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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Linux will be unstoppable in 2026 (David)
2. email oligopolies (Kim Holburn)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2026 11:26:51 +1100
From: David <[email protected]>
To: Link mailing list <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [LINK] Linux will be unstoppable in 2026
Message-ID: <3569022.LZWGnKmheA@ulysses>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Thursday, 8 January 2026 17:25:05 AEDT Kim Holburn wrote:
> Linux is currently the only alternative.
There's always OpenVMS... yes, it's now supported by a US company, but it's
apparently OSS. Note the last sentence below:
> VMS cluster uptimes of 17 years have been reported.
>From Wikipdia, with references removed for readability::
> OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS,[8] is a multi-user, multiprocessing
> and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support
> time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation
> applications. Customers using OpenVMS include banks and financial services,
> hospitals and healthcare, telecommunications operators, network information
> services, and industrial manufacturers. During the 1990s and 2000s, there
> were approximately half a million VMS systems in operation worldwide.
>
> It was first announced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as VAX/VMS
> (Virtual Address eXtension/Virtual Memory System) alongside the VAX-11/780
> minicomputer in 1977. OpenVMS has subsequently been ported to run on DEC
> Alpha systems, the Itanium-based HPE Integrity Servers,[19] and select x86-64
> hardware and hypervisors. Since 2014, OpenVMS is developed and supported by
> VMS Software Inc. OpenVMS offers high availability through clustering?the
> ability to distribute the system over multiple physical machines. This
> allows clustered applications and data to remain continuously available while
> operating system software and hardware maintenance and upgrades are
> performed, or if part of the cluster is destroyed. VMS cluster uptimes of 17
> years have been reported.
> [...]
_DavidL (an ex DEC person!)_
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2026 11:52:28 +1100
From: Kim Holburn <[email protected]>
To: EFA Privacy List <[email protected]>, Link mailing list
<[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] email oligopolies
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
I have a friend who had an email problem.? His emails were often not getting to
the people he was sending to.? I started looking at
the problem and it was not simple at all.? Still haven't narrowed it down.
Previously, running a mailserver meant dealing with avalanches of spam and
making sure you were not somehow contributing to that. In
addition to that, currently to run a mail server, you need to have complicated
and technical systems for your mail to even be
accepted.? ?Blocklists, spf, DKIM.
Currently, ISPs in Australia have largely got out of the email game, forcing
people to find email services elsewhere.? Online email
services have been being bought out by the large online email services, so
email services are being narrowed to large companies.
I have realised that most people seem to have given up and are using gmail or
microsoft, who seem to have gobbled up all the free
email services, or protonmail.
Sadly for most people, not technically proficient this means having their email
on a cloud server somewhere, most likely in another
country.
With the world getting increasingly chaotic can any of us really afford to have
all our personal and business dealings in another
country, or even in our own?? Choose your poison?
Kim
--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
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End of Link Digest, Vol 398, Issue 6
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