Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Thu May 31 21:56:08 CDT 2012
Hear Hear. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:32 PM To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues Subject: [dba-Tech] So long, Norman That's actually a quote from one of my fave singer-songwriters, to wit, Warren Zevon. The song is The Great Pretender and it's on his second album. But the point here is not about Warren Zevon, it's about my final liberation from Microsoft. I have at last converted my main squeeze to a native boot of Linux Mint 11. Inside that, I run Oracle VirtualBox, and inside that I run the only instances of Windows that I care about, each of which emulates a client workstation with only and exactly what the clients run. I have to tell you that for the first time in at least a decade, I finally feel free from the fellows in Redmond. The few times that I need to do some development for a client, I run a VM to do so. The rest of the time I'm living in Linux/Mint, and I love it. I do need to purchase a new laptop this month, but that's another story. It will probably come equipped with one or another version of Windows 7, and having toured the Windows 8 preliminary versions, I can see no reason to go there. Mind you, all this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt, since I am almost 65 years old and have little to no desire to retain my place on the bleeding edge. I have a stupid-phone and no tablets or any other fancy techno-vices. I'll continue to maintain the apps that I already have in the field, but from here on in my native OS is Mint, not Windows. For that kind of work, a VM will do just fine. I can precisely emulate what the client runs, right down to Windows/Office/SPs, so that I'm 100% confident that if it works in my VM, it will work on their hardware. And after that, my friends in Redmond, I have lost interest in your future directions. I simply do not care any more. -- Arthur Cell: 647.710.1314 Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. -- Niels Bohr _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com