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My experience with computing
systems
29 September 2006
I have always been a
Windows person at heart. I have had serious and extended flings with various
flavors of UNIX (SCO, IRIX, and Solaris) [by the way – I learnt that the comma
you put after the penultimate item in a group of 3 or more is called a serial /
Oxford / Harvard comma! – you learn something new every day!!], but never have
been able to understand the snobbery of why something as uncomfortable for
programming should dish out such powerful applications. One of the reasons
Windows is so popular and Mr. Gates is so rich is that Windows can be
understood by the masses. UNIX and its flavors are for people in ivory towers,
which is fine, because UNIX never did set out to capture every living room in
the world. Until of course the Mac OS changed all that.
But the Mac is a whole
another story that deserves a blog to itself. I have been an admirer of Mac in
malls. I never miss a chance to play around on the Mac in Valley Fair Mall Mac
store in San Jose; but I always find myself doing the same mundane and useless
things in the Mac that give me a 10-second adrenalin rush but never the sound
reason to shell out $1,000 more than a comparable Dell notebook. Mac
enthusiasts would be offended by the word ‘comparable’ in the previous
sentence. But that is their opinion and they are entitled to it. My point is,
for everyday work as a serious programmer and a person who cannot do without a
computer of any kind all the time I am awake, I don’t see how an expensive Mac
is a better proposition than an effective PC. Like most other things in life
(cars, big screen TVs, plasma TVs, HD TVs), I think Mac vs. PC this is an
emotional decision and a logical mind should not attempt to apply reason to
this argument.
I had heard about open
source software and Linux until 2004 but never seriously tried it out myself. I
could always fix everything in Windows by myself, could research and/or network
to get over UNIX dead-ends, so never really had the motivation to try open
source. So the open source community would tell you that its main scoring
points over the Wintel cartel are:
1. It is free (if not free, it is dirt cheap)
2.
It is developed by a community of users as opposed to the R&D division of a
company with deep pockets – so you get what users like yourself want and build,
rather than taking what the PhD minds R&D think you should want, and what
the Engineering division feels is feasible, and the what generates the margins
for the Sales team.
It all sounds good.
After 9 years in the IT services and consulting industry, towards the end of
2004, when I was managing multiple projects, I got a chance to engage in the
open source community seriously. It was actually 1/3rd of a chance, to be one
of my 3 key focus areas at work as I relocated to the United States in January
2005. Novell was in the process of reinventing itself to stay alive and had
acquired SUSE Linux recently and was making a last ditch attempt to hold on to
its Netware client base by positioning SUSE against Windows 2003. Microsoft
obviously had smelt blood, what with Novell bleeding forever – Novell was based
out of Utah and post the CTP acquisition based itself out of Waltham,
Massachusetts, but the stench of blood still got across the coast to Seattle,
Washington!!
But I digress. My focus
areas starting 2005 became program management for multiple streams of work we
were doing for one of our existing customers, presales support, and the open
source initiative in a partnership with Novell – this basically involved
strategic consulting for SUSE Linux based migration and solutions, and identity
& access management solutions. This was the first time I started getting my
hands dirty with open source (really the only way to learn, manage and lead by
example). I immediately realized within my own little sphere of influence that
cost was really not an issue being addressed by switching to open source. Now
when I say that, I do not refer to big, fat corporate giants spending $MM or
$BB on IT infrastructure and related maintenance. I do not have sufficient data
to believe beyond doubt that the total cost of ownership is lesser (or
otherwise) if they switch to open source. I think whatever license costs these
companies may save as a result of switching to open source will be negated by
the expensive and rare to find resources they have to deploy to maintain these
systems. Maybe if we sat down to count each apple and then just by virtue of
the volume of money spinning around in these companies, it may make sense to
switch to open source; I don’t know – it doesn’t seem to be a no-brainer like
off-shoring to India! But I was talking about the living rooms. What will be
individual consumer want – tried, tested and comfortable Windows, or
free/cheaper open source (Linux).
Many people make the
assumption that open source is freeware. It is not necessarily so. Freeware is
free. Then there is shareware – shared with some conditions. And then there is
open source – developed and maintained by a community of users. There are open
source applications too modeled on all software you use in Windows, but I am
sure if I were to switch to Linux exclusively, I would feel like I were
marooned in an island
Having said all this,
this blog will not be complete without mentioning the Firefox web browser. I
have been completely blown over by this. I like IE, always thought the world
and judiciary was unfair to Microsoft (in my own warped definition of
common-sense justice, or maybe I do not understand the specifics of this case
to comment on it. I tried Netscape and such just for the heck of it, but always
came back to IE. In one more such vagrant browser move, I installed Mozilla
Firefox in the middle of the night when I was not getting sleep and was too
brain-dead to do anything important. It turned out to be a blessing. I don’t
know what it is – the tabbed browsing, the themes and cool extensions (check
out Foxy Tunes, Foxcloud, Mousegestures, Forecastfox – these are my favorites)
– but I have converted to Foxism from IEism. I guess open source has a future
with me if they do more things like Firefox!
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