Last week, I semi retired my N900 replacing it with a Samsung Galaxy SII. Initial impressions are that the SGS2 is very nice and all but it doesn't have the same 'feel' as the Nokia. My N900 is without doubt a small computer with phone functionality. The SGSII is a smartphone. There is a subtle but distinct difference.

So, the N900 will live on at home with the sim removed but connected to my wireless network. I see it fulfilling various roles, one of which will be as a device...

I was answering a question the other day about the difference between mid-range (AS/400)and mainframe systems. I touched on how the OS differed but then it occurred to me that Linux will run on everything from big iron to a Raspberry Pi! To the best of my knowledge, there is no other OS that will do that!

My second observation is that there is pretty much no decent, easily found, basic documentation for Windows administrators. Try Googling for basic admin guides for Linux and then...

In the past, I posted on why I don't hate Microsoft. I must have been feeling generous back then, because on reflection, there isn't a lot to like with that company... Here's a couple of recent news articles that illustrate what I mean.

The first one Is the Windows 8 UEFI secure boot debacle. (Here's an excellent blog post on the subject.) My concern is that Microsoft will quite happily mandate that hardware manufacturers enable secure boot by default and then let their 'partners'...

I've been playing around with namebench since reading a post about it on the Mepis community forums. A nifty tool! One thing I discovered that annoyed me slightly though, is that my home router (BT Home Hub) will not allow me to change it's default DNS servers. So, if I want to use the faster servers namebench identified I've got to configure on a per machine basis for everything on my home network... :-/ Oh well.

So, I've been shopping online for a mouse for my new netbook. I settled on a Logitech M125. While looking at the specifications, I noticed that it specifically states that the mouse is compatible with Linux 2.6 kernels and better. Same info on the manufacturer's site. Well, it's not often you see that!