2010 July 14 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for July 14th, 2010

You Have to Wait a Month for Reinforcements

Published by Robert Pogson July 14th, 2010 in technology. 0 Comments

The recently-revealed critical vulnerability in that other OS took a month to be fixed. We can argue over the process but the end-users were exposed to enemy attack for a month with no help from M$. Just like the battle of Dien Bien Phu, it’s not good enough to expose an outpost for a long length of time.

That’s not good enough. FLOSS can do the job in a day or so when the stuff hits the fan. Surely a well-funded corporation should be able to do as well but M$ is run by salesmen. They pour energy into making the next sale and they care little about the future lost sales caused by the frustrations of end-users. M$ seems to feel that with enough leverage they can fix any PR hit. That might work for a given instance but this is becoming routine. No one wants to be fighting malware. They want to do their productive work. The world does not want to work for you, M$. Get over it.

Folks who have migrated to GNU/Linux may have to work hard to make the transition but they can relax a lot afterwards. That other OS and its apps will be around for years drawing attention from malware and GNU/Linux will just keep growing staying small and modular with lots of immunity built in. The cost of fighting malware is almost entirely born by users of that other OS and GNU/Linux gets a free ride. I like that. The cost of monopoly is compounding itself and the price of Freedom declines.

- Robert Pogson

Migrating to “7″

Published by Robert Pogson July 14th, 2010 in technology. 13 Comments

SJVN and others advise business to migrate to “7″ now if they must leave their old hardware (and they want to stay with M$) because buying “7″ on new hardware is the easiest for configuration but I think that is the wrong idea.

If your old hardware is decrepit/slow, you are much better off in most cases if you migrate to new thin clients in which case it does not matter whether the thin clients run that other OS or GNU/Linux. M$ only charges about a CAL (~$40) for the privilege and a new thin client costs less than half the price of a thick client. GNU/Linux costs nothing per-seat usually to connect a GNU/Linux terminal to a GNU/Linux server. If your present hardware is slow but not failing, you are far better off using it as a terminal than buying new hardware, both because you save the cost of new hardware and licence fees and the cost of maintaining a complex OS on the client.

A terminal OS can be little more than a running kernel, the GNU utilities and X. It costs little to do a basic installation of GNU/Linux on an old machine and sticking “X -query serverip” in /etc/rc.local or some stuff in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf to make the thing connect automagically when it boots. You can use ThinStation or some other thin client OS instead of a general purpose OS, too. You can use rdesktop to connect to that other OS or you can set up xrdp on a GNU/Linux terminal server if you buy thin clients that use RDP to connect to a server.

I like DevonIT as a supplier of fanless thin clients but you can buy direct from China, Taiwan or Malaysia and buy for less (with care …).

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.