MiSTer has cores for those two as well.
https://github.com/MiSTer-deve... (SAM Coupe)
https://github.com/MiSTer-deve... (Amstrad CPC)

...and Amiga, Atari ST, 486SX... and dozens more... along with consoles and arcade machines.
See the complete list on the top MiSTer wiki page:
https://github.com/MiSTer-deve...

For anyone wanting to know about it, here is the MiSTer FPGA Wiki page on their C64/C128 core: https://github.com/MiSTer-deve...

Speaking of MiSTer, the MiSTer already has a Spectrum Next core... and I'd imagine that it will eventually get a Mega65 core. Of course though, it won't have the cartridge port nor the Commodore keyboard... and its SID chips will be in FPGA-only... but other than that, I'd imagine it give virtually the same experience software wise. That assumes the health of the MiSTer Project continues to be good for some time to come... which seems very likely. I'm loving my MiSTers.

Just to clarify and quantify... what exactly does Red Hat contribute to?... here's their list: https://community.redhat.com/s... Not only do they contribute by funding development here and there, they have created many projects themselves and sustained them until they successfully made them into an upstream community. I'm not sure where to find that list but it is a subset of the above link. Any of the upstream project web sites that have a "Powered by Red Hat" type logio in the top right is a good indicator. Red Hat over the years also purchased / acquired a few handful of companies... and if those companies already had open source products, they remained open source... and if those companies had some proprietary products, in most all (if not all) cases, even though it took quite a bit of work... over time those proprietary products were opened up... and upstream projects were created for them. Red Hat Directory Server used to be Netscape's proprietary product but is now upstreamed as 389. Quranet's SolidIce management system was all Windows server/technology-based and although it took a couple of years to completely re-write it in Java... it became RHEV and later RHV... and upstreamed as oVirt. The list goes on and on. Then there are the big Enterprise class products Red Hat started from scratch and then over multiple releases adapted to use other's technologies where appropriate (they aren't afraid of not-invented here) like with OpenShift. At first they had their own container like entity that was called a "gear" and mostly namespaces, cgroups and SELinux policies strung together. Then they adopted Docker... and later Kubernetes. When they found issues with the development model of Docker Inc, they started developing completely open alternatives like podman, buildah, skopeo, etc. In any event, their story has always been combined with Free and Open Source software and believing in it. They did have one challenge when they made their own Red Hat Network backend based on Oracle DB... but that was fixed over time and eventually completely open sourced for use with other databases... and even forked to be used as a commercial product by SUSE. And then there was the whole Oracle Enterprise Linux fork of RHEL... and CentOS... (in no specific order)... and their eventual sponsoring of CentOS. And of course, don't forget Fedora. It took them a while to get to Fedora but they did. BTW, a commenter's mention of systemd... Red Hat did not originally agree with the idea of starting systemd... but Lennart P. continued developing it on his own time... and got it into Fedora and it proved itself... and was eventually adopted by RHEL... but it was never a given. Some people think systemd is a cancer others really appreciate the wide range of features it enabled (welcome modern world!)... and still others seek to emulate it on other OSes. One thing is for sure, systemd makes sysadmin easier to teach, learn and do across all of the distros that have adopted it. I'm sure there are many developers who have gotten paid by various companies to write both proprietary as well as open source applications on top of RHEL... and to sysadmin RHEL... and to devops it... and to support it... as an alternative to Red Hat's paid support. It has created all kinds of opportunities outside of RHEL and their various other products. As previously mentioned a whole lot of that work has made its way into the greater Linux and FOSS ecosystems and is enjoyed by pretty the vast majority of Linux users everywhere.

I've been using Linux as my primary OS since 1995 and do installs a few times a week... so no... your "probably" didn't pan out this time.

I test out quite a few Linux distros and even though I'm a systemd fan, I thought I'd give Devuan a try as a KVM virtual machine... something I would expect a lot of Linux users to do considering that KVM has been the native Linux kernel hypervisor since 2007. Anyhoo... no matter that I did, the partitioner would allow me to partition /dev/vda but when making the mount points it couldn't see anything because it was expecting /dev/sda. Wha, wha, what? Doesn't seem ready for prime time.

I'm a long time OpenVZ user. I don't know if your "VPS" is a container or a full-blown VM running under KVM or Xen... but if you want graphical access to a desktop environment I'd recommend using xrdp. xrdp is an RDP service for Linux. xrdp uses VNC underneath but it is transparent to the user who uses any RDP client they like. Many distros package xrdp.

I've used xrdp on physical systems, KVM virtual machines, and inside of OpenVZ containers and it seems to work equally well.

If you have a very limited set of packages installed, you'll probably have to install a desktop environment first. Get to know your package manager from the command line... rpm/dpkg or yum/apt-get.

The command line is still the preferred way to do things in some environments. Period. This is especially true in servers. In fact the next release of Windows Server supposedly has a non-GUI aka command line oriented interface by default. Linux is becoming more like Windows and vice versa. As someone else said, some command line tools offer features that just aren't available from a GUI... and again... vice versa. I say use the best tool for the job... even if it is a command line tool. I still prefer to run package managers from the command line even when there are reasonable GUI front-ends for them. The command line isn't always a failure, it's a feature.

I don't think Red Hat puts logos or branding in the kernel. This was talked about earlier in the week on LWN.net and the patches ARE still available but for RHN (Red Hat Network) subscribers... and they modified the RHN service agreement to include a clause that makes it a violation to share the individual patches. While that might seem like a violation of the GPL, it isn't because they do make the entire thing publicly available (no RHN subscription required) in the new (no separate patches) kernel package release.

Jim said the same stuff during his keynote at the recent Red Hat Summit 2010. If you want to see it, watch the video here: http://www.redhat.com/videos/summit2010/Jim_Whitehurst.html

I really wanted this book since I'm a Druapl user and want to find out about the upcoming changes / features in Drupal 7. I found out that the Packt Publishing website has a special going... and I was able to pick up the electronic release for $9.99. I bought myself a copy. They let you download a PDF that has your name and address embedded in the footer of each page. I like to have printed copies so I fired it off to the laser printer. Great value. Of course you can order the print version, or the print / ebook combo from them too if desired.

I'm a long time Prince fanatic. I *LOVE* Prince's music but the stuff he says when not performing music, not so much. I'll admit that in many areas, Prince is a nut. Aren't most of us?

Anyway... I think his point about the Internet is that, generally speaking, there aren't a whole lot of artists making money off of their works by distributing them over the Internet. There are a few monopoly sites / services who are getting the Lion's share of the money. Yes, there are a number of free music systems, or donation music sites where you can donate or pay what you want, but not really what Prince is looking for.

As many of you already know, Prince was an early Internet pioneer... creating several music clubs online to distribute his music. I think his main reason for stopping those is that people have very little control / discipline when it comes to pirating his music. With a later iteration of his online music club DRM was added but what a major pain that was for the end user (speaking for myself). Music without DRM gets pirated too much, and music with it is painful.

While I believe media piracy acts as a superior form of marketing, I'm guessing it would be hard to convince Prince of that.

So, from one aspect... online media content distribution has become just as corrupted as the pre-online... with only a handful of players making most of the money and to a certain extent, dictating the terms... and I think that is what Prince is talking about... and I agree with him... although I am encouraged by many of the free/donation type sites. I think Prince should be one of the first major artists to distribute content via some of our preferred services that are primarily independent music... to see how it goes before he calls it quits. I mean, giving away your CD in a UK newspaper is going to help your sales (compared to non-DRM Internet-based, easily pirated delivery) how?

I think if Prince gave his fans a chance, they'd be happy to donate... and just maybe he'd do as well or better as those efforts from Radio Head and Nine Inch Nails.

Here is what I use for the classes I have run (two so far): A server running an OpenVZ kernel with a public IP address that can be accessed from on or off campus. Then I recommend making a course container with a public IP address and give each student a user account on that container.

Then create a container for each student with a private IP address. A simple iptables line will allow you to NAT the containers with a private IP address through the host node so each container can reach the outside world.

To access their containers students would just ssh into the course server and then ssh from there to their containers. Containers don't take up a whole lot of resources nor disk space compared to a full virtual machine.

That will provide you with a virtualized environment for each student where they have full root access, can install software, and if they screw it up somehow, you can easily repair or replace it. You aren't limited to what Linux distribution you can run in a container so if you want to give them access to multiple distros, you can.

Of course that only gives you a command line only environment which is suitable for a sysadmin type class (what I teach). If you absolutely need a GUI environment, you can easily install one or more desktop environments in your containers which would be accessible over the LAN with VNC. Routing private IPs over a LAN isn't too difficult, you'd just need a static route to the host node.

Of course you could do the same thing with KVM on a server but it would require a whole lot more resources.

If that still will not meet your requirements because they turned down a server-based solution, I'd recommend external USB hard drives. You can get a fairly large one for about $80 and you'll have way less problems than with LiveUSB media that tend to mess up easily. Then you can either run a regular OS from it OR uses it to store disk images for VirtualBox or whatever virt solution the students would have to use on their personal computer.