Microsofts lie about netbook operating system installations

In a recent blog post by a Microsoft employee, a statement was made that 94% of netbooks came with a version of Windows XP installed. What this person failed to point out was what the people who bought these machines then did with them. Well I can now tell you , that a very large percentage, download a version of Linux, format the harddrive and never touch a version of windows again. How do I know this, well I started a thread on the Eeebuntu.org forums about six months ago to find out what people were doing with their netbooks, and what OS they were originally supplied with.

Well the thread has now shown that 36% of the people who expressed a preference have removed Windows from their netbooks and replaced it with Eeebuntu Linux. This obviously doesn't include those who have put Solaris,OSX, BSD etc etc. Why not tell the truth that they have grabbed a large slice of the market, but were facing significant competition? I'm sure their share holders would prefer that. Also having to bribe the netbooks manufacturers to take their OS, is not good for share holder value.

So, yet again the Redmond FUD masters have been at work spreading lies. I wish they would just spend more effort on their products and less on spreading nonsense. As with all large monopolists, they would rather spend time spreading lies , just like Intel, than actually developing new products that beat their competition on value for money and features.

Look here for the facts.

36% of Windows netbooks have their hard drives wiped and replaced with Linux

The total myth of Microsoft usability

While visiting my Brother this weekend, I had a laptop given to me to have a look at , as nothing would allow it to connect to the new Broadband wireless access point. Now as I only ever look at this one laptop for my brother as it has an ancient installed version of XP for a single application, they must use. If the machine was more powerful I would put Ubuntu on it , and run the app in a virtual machine, but it just doesn't have the grunt or virtual firmware support.

The truth is that the machine and the operating system are constantly fighting each other just to boot the machine. It is pathetic to watch a machine with 1GB of RAM take 5 minutes to boot. It is an old Dell Inspiron, but when I boot it with an Ubuntu live CD it flys along. I think in Microsoft's defence, a lot of the disk thrashing is down to the anti virus, anti spyware, download protection etc etc etc. Though you can reason a very goog case that if the OS was well built in the first place, you wouldn't need all this expensive software.

Well I have fought with it for a hour to get Firefox 3.5,Google chrome and flash player onto the machine, and we are there now. It would have taken me 5 minutes with Ubuntu, but still I hear the lie, and it is a lie, that Windows is just easier for the average person.

Using VMware Server to help save the Planet

I know that all the many new forms of Virtualization can be put to all sorts of tasks today, but I used VMware server 2 the other day to save having to deploy a screen and keyboard for a Windows application box. I have been using and looking at the latest KVM hypervisor in Ubuntu as this I feel will be the future of Virtualization on the Open Source roadmap, but for this implementation I felt VMware would do the job quickly, and without fuss.

The requirement was to set up a simple Windows machine to load the license manager for Mercury Loadrunner performance tool, which will only run on Windows. Now we could have just dumped this onto a lightly loaded windows server, if we had any, which we don't, so I decided to turn this into an XP virtual image.

Normally, this would require you to have the box setup with a screen and keyboard, which is a complete waste of equipment, and makes managing this single application box a real problem.

So as I try and Virtualize everything these days, I decided to Virtualize the XP instance, and install it on the same box , just with Ubuntu server 8.10 and VMware server 2.0 (latest build).

This now means I can stick that box in the server room with no screen and keyboard and manage it remotely with the VMware console and VNC , alongside all my other virtual images. That's because Linux allows me to run it without a screen attached.It will also benefit from all the backup services that are provided there and a computer monitor didn't need to be manufactured or ever powered on.

We can also use this virtual image for other small application requirements as they come along, so the effect will only be more positive over time. I have already thought that we can use it as a TFTP server for network equipment configuration file backups.

I did have some fun and games getting VMware web manager to work on this box, which was down to a miss configuration of the loopback network interface, but it now runs a treat. It would have been helpful to have more diagnostic output from the Java servlets, but that's another tale.

New Open Source web applications environment

After having installed and started using Adobe Air for a few weeks, predominately for use with tweetdeck and twitter, I came across a relatively new project that is going to offer the same functionality , but this time the whole project is Open Source. The name of the project is Appcelerator Titanium.

They currently have the environment available for Windows and OSX with the Linux version coming soon, how soon is not specified yet. What is particularly interesting is the way it allows multiple web development technologies to be used, HTML, Javascript, CSS, Flash and Silverlight/Moonlight. It is also built using some of the latest and greatest web technologies, which include , Webkit, Google Gears, Chromium, GTK+ etc.

They offer their own IDE , but it is development environment agnostic, so you can use your current favorite.

I think this looks like it could become an important product for open source development in the future, so it is definitely worth a look.

UPDATE:

Jeff posted a comment on this blog letting us know that it is now available for Linux. That is really good news.

Appcelerator Titanium