Returning to Windows: Part I

This series will run through how I've moved from being a full-time Linux desktop user to using Windows full-time. First up, a little about me.

I've been in the IT industry professionally for about 15 years, but I've always had something to do with computers. I started at around 7 learning BASIC and writing a few programs on my Sony Hit-Bit MSX.

(MSX is a whole other topic for another post, so I won't go into detail here.) 

After that I worked in Technical Support for a UK computer manufacturer before moving into R&D and finally into Linux system administration. During my time in R&D I had a lot to do with Microsoft and Windows in particular, developing PC builds and configurations around Windows from ME to Media Centre. I got to know them very well and didn't like the way either Microsoft, or Windows, worked.

So I changed my home desktop computers to Linux. Mandrake Linux at first as it was extremely user-friendly and attractive. It may look a little dated now, but against Windows 98 it was amazing.

I then moved onto Ubuntu as of Breezy Badger (5.10, released April 2005) and continued to make my protest against the Microsoft wheel corruption racket that I'd experienced when dealing with them.

So fast forward until now. Ubuntu was fantastic at the start, it promised so much, but as of Natty Narwhal (11.04) it's delivered so little. When I first started I always needed a decent video editor for my family videos. KDEnlive, Cinellera and later PiTiVi were video editors which were always halfway there, threatening to become the all-purpose easy editing suite that Windows Movie Maker had become. But 5 years later, it hasn't happened for one reason or another. A few weeks ago I simply couldn't hold out any longer, I installed Windows 7 on my main computer, stopped being a martyr and took the easy life again. My experiences since then have been mixed, but now I'm in the position where I can provide the fairly rare insight of an experienced Linux user discovering the pitfalls of being a newbie Windows user. In all honesty, I know what to expect, it's not that different to where I left it, but I still have a fresh view on most of it.

The next part of this series will be how the installation differed to what I'm used to. How easy is Windows 7 to set up and get ready to use compared to Ubuntu?

The Future of Web Services / The Plight of the Infrastructure Techie

The landscape for Internet Infrastructure is changing, and it may be quite scary for techies..

Currently, we have quite a supply-chain in web service hosting. We do everything ourselves and that means lots of skill-sets in various places such as:

Linux/Windows SysAdmin
Networking SysAdmin
HA/Load-Balancing Specialists
DBAs
Developers
Management

Typically, management instruct developers to do something and this something needs to be consulted on from conception to delivery. The developer needs to make it in such a way that the DBA and SysAdmins are happy that it will scale and perform. If it’s business critical the HA people get involved and ensure development is geared around being resilient too. The whole thing creates an infrastructure ecosystem of staff because it’s all very DIY so lots of diverse skills are required.

What happens when all of that is someone elses problem, without the disadvantage of outsourcing costs?

Using Cloud Computing you can build web applications to be self-aware. All of the nasty stuff that you used to have to worry about is gone:

Scaling – Amazon Elastic Compute lets you boot loads of instances of your pre-configured application OS images (read-only) manually or automatically. Because the booting of extra instances is web service controlled your app can decide if it needs more power or not.

Load-balancing – Single IP endpoints now control this. No more multiple servers with non-ARPing interfaces and virtual IPs. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing distributes load depending on instance issues, load metrics etc. OR you can plug it into Amazon Cloudwatch which monitors certain metrics and load-balance depending on that.

Hardware – It’s all virtual innit? It’s no longer our problem.

Database Scaling and Capacity – Apps just abstract DB API’s these days anyway. All apps ever do is ask the connector to pull data out into an object or insert data in, or do stuff with the data that’s there. If all you ever see is an interface into a limitless space of data then all you have to worry about is what you do with the data. Amazon SimpleDB does this for you.

Shared data storage – Amazon Elastic Block Storage behave like a SAN where you can have data sat on a filesystem to be accessed by apps on multiple instances. Again, any problems with this are someone else’s. All I care about is accessing my data.

Data mining – If you have lots of data to interrogate you can use Amazon MapReduce to process it.

There are lots of other ways you can use elastic cloud computing to remove a LOT of current infrastructure costs and concerns, eventually leading you to just have to worry about the application. Once you get to that stage you can just concentrate on making it work and doing it right. For a business, it’s a non-decision – or at least it should be. Without all the associated costs of infrastructure and infrastructure people a business can save obscene amounts of money and be a lot more efficient to boot. So why aren’t they?

Well, businesses are just scared of anything new. Elastic computing has to continue to innovate and provide something all-in-one and pre-packaged that it makes a lot more sense (not just a bit more sense) to migrate. Also business don’t like the idea of their data being somewhere they can’t control. That mindset just has to change, and it will as more and more large enterprises get on the cloud application bandwagon and start using tools such as Google Calendar / Mail / Contacts for company business. SLA’s give some peace of mind to directors but not quite yet enough.

But once the scales start tipping, the only people safe are developers.

Printing, And How It's Like Cars

Printers are like the car industry. Stay with me. I'll explain.

Back in the day, printers were tough as old boots. They supported either Postscript or PCL. That was fine, there were 2 standards and most printers supported either.

Then, along came Microsoft with WDM and the ability to use drivers to offload the printers processing into software. Suddenly people like Epson could build cheap mass-produced shit like the Stylus C20 USB printers etc. that didn't have a hope of supporting a standard like PCL or PS. 1-0 to Microsoft, as with their WDM drivers for modems, they played their market advantage to ensure that only people running Windows could use software printers (winprinters).

HP were caught a little on the hop. They suddenly had to play catchup and started doing this winprinter rubbish too. They did, but at the expense of their quality and their reputation in the marketplace. Eventually HP came back around to supporting PCL and Postscript in almost all of their printers and now they're back on top.

Compare to the car industry in the UK - Ford and Vauxhall have always been the mainstream cheap brands, they got good at shaving costs without compromising too much in reliability. Suddenly people like VAG, BMW etc. had to lower prices to compete but they weren't used to doing things on the cheap so the stuff they produced was often poor quality in the late 90's / early 2000's and the Ford and Vauxhall stuff was actually more reliable. It's only today that the higher marques have been able to compete on price and also quality with the cheaper stuff.

'til next time.

I'm KDE 4, and Windows 7 Was My Idea...

27 October 2007, KDE 4.0 is released:

22 October 2009, Windows 7 is released:

Microsoft: Innovation in action.