Monday, August 30, 2010

linux monday

Linux Monday

Problems popping up between Windows 7 and Linux, and Windows software is the bad guy:
At least some occurrences of this are with software which writes a signature to the embedding area which hangs around even after uninstallation, so that you cannot uninstall and reinstall the application to defeat a trial period.

This seems like a fine example of an antifeature, especially given its destructive consequences for free software, and is in general a poor piece of engineering; what happens if multiple such programs want to use the same sector, I wonder? They clearly aren't doing much checking that the sector is unused, not that that's really possible anyway.

We need to defend ourselves against the predatory practices of some companies making us look bad: a relatively small number of people do enough detective work to realise that it's the fault of a particular Windows application, but many more simply blame our operating system because it won't start any more.

What happens if you try to put one billion files onto a Linux filesystem? No, I'm not talking about my music library. Yet. But if you are getting close to that point, you could do some de-duplicating.

Once you do that and free up some space, you can install one of these
100 good open source programs
.

For the very geeky, a diagrammed look at the Linux boot process.

And a look ahead at changes coming in Ubuntu 10.10-also known as Maverick Meerkat. (They're gonna ask themselves, "What would a maverick do in this situation?" And then, you know, do that!)

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