There is always one of these threads every month or so ... /sigh

"Free as in beer", but not "free as in speech"... At least for Solaris from Sun. Not sure about the opensolaris project. Still some hardware support limitations, but it now uses a worked over gnome interface... I'm very impressed and will be switching from Linux to Solaris as my various boxen come up for replacement.

I built a file/print server for my kids school on an old P400 and it cost nothing. Its been sitting there for the last three years, used every day, and its never needed rebooting, has suffered half a dozen power cuts, and never required any maintenance or intervention of any kind whatsoever, it seems almost unkillable. Try that with windows. Well you can't cos windows will cost you several hundred quid for a start.

btw my missus calls XP telly tubby software. Any of you not familiar with this UK childrens program will be shocked by the resemblance -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/teletubbies/

Coincidence? I don't think so....

I thought that 1s and 0s doing mathematical stuff was simple. Oh, but us humans have to do "magic" with everything ...the complication began with the first command line, assembler, etc... making a machine "look" like something else.

At least it's open Open Solaris, don't know if it's free :)

No need to get facetious ... :}

Assembler and command-line don't mean that you have
don't to understand what you're dealing with. You need
to have a sound understanding of what the machine does,
and how it does it so you're not in for strange surprises.

The way that MS or Apple adopt real-life terminology, e.g.
the term document. In real life a document it something that
you don't alter, and if you want a modification you get that
PLUS get to keep the original. Doesn't happen with
"saving a document".

Now, I'm not saying that everyone needs to know x86 (or
whatever CPU blows your skirt) instructions. But a certain
knowledge of the thing on (or under) your desk should be
there. It's like with that woman who ran her car dry, and then
told the tow-truck driver:"I didn't know it needed gas?!"
"Why can't I use a \ in my documents name?"


Cheers,
Tink