Rants Tagged with “Linux”
1 (Total Pages: 1/Total Results: 4)
On the heels of my recent post about Microsoft and Linux, is this interesting article in SD Times. It is being reported that at MIX 2007, Scott Guthrie (responsible for Silverlight et al) pulled aside Miguel de Icaza to help with technical guidance for Moonlight (the Mono-based, Open Source Linux Silverlight implementation). I think this is tremendous news. Miguel went on to say:
...that the Moonlight project was strongly inspired by Guthrie’s recommendations.
Nice! Let's hope this cooperation can be seen across other Microsoft-Open Source ventures. I like to hear about this stuff.
What do you think?
I've been around software and OS's for a long time and while my bread is buttered to some extent by my continued involvement in Microsoft's technologies, I've waded into Open Source projects here and there. One of the things that has always amazed me is how fast some Open Source projects can achieve in a short time. I have a lot of admiration for Open Source.
The other side of the coin is that the supporters of Open Source seem to often relish their childish rhetoric.I am immediately turned off of this sort of unyielding acceptance of anything. It doesn't matter if it is technological, religious or political. I like well informed discourse. Using moniker's like M$, Microserf or other derogatory language isn't well informed.
To my surprise, I read this article about the Linux Foundation's call to respect Microsoft for what it does well and compete against them in an adult way (my phrase, not the authors'). Of particular interest to me what this sentence from the article (not a direct quote):
He also pointed out that many firms shy away from participating on open source mailing lists because discussions there tend to explode into flame wars.
I like this strategy. Competition is good. Discourse is great. I hope to see this is the same all three sides of the fence (Its not Linux/Microsoft...its Linux/Microsoft/Apple). I hope the idea of respect will gain some momentum. I hope to achieve this goal for myself. I want to avoid using phrases like "The Apple Tax" which I seem to like far too often.
What do you think?
My first taste of Monoppix was interesting this evening. For those not in the know, Monoppix is a Bootable CD version of Linux with the Mono Framework and tools pre-installed. This allows you to play around with the Mono tools on Linux without installing anything. It loads Linux directly from the CD and creates a RAM disk to store your data.
I found MonoDevelop pretty buggy in this version. I kept locking it up. If I knew how to disable help lookup and intellisense, it would probably be plenty stable. I'll probably go back and play around with the MySql Managed provider at some point. Take a look if you have some extra time.
I've been watching the Linux news wires lately to see whether I should be putting any time into Mono and it looks to me like Linux is falling victim to the Unix disease of splintering into too many distributions that may or may not be compatible. Here's what I am reading:
- Redhat is now charging for their regular consumer Linux Distro (they've been charging for the 'enterprise' edition for a while now), and have a more OpenSource friendly 'Fedora' distro that will be free.
- Novell is planning on a several versions of its Linux Distro (Novell acquired SuSE some time back), most of which will be in paid versions only, and with different kernel versions (2.6 on the desktop and 2.4 for the server).
- Mandrake used to be the easiest desktop version, but has lately become harder and harder to install.
- Though Oracle will run on Linux, they really only approve to be run on one flavor of Linux; RedHat's Advanced Server.
- China's government (with some cooperation from other Far East countries) are looking for their own OpenSource OS, perhaps another variant of Linux.
None of these stories are very damning on their own, but I am seeing a trend towards many conflicting distributions for specific needs. Imagine an enterprise where you would need four or five different distro's to support. Windows three tier OS (Home/Professional/Server) seems to be easier to manage (one company, one support contract, etc.)
I do not want to see Linux marginalized. Linux is putting pressure on Microsoft to clean up its own house and competition forces increased innovation. Now if Sun would just stop trying to stop Java from being submitted to the standards bodies we could get somewhere...
