Virtualization Era!

Rebooting a machine to switch to another OS on multi-operating-system machine sounds out dated now. With recent VT-enabled technology from both Intel and AMD on certain x86 CPUs, virtualization goes smoother and better.

I just tested Microsoft Virtual PC which enable me to install multiple windows or even Linux under my Windows XP host OS. There are other Virtualization software available, either freeware or not. Here I am trying to list some of them:

Non-free ones:
VMWare: https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?a=l&eval=workstation-l
Microsoft Virtual PC: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/
Novel SUSE Linux Exterprise VM Driverpack: http://www.novell.com/products/vmdriverpack/

Freeware versions:
Bochs: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/
QEMU: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.de/ (this software has dual licenses: free and proprietary)


While, to just run windows application on Linux, we can use wine or its sibling, the commercialized one: CrossOver for Linux: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

To learn more about virtualization and/or virtual machine (don't get confused with Java VM as it's not a system VM): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization

The more complete list of VM packages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines

I will report further once I try some of them. In most cases, the host OS will be OpenSUSE 64-bit ver 10.3 with guest OSs will be: Vista Home Premium SP1, Vista Ultimate 64-bit, Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger and some variants of Linux [Redhat, UBuntu, Debian]. The host system will be my desktop CPU: Intel Quad-core 2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, with almost 768 GB total space.

x86 Technical Info

Some very interesting technical information related to x86 (besides, of course, Intel/AMD official sites and Micro$oft):

http://www.sandpile.org
http://www.mgreene.org/wikka/LdrNotes

HP 1020 on Linux is now working!

Finally, I am able to print to HP LaserJet 1020 from my Linux machine. Thanks to the guys at http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/.

Just follow the instructions in the INSTALL file, you should be able to successfuly print. One thing I was unaware was to control CUPS via web (in my case, browse to http://localhost:631). From there, I could then test.  Although I've tested remote printing, it shouldn't be a problem because CUPS will handle all!

Great!!

Alternatives to Window$

I've found some alternatives to Windows, which some of them are quite attractive:

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

http://www.ecomstation.com/

OS/2 clones:

http://www.osfree.org/
http://voyager.netlabs.org/en/site/index.xml

Vista Is a Pain in the Butt!

The more I use Vista, the more frustation I get. My Vista has been updated with SP1 (as it always be, because it's been running Update scheduler since day one). Recently, my PC locks up more frequently than before. What I mean "lock up" is really a locked-up condition (freeze) to user. The mouse pointer freezes, there is no way to shutdown/reboot and doesn't get any response for any inputs either from keyboard nor mouse. I notice there is some activity on the hard disk, though.

With this issue, my list of dissapointment with Vista has even longer. Here's some of them:

1. No support for 4 GB RAM (only 64-bit does support it). What the heck? Mac OS-X and Linux much better (Mac OS-X 10.4 or later is actually a 64-bit OS so no issue, while on Linux 64-bit, support for 32-bit apps are excellent). Why doesn't Micro$oft just sell one version of the OS?
2. GUI freezes frequently (Yeah, no BSOD, but what's the difference? both render my PC as dead anyway!)
3. To-much minimum hardware requirements
4. Many compatibility issues with older applications
5. Costly (As comparation: Mac OS-X Leopard cost only $100'ish [there is only single version! no home, ultima bla...bla...edition]. Linux is even totally free!). Vista Ultimate? $300'ish!!!
6. Still immature driver support.
7. Super-fetch which is not super (it keeps my hard-disk busy for most of the time, although my PC has 4 GB of RAM and it's a Quad-core Intel 2.4 GHz!). Instead of a boost, it slows down the PC.
8. Slower than XP !! (and takes more space than XP too).
9. Lack of bundled development environment (Mac OS has XCode comes in its OS installation CD as an optional application. Linux has GCC and many others). Microsoft sells the development packages separately as MSVC, .NET bla..bla and cost hundreds of dollars each.

I now boot to Linux partition more than its Vista. openSUSE ver 10.3 now supports writing to NTFS partition, so there is no issue with mixed partitions. There are some limitations too on openSUSE, but at least I am in control if an application is going south (I can switch to text console, I can force-kill an application, I can even modify the operating system as I want!)

Windows versions

Windows, internally, have been versioned with numbers instead of codename like "Longhorn", "Vienna" etc. For example, Windows XP is internally versioned with "5.x", while Vista is basically Windows version 6. The next windows version (Windows 7) is trully windows version 7.
All are rooted since Windows 3.x Users mostly see product name (e.g, XP or Vista), but developers usually can see the versions (WinAPI doc from MSDN).  The numbers correspond to their major version and revision.  So expect a another big revision from Vista to Windows 7 (although users may not see or feel it, because the changes may be only internal to the system).

Here I try to list the versions:

Windows 3.0 -> winver 3
Windows 3.1 -> winver 3
Windows 95 -> winver 4
Windows NT -> winver 4
Windows 98 -> winver 4
Windows 2000 -> winver 5
Windows XP -> winver 5
Windows Vista -> winver 6
Windows 7 -> winver 7