That makes a lot of sense. Apple probabely also has a gag clause in their app store contracts that forbids them to talk about said contract. So they can't explain why the went closed source.

I thought that was exactly the difference between XEN and KVM. KVM uses the Linux kernel as ring 0, whereas XEN creates it's own 'sort of' kernel as ring 0.

And, I don't think this approach is the best, because Linux and Unix still outperform any other approach by a long shot and have a lot of stability. So I prefer OpenVZ, Linux-Vserver.org and, since it is now the officially sanctioned solution: LXC. On the server side everything is Linux anyways. So why should I virtualize hardware, when I can use the perfectly good Linux kernel, which is very fast and very stable and just virtualize the userland? I get more perfomance AND more stability.

> This hasn't been a financial success, but it's not hurt them that badly either.

Actually it did hurt them bad. They sold something like 2 copies (at 2 bucks) a day afterward, but had to buy freakin *new* servers (at what? $1000 bucks) just to support all the new people.

Partially for monopoly reasons the computer has not seen any major ui revision since Win95. XP brought the stability to that ui. Maybe because of competition from OO.org (I dunno), the Office division of MS was able to push through a minor overhaul. The ribbon interface for Office 2007. Which finally made a change from Office 95. Now it's 2011 and we are still waiting to see anything on the ui front.

Though I do believe Microsoft will do something minor in Windows 8, because they want to make it tablet friendly.

Note that I didn't comment wether or not the ribbon interface is better. Personally I certainly think so, but I didn't want to get into that discussion.

What Win7 image are you using? I seriously didn't know Win7 came with an official option to put it on a usb stick for install. Also: How big does the stick have to be?

Now when you install Linux, you arrive at a machine ready to go. With office and internet applications already installed. When I install any version of Windows I will still need to install drivers and applications afterwards. If you don't have a fresh install, but a new machine and/or a restore to factory you can't start installing, but rather need to start removing crapware, some of which (like anti Virus) will ask you for reboots.

> I don't know why I still consider this a technical forum.

It's not really, but this discussion is clearly going OVER your head, not under.

> but I assume it's better now so I won't condem the entire Linux platform on my bad experience (ancient history now

> That doesn't make Windows a less viable platform or me ignorant on the available options.

It actually does if you don't have any recent experience on Linux.

I personally use Debian for servers and my personal desktop and it IS awsome. Though you have to know what you are doing. I am using apt-pinning to get some recent packages. KDE packages in stable have numerous bugs that are fixed in the current KDE for example and I would like to pull in the KDE from experimental and so far have not been able to, because apt pinning sounds better than it sometimes works.

If you want fresh stuff you can always use Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE) or Lubuntu (LXDE).

That being said, there are numerous tutorials on the web on how to use either Gnome2 or Gnome3 with the default Gnome Shell instead of Unity on Ubuntu Natty. So where is your problem?

If enough people end up liking the default Gnome3 shell they might even create an Ubuntu spin of their own.

OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) and Linux-VServer used to be the big names in virtualization. Now Linux has LXC in the mainline kernel. Virtualization with Xen and KVM are nice. But when you want to run Linux in virtualized guests you get a much better performance with para virtualization.

Xen and KVM are useful is you want to run Windows as a guest. But for Linux guests I really recommend the above.

But why would you buy a commercial Hyper-V? VMware is there. VirtualBox has excellent support for Windows hosts and is free. I don't see how Microsoft could make any headway with all the excellent products with every ninche (commercial, open source, free, expensive) already taken.

I am a pretty big rts fan. Even though I don't play all that much computer games and even though I run Debian on my desktops I actually purchased copies of Warcraft III and Starcaft. I believe those are among the very few games I ever bought. And the only Windows games I bought within the last ten years (I got myself Tribes 2 and Civilization CTP from Loki and UT2004, all for Linux). I was really looking forward to Starcraft 2 and even considered a Windows partition or a purchase of Crossover Games (Wine on steroids for money). Since I don't follow game news I never thought Blizzard would become one of THOSE companies.

I will definitely buy a copy of Starcarft 2 as soon as I can play it whenever and whoever I want. But now? I tell my friends not to buy Blizzard anymore. They are free to pirate that crap.
I thought Blizzard got it, when a recent (within the last two years or so) patch for Warcraft III removed the need to have an original cd in the cd drive bay. I guess I was wrong. Blizzard can kiss my behind.

If you don't want to go cloud you will either have to set up your own server or directly sync between the desktops and the phones. Since you are already set on Evolution you will have to find a solution that works with Evolution. I have done a lot of research into syncing for myself and for my job. For Evolution there is a mature solution called SyncEvolution that even has corporate sponsors. SyncEvolution speaks SyncML, so you simply have to find either phones or a server that speaks SyncML.

For servers: http://www.synthesis.ch/ or http://www.egroupware.org/

Certain phones can speak syncml. For example the Nokia E-Series (business phones). Also said company Synthesis does offer an Android app to add SyncML capability to Android phones.

Come on. How many times do you need to check your eyes. And shouldn't somebody do this that has an idea of what they are doing?