saying the same about MS, HP and others too.  I really cannot 
> > see Apple disappearing any time soon.
> 
> Didn't say dieappearing, just losing a lot of the dominance.  MS is in
> an evenmore dangerous position.  I would bet that the government accounts
> for a very large portion of MS's business.  If they were to decide that
> they can no longer afford that luxury and that OpenSource can meet their
> needs (and it can!!) it could prove rather disturbing to their bottom line.
> I am actually working on a magazine article (which I doubt anyone here will
> ever see) to address this very issue with at least one faction of DOD.)

I cam across an article a few months ago which reckoned that MS should 
take a decision: Concentrate on _either_ the Office stuff _or_ the 
server stuff.

The Barclays story I posted yesterday was interesting. To quote a bit I 
didn't yesterday:

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/barclays-cloud-open-source-103349

"Barclays saved  90 percent of its IT budget by avoiding products from 
Microsoft, Google, Oracle and SAP. The non-traditional infrastructure 
has also helped the bank cut down mobile app development time 
dramatically, and release its PingIt mobile service in seven months 
instead of two years."

That does of course imply that they are willing to divert those saved 
budgets into in-house effort rather than buying COTS which has as 
prerequisites software from MS, Google, Oracle and SAP.

> > 
> >> 
> >> I am actually looking at VirtualBox on Server 2008 again.  It has improved
> >> but it still has some quirks I don't like.  But we will see where it goes.

VirtualBox itself has improved over the last couple of years.

> > I found VirtualBox on Server 2008 to be very solid and it could 
> > certainly handle some hefty I/O loads.
> 
> Two problems that I am aware of (from experience):
> 
> 1. Guests don't restart automatically on reboot. (I have been given some
> work-arounds for this, but I hate kludges)

I simply had a batch file on the desktop which ran CLI vboxmanage to do 
this.  In my earlier experience the "send shutdown signal" option wasn't 
reliable, so I did shutdowns from within clients, and that habit stuck.

VirtualBox V4.2 introduced the concept of groups so you can for example 
start, pause or stop a Database VM, a middleware VM and a couple of 
clients for testing:

https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/creating_and_using_vm_groups


> 2. I could not get 64bit BSD to run as a guest.  Not sure why as it should
> but at the moment, 32 bit still works for the specific tasks I need it to
> do.

I had a curious one with 64 bit BSD.  I did manage to migrate the VM to 
another physical system (the trick being that once you have it on the 
new system you go into Settings, watch the progress bar while it 
automagically adjusts itself for the new host environment and then you 
are good to go), but it either wouldn't run at all or refused to see the 
network, I forget.

> So I am continuing my research and may decide it has grown up enough to
> handle the necessary tasks.

If you want to try automating this, there is Vagrant:

http://www.sture.ch/node/226

also see "VirtualBox VBoxHeadless, the remote desktop server"

http://askaralikhan.blogspot.ch/2011/01/virtualbox-vboxheadless-remote-de
sktop.html

-- 
Paul Sture