I just turned on parallel booting in Debian GNU/Linux. Teachers will be pleased:
Of course the BIOS dances around a bit and the boot menu has a default 3s delay for testing but I will set that to 0 before rolling this out to more teachers. I did tests with dual SATA 500 gB drives in RAID 1 to see that, indeed, two files at once may be read (two heads are better than one). I even throttled the drives down to 160 gB so they would not have so far to seek. Compare this with the minutes they have to wait for XP on our old hardware. Teachers are going to love GNU/Linux. It might reduce coffee consumption, however. Login takes 3s to get to a usable desktop.
To enable parallel booting, all I had to do was include this line,
CONCURRENCY=makefile
in /etc/default/rcS . Cool. I still have a bit of room to improve DHCP. That takes up to 3s on my DLINK box. I could issue static IP addresses and save a couple more seconds.
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.159 — renewal in 295203 seconds.
real 0m1.622s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.012s
I could also install a faster DHCP server.
Here’s the result with fixed IP address and CONCURRENCY=makefile:
I measured the following times with a clock on the wall:
- Power on until boot menu appears: 13s
- boot menu to login screen: 17s
- login screen to usable desktop: 4s
That is a big improvment over the minutes we spend waiting/please waiting on XP on our old hardware.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
I stumbled upon an article giving solutions to problems that mostly were made by M$. A better solution the writer missed is to use GNU/Linux and be done with most of those things. No pesky EULA. No malware. No slowing down and few re-re-reboots.
Some folks like the Media Centre version of that other OS. Check out MythTV or XBMC and a bunch of others. There is choice. I saw XBMC running this year and it is great. You can get a single remote to run the TV, the PC and the software.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in technology.
Google’s VP8 FLOSS video code and WebM file format are brewing a bit of a turf war and the old guard is circling the wagons around H264. There is an idea to add VP8 and WebM to HTML5. That would ensure that everyone with any browser or OS could use HTML5 properly but the old guard wants to make money from HTML5 by holding patents and charging licence fees to use a video codec.
Thus, the battle lines are drawn. The FLOSS side is in a bit of disarray with the OSI and Google squabbling about who is more open… but I expect that will be settled shortly when they finally talk with each other directly rather than through the media. Google’s Chrome Browser already allows most of us to use the codec so practical matters are not the issue, just politics. The dark cloud on the horizon is whether the MPEG-LA jackasses will “go after” Google or just the browsers like FireFox and Opera. Google will fight. Will the smaller organizations have the strength? I don’t know but I expect there will be a fight and that FLOSS will win. Bilski could settle that issue more or less next week…
So far, it looks like Apple is the only organization on the planet that thinks Google can be stopped in this initiative. HEHEHE. The other Steve is in for a rude awakening.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in technology.
I am a cheapskate. I look for the best price performance ratio. For a long time that was Opteron on the server. When AMD pushed 64bits ahead of Intel they commanded a premium price per CPU but when Intel caught up, AMD cut prices making 64bit the way to go. I drooled over SUN’s ads for low-end servers that were not out of reach of our minimal school budgets. I was even tempted to apply for some of their freebies to get SUN into schools.
That was then. Now Oracle which bought SUN is looking to cut AMD from their server lines.
“In January, Charles Phillips, Oracle’s co-president, said the company is not interested in being in the commodity x64 server racket. ”
…
The biggest news for Ideas at the event was Mr Sigler’s announcement that Oracle intends to go forward with just a single x86 processor architecture. The company will bring to market new Sun x86 server using the Intel processor architecture, and has no plans to develop any new servers with the AMD processors, including Magny-Cours. In fact, Mr. Sigler said that the company is in the process of EOL’ing the current family of AMD x86 servers.”
Ouch! That’s it then. Oracle will concentrate on Intel Xeons at the low-end. For the price Oracle charges per processor for their database, their favourite customers will gladly plunk down a premium for Intel chips. What about MySQL then, the commodity database? What is the point of continuing that to run on premium hardware?
I think Oracle may be making a mistake. Business may be willing to give up competition in software but not in hardware.
see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/27/oracle_spikes_opterons/
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
The CEO of Acer has a Christmas present for M$, a tablet PC running Android GNU/Linux. TFA does not give much technical information but this is the kind of product that Acer has been selling to banks, ISPs, cellular networks and so on as bonus or inducements for customers.
- 2007 – netbooks
- 2008 – smartphones
- 2009 – recession
- 2010 – tablets + ARM
M$ has had a lot of coal in its stockings the last few years. They must feel unloved.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in technology.
I was poking around Netcraft.com and was surprised to discover mrpogson.com is in the million busiest sites list especially when there are 206 million sites out there. I guess there are a lot of slow sites…
I have been pleased with growth in readership.
Blog stats for three weeks of May 2010
Thanks to all of you.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in technology.
The NY Times has an interesting picture of the stock-market value of M$ and Apple over time. Prominent features are obvious exponential growth of the capitalization of M$ under Gates up to ca 2000 and a level under Ballmer since. Apple is showing exponential growth still and has surpassed the market cap of M$.
One must wonder how M$ magically switched from exponential growth to level when they have a monopoly on x86 PCs which continued to have exponential growth in units shipped. The best answers I can see are:
- GNU/Linux began to be viable on the desktop around 2000 and was vastly more reliable at that time. GNU/Linux must be enjoying exponential growth for this to be so.
- Apple is taking share from M$, particularly in USA/Europe where folks have tons of money to spend and will pay a higher price to get more reliable results
- Ballmer may be a great cheerleader for salesmen but he lacks the expertise to drive a technology company
That oversimplifies things because M$ does give substantial return on investment in dividends. I would expect the market cap of M$ would decline if those dividends were not given.
The question remains, “Where does all that cash go?”. M$ claims $8 billion annually in “research” but it probably amounts to market research and some flailing of ideas in the back rooms. A lot of cash must be going to OEMs and retailers to promote/sustain the monopoly. They are buying off so many with so much that there is not enough left for investors to be excited. The latest 10Q shows $4 billion in income but only 13cents per share of dividend. The earnings per share was 46 cents. This shows how weak the monopoly is. If the cost of issuing licences is that high, the end is near.
Why Apple continues to grow with the products they sell is beyond my understanding. I shop based on price/performance and I do not see Apple’s products as superior in any way to a PC running GNU/Linux or a cell-phone running GNU/Linux. Apple does use ARM on some gadgets which is a technological plus but the rest of their empire is anal-retentive nonsense. Vertical integration may be efficient for Apple but it is not in the best interest of consumers/other businesses. I think a lot of Apple’s success is due to the technological failure that that other OS is. Consumers are being convinced that Apple has the answer. They are not seeing other possibilities.
This is the Year of Arm IMHO so the near-monopoly that Apple enjoys in Armed gadgets will be weakened. Similarly GNU/Linux is being seen as valid by many millions so I predict this will be the last year that Apple has exponential growth or at least growth at this level. Good products in gadgets and PCs can be produced for less with GNU/Linux and ARM. Both M$ and Apple will cling to their markets by slowly reducing prices. They can be in a holding pattern for years at this stage but there is light on the horizon for open solutions.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 26th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
The search has been unsuccessful. Since this latest effort was based on pings received by a submarine last summer, we expected success. The largest pieces of wreckage found floating, the tail fin and a cabinet, are of a size sonar would have detected on a flat bottom. I expect there are larger pieces on the bottom, wings, engines, spars, etc. so either the terrain is very rough and everything found a fox-hole in which to hide or there is some systematic error between the coordinate systems of the submarine and searchers. I expect those details to be worked out and a subsequent search will be successful. I cannot see France, Air France, AirBus or the BEA dropping this when they must be very close. There is some possibility that the recorders have no useful information but the fact that AirBus seems to have a problem, so far unidentified, and the closure wanted by the victims, airlines and humanity should be sufficient reasons to continue after some reflection on what might have gone wrong with the search.
Beside the possibility of a systematic error in coordinates, it may be that the pinger died too soon after detection to narrow the location sufficiently. In that case, a wider search in the vicinity would be required. There is not sufficient public data to know. One strategy may be to open the data to the view of the world and use the best ideas that result. Another may be to offer a reward and issue copies of the data to entrepreneurs. Movie rights alone, on this search, should be sufficient incentive to gather the right people to do the job. However the search goes forward, it will eventually succeed to bring closure. The wreckage may be sufficiently informative even if the recorders tell nothing.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 25th, 2010
in technology.
I have not been shopping for mobile PCs lately but unit sales are still increasing. Gartner has numbers that show ACER and ASUS had the largest growth rate and
Coincidence? I don’t think so. HP and the others are not big on “No OS”. I think “No OS” may be working for folks who hate that other OS and want to pick their own OS, such as GNU/Linux. I think about 10% of PC users are able/willing to install an OS so a large part of the growth of ASUS and Acer could be due to this plus the fact that they push low-end mobile PCs.
In the “good, old days” of the monopoly, M$ could veto “No OS” but no longer. OEMs are beginning to see a light at the end of the monopolistic tunnel. They can make money defying the monopoly. “No OS” will likely remain a small part of things but it is another slice of the market that M$ cannot touch. It also helps those who use GNU/Linux but prefer a distro not offered by OEMs. I expect continued growth of GNU/Linux in the mobile space as a result.
If this growth continues, Acer could displace HP in mobile and ASUS could overtake Dell. When that happens, HP and Dell will respond with more stuff at the low end and, probably more GNU/Linux stuff. It may take a year or two for this to come to pass but every unit sold with no OS or getting installed with GNU/Linux is a licence fee lost to the monopoly, weakening it. This is good.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 25th, 2010
in technology.
The idiots at Apple and their loyal customers are foolishly using a browser that allows a website to save to the local hard drive any number of potentially malicious files without user intervention. Does that make sense? Denial of bandwidth and filling the hard drive come to mind immediately.
Apple has not done anything about this vulnerability for two years. It shows where Steve’s priorities lie. It’s not a vulnerability. It’s a convenience for users and malware artists. It may not be so convenient for users if malware artists bomb them with 9384 files with random names. How long would it take users to sort out the list and fix the mess? Order by date/cut, I suppose.
Yet another reason to use GNU/Linux, an OS designed by geeks for performance. Carpet bombing self is not performance, Steve.
- Robert Pogson
LSE claims it will save millions of dollars annually by using Millenium Exchange on GNU/Linux instead of TradeElect on that other OS. This is another case where buying a company producing a product was cheaper than paying the costs of licensing some non-free stuff. We don’t know the details of their cost structure but if they are saving money like that even while using the costly Oracle DB, the cost of TradElect must have been huge. LSE is writing off millions in depreciation on the money invested in TradeElect. Switchover is expected to come in September.
I think everyone should look at stories like this one and realize there are less costly ways of doing IT based on FLOSS on desktop or server. The same benefits of speed, low licensing costs, freedom to examine and modify the code, and fast development times apply to the desktop as well as the server.
Don’t let businesses have all the fun, run Debian GNU/Linux today. The staff here are in agreement to distribute a dozen new PCs to teachers. These are fairly hot machines with all the goodness needed to run that other OS (meaning they will fly with GNU/Linux). I will set mine up with VirtualBox to provide documentation/video of the installation process and operation and maintenance. Some of the result may be posted here and YouTube. The staff expressed a desire to have IT that works, works faster and is maintainable. They asked for some training which we will start this week. We can do that much more easily with GNU/Linux than with that other OS. We have in the building 80 PCs now with only part-time IT support. It was impossible to keep the other OS running. Teachers are having constant problems struggling with the slowing down of that other OS and dealing with malware. With GNU/Linux, most problems are fixable in seconds by remote administration.
Some tests on the new machines this weekend are very interesting. I was able to boot in 10s with a basic configuration. With a full XFCE4 desktop setup, it takes a bit longer, 15s. Folks were used to taking minutes to boot XP on the old machines. Is anyone going to object that it’s not running that other OS when it’s this fast? I haven’t even configured the RAID yet…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 24th, 2010
in technology.
There is no news of Bilski on SCOTUSBLOG.
No news is good news. Next shot is likely June 1.
- Robert Pogson
17413
12736
206
3
2
23847 
11833 
11685 
4618 
4239 
1641 
198 
14 
2 
0 
0 
0 
Recent Comments