Windows 8

[Engels]

Networking, safe web browsing, laughing at plebeians...

Pretty much that. A whole host of networking stuff is easier in *nix world. Even windows shares (samba shares) seem easier to set up and manage from *nix than from Windows itself.

You're also talking about a huge degree of customization of how your desktop looks and operates that isn't available in Windows.

Do a google images search for "compiz fusion" for examples of what I mean.

[Venkman]

Ok, that's about what I figured. For a non-developer this feels like a cool tinkering OS. I kinda don't get to that depth of computer use, and what I need for networking support of my Macs, PCs, media server and CE devices seem supported just enough in the various OSes.

[Salamok]

It is faster at most things.  There are also some nice htpc apps available.  Most of the fun linux apps have been ported to windows, documentation for setting them up on windows may be a little hit or miss though.

Edit - if you like customizable desktop widgets then conky  is pretty cool but customizing your desktop can be a pretty addictive time sink.

[Lantyssa]

I used it to turn computers that struggled with XP into smooth-running, quiet, diskless terminals.

[Yegolev]

I happen to work for a cloud provider, so that's my excuse.

I asked the guy who used to be my boss' boss if I should bother to learn HPUX, and he said I really should learn linux and python.  That's where the UNIX enterprise is going.  I think I'll read `man yum` and a chapter about SELinux, then go take a RHEL cert test.

[Hammond]

Meh, Red Hat is raising their rates to the cloud providers which is going to cause some serious backlash.  http://gigaom.com/2012/06/01/red-hat-dilemma-cloud-players-balk-at-new-support-fees/

Just to give you perspective they want to triple our rate for the 1 server we are using. We are probably just going to roll a centos machine and migrate the stuff over.

As far as learning Virtualisation I would argue that it is good to have least a basic idea of how it all works. I would also argue that most IT / sysadmin groups are going to have to deal with it at some point if they are big scale. I know far to many outfits that will keep things in house on a private cloud because of things like HIPAA , industrial secrets, and simply a fear of the unknown. Eventually you will have a mix of private and public clouds but god knows how long that will be down the road. All the cloud providers keep having high profile outages which is not endearing them to many people.

[Ironwood]

While that is all technically correct, it's not going to stop the inevitability.  Unless something really, really disruptive comes to market, Cloud is going to be where it's at for a good long while.

What you're seeing just now is teething problems as people get to grips with it.  Microsoft is so far behind Amazon at this stage it's not even funny and Rackspace has a crap offering.

But it'll get there.

[bhodi]

I happen to work for a cloud provider, so that's my excuse.

I asked the guy who used to be my boss' boss if I should bother to learn HPUX, and he said I really should learn linux and python.  That's where the UNIX enterprise is going.  I think I'll read `man yum` and a chapter about SELinux, then go take a RHEL cert test.

One of us! One of us!

[Sky]

OS X is a unix! 

[Salamok]

Amazon's VPC is a good enough solution to convince all but the ultra-paranoid and the only people I see really embracing the Microsoft cloud are people building .Net based solutions.  About the only thing that has me interested in keeping it local is google fiber coming to town in a few years, but building a datacenter in my house will most likely be a foundation for just providing webservices to the public which is akin to going from a cloud user to a cloud provider.  I agree that cloud is an annoying buzzword and for most cloud providers it is just marketing spew but when you look at what Amazon is doing you start to get a glimpse of what a game changer this will be.

Also, another argument for Linux is future proofing your skill set, in case you hadn't noticed Microsoft has had it's head up it's ass for several years now and they seem to be doing more wrong than right.  Linux on the other hand is changing at an ever increasing pace to the tune of 10k lines of code being added and 7k lines of code being removed every day, the entire OS is also pretty focused on interacting with itself via the command line. I don't know about other developers but if given the choice between the win32 API (or whatever they call it these days) or any API and doing something from the command line i'll take the command line.  On windows this may be considered a pretty hacky approach (as is maybe all scripting) but on Linux invoking another program from within your script is a widely accepted practice.

You may think to yourself "I don't give a shit about the command line" but keep in mind that the ease of access here makes it really easy for others to develop cool shit that you may actually use.  Linux seems to attract people who want to build command line apps and then letting some other developer come along and make a gui or web application for it.  This is great as it allows front end and back end developers to work independently and has produced some rather awesome results ffmpeg->vlc/youtube, git/svn->tortoise/github to name a few.  

Finally, it is much more difficult to get a perl/python/php/ruby on rails/node.js script running properly on Windows than it is on Linux, eventually one of these languages is going to produce a product you would like to use locally and the extra work to get it running on Windows is going to be a high enough barrier to entry that you just wont bother.

[Hammond]

Linux is a great server OS and is definitely worthwhile to learn. Also it helps that Linux admins tend to get paid more in my experience. My personal experience is I do not like it as a desktop offering.

Ironwood I have worked with amazon's offerings a little bit and to be honest while the technology is great they seriously need to working on the billing.  To say things are complicated is a understatement. Also moving things between providers is more than a little painful at this point. You get vendor lock-in (much like using Microsoft products) again that will change in the long run but in the short term you should at least be aware of that.

And a totally random thought. To me one of the biggest reasons not to host things in the cloud in the US if I was a foreign company is the issues with our existing laws and European privacy laws at least in the short term. Essentially the way that the patriot act and other laws are the government can look at your information without a warrant(I do not want to go into the gory details or argue about laws here...). That is against the privacy laws (and other laws) in the EU. I have seen several high profile cases where US based cloud providers lost out on large deals due to where the information is stored. That will change as more data centers get built out and things get "localized".

[Salamok]

And a totally random thought. To me one of the biggest reasons not to host things in the cloud in the US if I was a foreign company is the issues with our existing laws and European privacy laws at least in the short term. Essentially the way that the patriot act and other laws are the government can look at your information without a warrant(I do not want to go into the gory details or argue about laws here...). That is against the privacy laws (and other laws) in the EU. I have seen several high profile cases where US based cloud providers lost out on large deals due to where the information is stored. That will change as more data centers get built out and things get "localized".

There are 5 cloud regions for Amazon located outside of the US (Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Australia and Singapore).

[bhodi]

Amazon refuses to touch or look at anything inside the AMI "container", for legal reasons. It's why you're never going to see, for example, integration between your AMS user set and the host users or any sort of in-system nagios-esque management. They can still be asked, but they can legally say "We don't know, we don't track". There are tons of torrent seeder boxes running off of various cloud providers, and that's why it can work. If the cloud provider has a you have a 'don't look, don't know' policy, your legal liability is much reduced, basically down to "if someone tells us it's illegal, we turn it off within X time period". It just makes business sense.

[Hammond]

And a totally random thought. To me one of the biggest reasons not to host things in the cloud in the US if I was a foreign company is the issues with our existing laws and European privacy laws at least in the short term. Essentially the way that the patriot act and other laws are the government can look at your information without a warrant(I do not want to go into the gory details or argue about laws here...). That is against the privacy laws (and other laws) in the EU. I have seen several high profile cases where US based cloud providers lost out on large deals due to where the information is stored. That will change as more data centers get built out and things get "localized".

There are 5 cloud regions for Amazon located outside of the US (Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Australia and Singapore).

And Amazon does not explicitly say your information is hosted in Europe. Which is why I said that above. Here is one example of a UK contract that both google and amazon missed out on.

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/amazon-google-g-cloud-security-government-100303

Although reading more into it I find it interesting what they refuse and what they actually host.

Couple more articles (lots of fear mongering though.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/technology/new-eu-guidelines-to-address-cloud-computing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57557569-38/patriot-act-can-obtain-data-in-europe-researchers-say/

Amazon refuses to touch or look at anything inside the AMI "container", for legal reasons. It's why you're never going to see, for example, integration between your AMS user set and the host users or any sort of in-system nagios-esque management. They can still be asked, but they can legally say "We don't know, we don't track". There are tons of torrent seeder boxes running off of various cloud providers, and that's why it can work. If the cloud provider has a you have a 'don't look, don't know' policy, your legal liability is much reduced, basically down to "if someone tells us it's illegal, we turn it off within X time period". It just makes business sense.

Honestly I am not saying Amazon is going to look at anything why would they? and I will highly doubt anyone there wants any kind of liability. What I am saying is the way the laws are on the books they can ask for information without you ever knowing it. Any service provider doesn't want the liability of knowing what their customers are doing.

[Salamok]

The foreign government legally gaining access to your data argument doesn't make sense to me, the EU region involves only data centers that reside inside the EU.  Amazon states that they do not migrate cloud data between regions:

"Objects stored in a Region never leave the Region unless you transfer them out. For example, objects stored in the EU (Ireland) Region never leave the EU."

The whole govCloud region in the US is more about security against unlawful access (hacking) AND people utilizing our own laws to gain access to data that the government had thought was purged.

[Ironwood]

Linux is a great server OS and is definitely worthwhile to learn. Also it helps that Linux admins tend to get paid more in my experience. My personal experience is I do not like it as a desktop offering.

Ironwood I have worked with amazon's offerings a little bit and to be honest while the technology is great they seriously need to working on the billing.  To say things are complicated is a understatement. Also moving things between providers is more than a little painful at this point. You get vendor lock-in (much like using Microsoft products) again that will change in the long run but in the short term you should at least be aware of that.

And a totally random thought. To me one of the biggest reasons not to host things in the cloud in the US if I was a foreign company is the issues with our existing laws and European privacy laws at least in the short term. Essentially the way that the patriot act and other laws are the government can look at your information without a warrant(I do not want to go into the gory details or argue about laws here...). That is against the privacy laws (and other laws) in the EU. I have seen several high profile cases where US based cloud providers lost out on large deals due to where the information is stored. That will change as more data centers get built out and things get "localized".

Wow.  So much misunderstanding.

[Ingmar]

We operate in both the EU and the US and had zero problems moving our email to Google Apps. No legal issues there. We did have counsel look at it just in case.

[Ironwood]

I work in Cloud exclusively now.  Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, Google and all offerings in between.  I've been doing it for quite a while now.  I have moved Lawyers to the Cloud.  Quite a few in fact.  Also, some very large banks and Financial institutions. 

The fear and security angle is almost always utter, utter bollocks.

But hey, carry on.

[calapine]

Some info from Paul Thurrott about the upcoming Windows 8.1 new "features":

• The evolutionary new UI concepts called "Startbutton" and "Boot-to-Desktop" will only be available for Enterprise- and Professional versions of Win 8.1
• Only the clickable button itself is coming back. A click on it will open the Metro-UI. There will be no startmenu.

MS sucks, that's all I have to say.

[Salamok]

Some info from Paul Thurrott about the upcoming Windows 8.1 new "features":

• The evolutionary new UI concepts called "Startbutton" and "Boot-to-Desktop" will only be available for Enterprise- and Professional versions of Win 8.1
• Only the clickable button itself is coming back. A click on it will open the Metro-UI. There will be no startmenu.

MS sucks, that's all I have to say.

Wrong thread?  Isn't this the appleslinux cloud thread?

[schild]

Some info from Paul Thurrott about the upcoming Windows 8.1 new "features":

• The evolutionary new UI concepts called "Startbutton" and "Boot-to-Desktop" will only be available for Enterprise- and Professional versions of Win 8.1
• Only the clickable button itself is coming back. A click on it will open the Metro-UI. There will be no startmenu.

MS sucks, that's all I have to say.

Does not even make sense to me.

[Venkman]

Now THAT is the goddamned stupidest way to solve their huge ass PR problem.

You don't need the startbutton because Metro invokes by clicking in the lower left of the screen (if there's ever reason to use Metro, which there is not). And boot to desktop is achieved by never turning it off 

And by limiting it just for the type of end user who probably already went ever further with hacks and whatnot just shows the pathological level of ignorance and hubris they have internally.

[Hammond]

I work in Cloud exclusively now.  Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, Google and all offerings in between.  I've been doing it for quite a while now.  I have moved Lawyers to the Cloud.  Quite a few in fact.  Also, some very large banks and Financial institutions. 

The fear and security angle is almost always utter, utter bollocks.

But hey, carry on.

You know I was thinking of a long reply.

However I think at this point lets agree to disagree? We are coming from opposite ends of the tech world. You are coming from a cloud provider supporting and champion those products while I am coming from the other side worrying about how to keep my paranoid bosses happy and making sure things are secure / backed up.

[Ingmar]

No, it really is kind of BS, I am pretty sure. There was a flurry of concern from cloud providers last year (right around the time I was switching to Google as it happens); everything I've read indicates that they've largely resolved the issues and can operate in the EU just fine... other than European provider salesmen trying to insinuate that US providers aren't safe, apparently:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/international-foreignlaw/blogs/internationalandforeignlawcommentary/archive/2013/02/26/cheap-shots-eu-privacy-the-usa-patriot-act-and-cloud-computing.aspx

I wish I could see the whole article on this one.

[Ironwood]

I work in Cloud exclusively now.  Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, Google and all offerings in between.  I've been doing it for quite a while now.  I have moved Lawyers to the Cloud.  Quite a few in fact.  Also, some very large banks and Financial institutions. 

The fear and security angle is almost always utter, utter bollocks.

But hey, carry on.

You know I was thinking of a long reply.

However I think at this point lets agree to disagree? We are coming from opposite ends of the tech world. You are coming from a cloud provider supporting and champion those products while I am coming from the other side worrying about how to keep my paranoid bosses happy and making sure things are secure / backed up.

I was where you were for 20 years.

Trust me, that shit gets old and once you figure out you don't have to do it, it's so very, very freeing. 

[MahrinSkel]

I have to say that as I have shifted from having 2-3 computers of roughly equivalent capability (one might be a better gaming rig while another was more portable, but they all did roughly the same things in the same way) to about 10 different computing devices of radically different form factors, input methods, and display capabilities, the attraction of using "cloud" services that don't make me constantly worry about which data is on which system has definitely made itself felt.

--Dave

[Hammond]

I work in Cloud exclusively now.  Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, Google and all offerings in between.  I've been doing it for quite a while now.  I have moved Lawyers to the Cloud.  Quite a few in fact.  Also, some very large banks and Financial institutions. 

The fear and security angle is almost always utter, utter bollocks.

But hey, carry on.

You know I was thinking of a long reply.

However I think at this point lets agree to disagree? We are coming from opposite ends of the tech world. You are coming from a cloud provider supporting and champion those products while I am coming from the other side worrying about how to keep my paranoid bosses happy and making sure things are secure / backed up.

I was where you were for 20 years.

Trust me, that shit gets old and once you figure out you don't have to do it, it's so very, very freeing. 

Believe me I may gripe but I truly have a great place to work. and I talk about this stuff more because I get a kick out security and understanding big picture stuff. I like the cloud and what it entails but some of the security hurdles they are working through are still a bit high for me to feel comfortable with it.

On a side note I feel sorry for you to have to deal with the clients you deal with. Lawyers and Real Estate agents were my two least favorite clients at my last job. (service provider internet, email, hosting, vps etc etc) Doctors were a close third.

[Yegolev]

I'm not aware of any security issues with cloud.  Especially when you consider that what I mean by cloud is basically the same IT outsourcing people have used for years.  For me, cloud is more about automation or virtualization.  It's a damn stupid word.

Linux is sort of funny.  It's come a very long way over the past few years and is a viable OS for serious computing.  On the other hand, RH clusters are laughable.  It's getting there, though.

[Chimpy]

I work at a major research university. The vast majority of our core infrastructure will continue to be on site long into the future. We are integrating things into a more centralized "private cloud" type setup with cross-campus integration between the 3 campuses, but that is as far as a lot of it will go in my estimation knowing how things are.

We have dumped a lot of stuff off on commercial vendors in recent years. We use Box.com for shared web-accessible content and we punted student email to Gmail/Live (the student chooses) a few years ago.

And on the Win 8 note. Dell REALLY is trying to sell us a bunch of their new Win 8 tablets. The rep even was talking up some ridiculous plan that Southern Illinois is piloting now and planning on launching in August where they will do away with physical textbooks and rent every student a Win8 tablet to use as their "textbook"/main computing device. 

[Ingmar]

Latitude 10 is actually getting very solid reviews.

[Polysorbate80]

I work at a major research university. The vast majority of our core infrastructure will continue to be on site long into the future. We are integrating things into a more centralized "private cloud" type setup with cross-campus integration between the 3 campuses, but that is as far as a lot of it will go in my estimation knowing how things are.

It's a mixed bag here at the University of Idaho.  On the IT/educational outreach side of things in particular, most folks would be happy to never deal with local servers ever again.

On the research side, some have security restrictions attached to their government research funds, and others (I'm looking at you, bioinformatics people....) have too many terabytes of information to move about willy-nilly.

Not that I should point fingers; I work in video.  My average project seems to be around 75GB in size, and some are larger.  This week's state board of education meeting is somewhere north of 500GB.  I have to have all that junk stored locally to work with it.

[Miasma]

Some info from Paul Thurrott about the upcoming Windows 8.1 new "features":

• The evolutionary new UI concepts called "Startbutton" and "Boot-to-Desktop" will only be available for Enterprise- and Professional versions of Win 8.1
• Only the clickable button itself is coming back. A click on it will open the Metro-UI. There will be no startmenu.

MS sucks, that's all I have to say.

Fuck.  So did we ever come to a consensus on what flavour of linux is currently the best, at least for developers and IT people doing work?

[Chimpy]

Wouldn't it pretty much depend on which 'core' version of linux you are interfacing with on the server side (debian, fedora, etc.) so all the packages/configuration quirks are the same?

[Salamok]

Fuck.  So did we ever come to a consensus on what flavour of linux is currently the best, at least for developers and IT people doing work?

Mint!

edit - I probably have this all wrong but developers and IT Folk are somewhat at odds here.  In my delusion this can be explained by looking at the Linux distro timeline Most IT folks are concerned with enterprise management and integrating Linux into an enterprise infrastructure, they will likely be following the forks at the bottom (along the redhat branch).  Most developers are not focused on being systems administrators and want a simpler security/infrastructure model so they go for a path of less resistance here and end up on the debian fork at the top.  The insane people who enjoy cultivating neckbeards, compiling their own kernels and speaking in tongues stay in the middle.

Wouldn't it pretty much depend on which 'core' version of linux you are interfacing with on the server side (debian, fedora, etc.) so all the packages/configuration quirks are the same?

For me this is mostly an apt vs. yum + what desktop environments are easily available argument but everyone will likely have their own feelings on the matter.  Also other than 5 years dealing with Novell and SLES web servers at work my Linux desktop experience has been split pretty evenly between debian flavors (at home) and redhat (at work).  Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) just builds on the familiarity I have here is just where I feel more comfortable.  If you have some ubuntu familiarity the original Mint was ubuntu based and there is still an ubuntu fork (trunk?) of Mint but since ubuntu is just a fork of debian anyway I would probably still suggest to just go with LMDE.

IMHO very few developers choose to work on red hat or suse most get told to use them by their IT staff and the ones that don't are choosing it because they want the support contract.  They both offer enterprise security (in addition to what Linux has already) and management, both are also more painful to work with than "consumer" Linux distros.

[Miasma]

Wouldn't it pretty much depend on which 'core' version of linux you are interfacing with on the server side (debian, fedora, etc.) so all the packages/configuration quirks are the same?

I don't know.  If so I guess just whatever the latest version of centOS is?