ITE 153 Blog   Operating Systems Course Blog

Great and Disappointing Operating Systems of the Decade

Disappointments:
Who would have thought that Windows Millennium was such a horrible thing *laughs hysterically* Seriously, I almost want to cling to it and the dinosaur building block of DOS, but we must move forward. GNU Hurd also made this list, I am sure someone out there has used it, at least once.

The Great Ones:
I was happy to see Google’s Android OS on here, and also thrilled to see that Solaris is now open (something new to play with). Also making the great list Windows Server 2008 R2, MacOS X (they praise the Darwin BSD), and GNU/Linux.

I found the article interesting and I now have more of a desire to partition one of my hard drives so I can play with some different OSs. The article also made me think back to older operating systems gone by *burns a funeral pyre for CP/M and Apple DOS*

Happy Holidays everyone and happy computing.

Mark Shuttleworth who is the CEO of Canonical, a company which backs up Ubuntu, is stepping down from his position. Some people think that this is a good thing because Mr. Shuttleworth, who is a smart man and is good at starting up companies. But this does not mean you are good at running a large corporation. Mr Shuttleworth is going to work and partner with Asian hardware companies. By working with the Asian hardware companies, it may help Ubuntu, which is trying to get into the desktop market by getting venders in outside markets to installed Ubuntu on their computers. http://blogs.computerworld.com/15278/where_does_ubuntu_go_from_here

Here it is, our final exam review post for the semester.  Here’s what I remember discussing since Exam #2:

• Ubuntu Installation
• Three ways to install software in Ubuntu
• Foreground and background processes, C-z, jobs, fg, bg, ps, using the &, kill
• tar, gzip, bzip2
• cron and crontab
• ssh-keygen
• Running a command inside backticks (like `date -I`)
• How to set up automatic offsite backups
• find
• xargs
• for

Your monthly post and monthly comment for December must be posted before this course ends at 8:25 pm on Wednesday, December 23rd. Any posts or comments added to the blog later than that will not be considered when determining your Online Discussion points for the semester.

Seems to be an exciting time for Intel. They are releasing several new versions of their chips in December ahead of the January 2010 Electronics show.  As the industry has grown extremely competitive and the marketplace less forgiving, Intel has quite a bit riding on these new releases.

There is great anticipation for their new 32-nanometer technology.  Current version is 45 – the new 32 is set to be faster and more powerful technology

brief  quote on another release from Intel ….

One of the most anticipated processor technologies is “Arrandale.” This will be the first mainstream Intel laptop processor to put two processor cores and a graphics function together in one chip package, resulting in better overall power efficiency. And the new built-in graphics technology is expected to offer materially better graphics performance than current Intel graphics.

article link:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10414160-64.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

According to this article, Dell is saying that 1/3 of all the netbooks that they  sell are shipping out preloaded with Linux on them, rather than Windows.  They go on to say that this doesn’t count dual-boots or any computer that might have the OS swapped out after the fact, but how often do you hear about Linux being removed for Windows?

What I find most interesting in this article is that Microsoft still claims 93% of computers go out with Windows installed.  Hmm…..

As a long time Windows user and completely new to ubuntu,  I was happy to find an article comparing the two (click on the link below).  I am currently running the Windows 7 Operating System on my Home desktop and I must say so far I am liking it a lot better than my previous Windows Vista “Ultimate” OS.  I also just installed ubuntu 9.10 as a virtual machine on VMware last night, on the same computer and will be experimenting with it over the next few weeks. I will keep you posted.

Ubuntu 9.10 Vs. Windows 7: No ordinary October showdown.

I found this interesting article about best and worst tech gadgets of 2009. I found my favorite on position 12, iMac. I ordered one yesterday and I think it’s a good choice. What is Your favorite gadget? Here is the link to the website http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/11/1125_gift_guide_best_worst_tech/index.htm

Google is the best and most widely used search engine. In order for google to give the user better results it stores data about you. This data is mostly you searching history. Your search history says it all. Law enforcement can get any info they want on you by contacting google. A CNBC special on this and other technologies that spy on you airs Thursday at 9pm.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15519811/