micromux

Open Source for Sale

The reality of open source is that it in fact predates commercial software, when computers became available around 1945 the primary mode of software development was extremely collaborative. People learned how to program working for computer manufacturers who didn’t see any benefit to the commercialization of the software. Why is it that today the commercial software industry dominates a landscape where open source software is equally capable?

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Losing the Windows Network Client

Recently following an unrelated upgrade to my VirtualBox client, one of my host VM’s started exhibiting unusual behavior. While it was possible to retrieve directory listings from a UNC path, any attempt to map a drive would result in a standard although somewhat generic error message. Read Losing the Windows Network Client >>

USB File System Brilliance

The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system has allowed the common USB flash drive to pervade virtually every desktop computer. My flash drive can easily be used on a Windows, Mac or Linux workstation. Even more importantly, I can copy a handful of photos to it and at my local Target store the Kodak photo machine is able to read the images from the drive.

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Running With Forks

The browser war has temporarily been placed on hold in favor of a simultaneous application war. It appears that a Vista user can run maybe 100 applications at a time, and on OS X you are likely to get only a mere 150 applications into your dock. Of course, on Linux you can run even more despite the incredibly high CPU utilization. Imagine a completely unusable computer running 200 applications at once, and in fact this is the scenario we should really be concerned with.

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Working With Wine

It’s been a while since my last post, and during that time I have been busy playing some computer games that I haven’t looked at in a while. At the moment, Empire Earth and SimCity 4 are at the top that list. What is significant about this is that these are playable on Wine and they actually work. Read Working With Wine >>