October: The Month of OS Refreshes
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Another autumn, another round of operating systems. For those that are in the Linux loop, we're used to getting the full onslaught here - Ubuntu 9.10 and OpenSuSE are due by the end of this week, whereas Fedora and Linux Mint are anticipated sometime in November. There's a lot of promising stuff coming down the pipeline, and it seems like it's going to definitely be a good release refresh - new X Server, new previews of GNOME Shell (which I happen to like), new kernel, and more stability than ever before.
My distribution of choice is Ubuntu, and I plan to be moving my machines to 64-bit operating systems soon. Admittedly, there may seem like there aren't many more advantages than being able to address 264-1-1 bytes of memory, but I've actually felt that the system was more stable than in 32-bit. Not to mention, we should be moving to a 64-bit architecture soon - it's probably going to happen well before the end of 2020.
I've been running Ubuntu 9.10 RC for about a week now, and for what it's worth, it's rock solid. For the first time in about a year, I don't have to compile my own drivers for wireless anymore. Graphics card works nice, too. I'm still a bit upset with the new Java plugin, since it doesn't seem to like working with RuneScape without eventually crashing. I'll have to file bug reports about it later.
Even if RuneScape still won't go into full HD mode in 64-bit, that's kind of irrelevant right now. Jagex just needs to get their act together and ship 64-bit ELFs for Linux, that's all. Same thing applies to any other application out there - if your software won't work with 64-bit systems, then you're already way behind the curve. How many years has it been since AMD launched 64-bit instructions again?...
Also, about a week back, Windows 7 was released. Alright, I know that many people don't like Vista, and Microsoft has probably lost some of its personal customers with Vista's poor showing forever (myself included), but let's be fair and give the demons company another try.
I happen to be in the Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA), and as a student, I am privy to receiving Windows 7 (and Vista and Win XP SP3) for $0. Even if I don't like the company much, academia relies more on Windows than one would like to believe, so I have no choice but to use it. I am a bit wary of any new OS, even the Linux OSes, but I will say that I am impressed with Windows 7 so far. I haven't done a full install of it on my main machine yet, only tinkered with it in VirtualBox, but I am indeed pleased with it. And it's not often that I'm pleased enough with Windows to consider wiping XP again for it.
Anyway, I'm going to probably play with Karmic a bit more, and wait until I'm ready to back up 125GB worth of data to redo my tower. Perhaps next time I'll post something I've been working on in my spare time.
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