On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:07:12 PDT "Richard L. Hamilton" <rlhamil at smart.net>
wrote:
> So given all that, it's up to you to decide whether OpenSolaris is suitable
> for you. The best approach with anything is usually in this order:
> * first, make a list of everything you know or can anticipate you might want
> to do, and put it in priority order
> * second, find applications that do that, keeping in mind that there may
> be multiple applications for any given task, not all of which run on every
> platform
> * _last_, pick the OS that will support the most of the top priority
> applications
You know, I started giving advice pretty much identical to that nearly
30 years ago. Seeing it again, it hit me that - well, I didn't do that
any more. Thinking about it, I realized that that's because it's no
longer correct.
Back when I started doing this, computers came with 10s of K, and
usually were dedicated to a single task: playing pong, or going to the
moon, or such like. For most of the time between then and now, they
were pretty much dedicated to doing a small set of things, which
produced results that you would use without dealing with a computer
again.
But now, things have changed. Computers are part of the infrastructure
of our lives. Most of the uses aren't generating output you take away,
but involve communicating with other people - both directly, with IM's
and video chat and email, and indirectly, by sending around digital
media that both ends need to play. Even worse, we now spend nontrivial
amounts of time trying to get the balky beasts to do what we want,
instead of doing what we want. Again, other people play a big part of
this - we'll go to our friends and ask for their help in dealing with
problems, particularly if they sent us the file we were trying to play
in the first place!
For most people the top things on that list of things they want to do
is going to be dominated by things like "Exchange <foos> with <bar>"
and "Help <|> exchange <fus> with me and <notme>." Some of the <foos>
and <fus> will have been around long enough that all the common
formats are open and any application can read them. Some of them will
almost certainly have only proprietary formats, and the applications
that deal with them will tend not to talk to each other very well. A
lot will be things that have proprietary formats *and* open formats,
and applications will generate their proprietary formats by default -
and most people won't change that - and try and read those proprietary
formats - and not do a very good job of it.
So you want to get your list of applications more like so:
*) List the people you're going to be communicating with, and what
you're going to be communicating with them.
*) Talk to them, and find out what applications they for what you're
going to send back and forth, and what other applications can read
those things. Find out if they feel willing and able to help you
should you have problems, and who they talk to when they need
professional help.
*) Talk to the pros about the things you're going to be doing, and see
what applications they recommend.
Of course, for most of the last couple of decades, what falls out is
almost always Windows. I'm happy with that - I've always used Unix, so
I can tell them "... but I don't use Windows, so don't call me for
help."
These days, virtualization technology is changing that answer again,
but I haven't figured out exactly how yet. I think Sun sees this, and
hope they make sure VirtualBox make Solaris a viable platform in a
world where most of your applications run on virtual systems.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org
