Where is Vista at the Office?

A year ago I purchased a single volumn license of MS Windows Vista and decided that we, the company I work with, was not ready for migrating to this new version any time soon.

Over that year I've kept my ear to the ground, regionally I mean, speaking with other IT leaders in my area - the larger, well established, vendors - what are others doing with Vista in the workspace? Across the board, without exception, not a single medium to large company that I've spoken with has upgraded to Microsoft's latest Windows offering.

Makes you step back and think about the larger picture.

My Day to Day Computing

I've been asked a couple times what do I use for hardware and operating systems on any given day. Those that know me would not be surprised that the answer is not a little one.

I use two laptops every day: an Apple MacBook Pro with OSX Leopard and a Zareason MegaLap with Ubuntu Linux. I have been trying to move much of my day to day work to OSX, so the Linux laptop is there for the things that I haven't gotten migrated as yet.

For desktops I have a HP workstation at the office running Microsoft Windows XP Professional. At home I have a self-built (very cool) Windows XP Professional desktop (mostly for games) and a Intel Apple iMac.

But if anyone asks next week, I'm sure the answers will be different.

Upgrade Debian Sarge to Etch

I have a Debian server that has been around for 6+ years. Oh sure, the hardware has changed, even failed and replaced, but the OS has been going this whole time. I have used the DEB packages almost exclusively, maybe even religiously on this box - using whichever flavour of package management application I felt like at the time (apt-get and aptitude are my preferences).

After a Debian machine has been running for a while, and especially one that is very eclectic and is used for various services and roles, it starts to get a little nuts. What I mean is, you install a deb file from the stable release, a host of deb's from testing and a random set of debs from various sources like Debian Backports. Hell, I like to roll my own debian packages as well - from the kernel-package to dh-make-perl, a crazy assortment of packages are installed to my system - Debian makes it easy. I just followed one rule - stay with deb packages.

Okay, I'm writing this before Etch, the current testing release, has gone to stable. The reason is because I'm starting to need more and more packages that are not available in the stable release but which are in testing. Sure, I can use backports, but I'm starting to get pissed at waiting (yet again) for the stable release to be upgraded. (this is not the first release I've done this and knowing the Debian release cycle as I do, I doubt it will be the last)

So its time to upgrade Debian Sarge to Etch! (or stable to testing)

Can you hear the drum roll... or is that just in my head?

Ensure you have backed up (off the box) any information or configuration that you are not willing to part with - just in case!

Head on over to your /etc/apt/ folder (I don't have X Window on my server, if you do, ensure you kill your xdm and drop to shell).

What you need to do is change any instance of stable (or sarge) with etch - while also using a little reasoning. Why not use the name testing? Because I've been hit one too many times, when an update caused havoc on my box when I had not expected a distribution upgrade. Managed upgrades are always a smart move.

Look in /etc/apt/apt.conf to start. (if you don't have one, no worries) I only have two lines in there that now look like this:

APT::Cache-Limit 10000000;
APT::Default-Release "etch";

Next is /etc/apt/preferences, which I had used to managed several sources coming from all three Debian releases. But since I'm starting from a fresh slate, so to speak, I'm going to remove this file altogether.

The last file I needed to edit was the /etc/apt/sources.list file, that you are
probably familiar with. My sources file just became easier - commenting out all
non-testing references, use etch in place of testing, stable or sarge. I even go so far to take out deb-src sources, adding these and other repositories as I need later. My greatly simplified sources now look like this:

# main package repository
deb http://mirror.peer1.net/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

Don't forget to use your favourite regional mirror!

Do a apt-get update.

Easy right? Well the interesting part is coming up.

First find some wood... and knock on it with your knuckles.

Do a apt-get dist-upgrade.

I have 599 upgraded, 114 newly install and 33 to remove packages. Good idea to review what is being removed, installed, etc.

At this point, its completely up to you if you want to hit that enter key! I make no promises. :-)

Two Days with Vista

As many MS Windows users know, after a period of use you will need to reinstall your operating system. This happened to me at work - where I was running Microsoft Windows XP Professional. Being the little dweeb that I am, I thought to give this Vista thing a try - the designate test dummy for our corporation.

Microsoft Windows Vista is the newly released product from the Windows operating system line. I purchased the eOpen Business edition of the product - creating my own CD from the official ISO then using the eOpen license number.

Installation went very smooth on my Pentium 4 3.00 GHz 2GB RAM desktop. Post installation I had to manually track down and install the sound and firewire drivers - thankfully the Vista version existed. Manually added my desktop to our corporate domain (Windows 2000 AD) - global policies were enacted, login script ran. I'm in!

This is where the fun begins right?

The colours - more gawd-awful pastels that I can't stand. Next is the 3D effects - they are okay but nothing coming close to what I have with my Beryl (or Compiz) desktop. I don't really need eye candy - this is a work machine after all - so I configure the computer for Best Performance which effectively turns off all the toys. There is a noticeable increase in performance with all this garbage off. Didn't like the Windows Sidebar and Gadgets - just not customizable enough for me what I'm used too in Linux - so they are gone as well.

Fine - so now I need some applications. Can't install Microsoft SQL Server (client or server), sorry - won't work on Vista until next service pack. Okay, so everything else goes on - no troubles. The applications themselves seem to start slowly, archives painfully slow (30-90 seconds in some cases) - once running they seem to be okay to use. Every time IE starts it overrides my default brower, this pisses me off (and reminds me of the pain back in the early-mid 90's). Even as a member of the domain administrator group I am unable to change some functionality on the local machine - this must be customizable, and I don't bother looking. My legitimate music CD fails to play - looking into this it appears Microsoft was nice enough to put DRM shit directly into the OS (which is much much worse that most users will ever realize). My time is limited and the changes just browsing network files is different enough that I loose patience - I can't blame anyone else but myself.

In theory, I agree for the need to retool Vista. Security right? Wrong, DRM takes precedent when there is a conflict - that makes no sense at all. New innovative technology? I don't see anything but incremental changes to what our corporation uses already. So what about all that great eye-candy? Big deal - ask any Linux desktop user to see the desktop they have been using for the last year. And what is all this shit about Vista Content Protection hardware? Is anyone else getting scared - Vista is causing the markets other hardware costs to increase! But what is this about some users seeing upwards of triple the bandwidth usage?

There are a host of good things - don't get me wrong. Piles of great stuff in the AD itself should make every company look at reasons to upgrade. But is it enough? I barely even looked at Vista and it gave me a bad taste. I use Windows because I have to and I'm lucky enough to enjoy a Linux desktop because I prefer it.

Two days later I sat back and looked at my system and thought this is just stupid and on a day away from the office, asked a Junior System Administrator to re-install XP Pro back onto my system. I was worried about being forced to move to Vista (pre-installs, etc) but guess we should be good for 2 more years on Windows XP.

Just long enough to convert all our desktops to Linux.

Vista Released, Does Anyone Care?

I have been pondering the release of Microsoft Vista. November 30 2006, Microsoft announced the availability of Vista for businesses (and broadly available on January 30 2007). The excitement (at least in the trash tech media) leading up to the initial release was in full swing. All the gears were in motion for another industry sweeping product from Microsoft.

So what happened?

Was there any release parties in November or December? Not in my area. It certainly didn't explode on that date like fireworks on Canada Day.

And where is all the excitement? The majority of the tech magazines are focusing on if you should upgrade, how little this release has changed from the prior, why it costs more, how stable will it really be and of course is it worth it?

Oh certainly, looking at Microsoft Vista, there are some great things within for any business. But I know upgrading is not high on my corporate agenda - maybe in 18 months or maybe not.