i remember when i first set up my /. account - with my brand-new UNIX cert and my first sysadmin job, it was pretty cool to find a site that catered to the *NIX mentality back in the day. Even if i was one of the 'new' users of the time period, undoubtedly part of the 'boom' crowd from exposure on Wired or something. I think I was actually referred to the site by my cert instructor, who was a huge linux fan (yggdrasil FTW, according to him).

I don't post on /. much any more - things have changed so much since those olden times, and I've just become even more cranky and cynical and have finally given up on the GPL/BSD flamewar. /. is still the first site I hit up when I begin my daily slog across the Internet, though.

Thanks Taco - /. has certainly changed as the times have changed but I don't think that's a bad thing; thanks for setting things up and keeping 'em running for so long.

and that guy who's convinced some people the world is going to end on May 21, he'll have to shut up soon as well.

It's better than nothing, I guess.

I don't think that a 'crime-kit' that consists of a form-grabber that works with Firefox qualifies as a deluge - it's hardly equal to the malware situation with Windows.

I believe that question was anwered by some of the Google I/O stuff yesterday - Flash is going to be an integral part of ChromeOS.

I believe that ChromeOS will be secure just like I believe that 75% of businesses can do business using only ChromeOS - that is, not at all.

there's a world of difference between disabling plugins/malware sinkholes and removing them. I agree with others that if Google's going to have their little reach-around agreement with Adobe and bundle their stuff in Chrome, then Google needs to take responsibility for the flaws/exploits/problems this causes or exposes.

Maybe someday the Google collective will realize that improvement cannot be realized if one doesn't admit to one's mistakes and act on that information. No doubt that's "just around the corner", along with the apocalypse of Macintosh malware, the death of the Windows desktop hegemony at the hands of the Linux desktop proletariat, and Christians awaiting their zombie-god's return.

I wish they would go ahead and come out, instead of lurking around the corner for, what, the past 8 years or so? Mac malware doom-n-gloomers are just like pseudo-archaeologists with their Mayan calendars, Adventist Christians and their second coming, and the Linux desktop people with their, well, desktop: always waiting for their moment, which is inevitably, "just around the corner."

That's not necessarily true. My main client is a small office with a lot of overworked people light on technical know-how, with a few policies set in place by management with similar workload and technical know-how. The average user here has dual 22" monitors, and a standard workload consists of 7-10 Excel spreadsheets open at once, stupid-sized Outlook mailboxes, multiple web sites, PDF document viewers / editors, along with the craptastic line of business app they use based on Visual Foxpro. It's a struggle to provide them with enough I/O on the desktop to make their "work harder not smarter" brute force approach doable. This isn't even calculating in the deleterious effects of a anti-malware solution, or any sort of management suite.

1GB on Windows 7 is a recipe for disaster. I wouldn't run 1GB on a Windows XP machine, unless the user doesn't use more than one application at a time, and uses some form of webmail instead of Outlook and Exchange. Factor in a lifetime of 3 years (at least), and there's no way that you should be buying any desktop with less than 2 GB of RAM, dual cores, and some modern SATA rotating storage (not that bottom-of-the-barrel low-performance crap that gets used in cheapie desktops) if the users do more than look up YouTube videos on the Internet.

point out one distro based on embedded linux, if you would. One that does not require USB to boot, or a LiveCD. Compared to the old days of linux kernel 2.0.36, linux kernel 2.6.xx is fucking Windows Vista, pre-SP1. Even the netbook-oriented distros are pigs compared to linux distros from that time. You can yammer on about all the new functionality you have, but linux is still swelling up with 'extra features'.

I tried to help out someone who had a Thinkpad T600e (Pentium II, 128MB RAM) and wanted to use it because it was the only machine that her relatives would not co-opt and install iTunes and every app under the sun on. I tried DSL, Puppy, etc. Compared to OP's requirements, this thing should've been a shoe-in: one USB 1.1 port, one CD-ROM. Neither DSL nor Puppy would boot on the thing - it would kernel panic when running setup regardless what kernel params I passed, on either distro.

I gave up and installed an old OEM copy of Windows 2000 Pro I still had kicking around - and it works fine. Hell, even Office 2003 works well.

i guess it *does* matter in that there apparently is a law or set of laws in place to make it illegal to do stuff like this. Companies like like Winchester or S&W or Boeing are legally operating manufacturers of firearms or aircraft used as weapons delivery systems, and so on.

I think the DMCA is stupid, but what you and I may think ethically doesn't mean a single thing from a legal standpoint. Here's hoping he gets off with a fine (though after seeing what happens to people who admit in court that they knowingly pirate songs, maybe that wouldn't be so great).

I don't agree re: VMware Server - I suspect it's much easier to find a computer with a copy of Windows XP on it than it is to find a server with the specific hardware requirements for ESXi. Performance, though... *shudders*
As far as white-box hardware, you're right. In my particular case, however, the machines in question were HP servers, not generic corner-cutting hardware, as you imply.
Further, on the two ML-series servers I had that met the hardware prerequisites for ESXi, neither would boot ESXi without a panic. I installed xen and had no problems.
I never tried Hyper-V, as xen met our performance expectations. How is Hyper-V's support for non-MS operating systems?

I realize this post is a bit hysterical, but the poster's correct in his/her information. why is this flagged flamebait?

The MS license 'graciously' allows you to use multi-core CPUs without extra cost (such nice bastards), provided the number of CPU sockets fits within your OS license. Regarding virtual procs and MS OSes - according to Microsoft: "For licensing purposes, a virtual processor contains the same number of cores and threads as its underlying physical hardware system."

you better go back and read the licensing terms for Windows Server 2003... Using the Enterprise Edition, you may run up to four 2003 servers with no additional license, provided you're using 2003R2 EE as the host OS. With Datacenter, you have unlimited licenses, provided that you're using 2003R2 DE as the host OS. Any other scenario, and you're required to license each copy of 2003R2.

I have a T61 (6465-57U) and run VirtualBox on top of Ubuntu 9.04 to run instances of XP - it works really well for me, provided I stay away from 'seamless' mode. I only wish the T61 had a higher RAM cap. Performance-wise, though, it works pretty nicely.

that's BS - I use xen to host a mix of debian and Windows images, and the I/O performance is pretty good. VMWS is the 'option' if you want to have absolutely substandard I/O performance.