The Contrarian Technologist

Category Technology
There has been discussion on some other blogs about whether or not IBM should support Ubuntu and/or other Debian based systems. The current response from IBM is that they are focused on platforms that have a lot of business use and see little value in supporting "home use" versions. Now, I will readily admit that I know little or nothing about Linux. I'm ashamed to admit that getting some better skills has been on my priority list for the last several years and every year it doesn't get done. I made a commitment earlier this year to have half of my server "farm" migrated to Linux by the end of the year and while I have a server up and running I have never felt confident enough to make the move.

That being said, the new Beta of Domino has doubled my resolve in this area, and convinced me that IBM should rethink their support of Ubuntu.

Posted by Kit Davis At 10:05 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
It's now been a little more than a week since I was lucky enough to find and down-load Beta 2. There are plenty of people blogging about all of the new features so I'll skip that discussion, but I am just really amazed at how stable the product is. After giving the product my usual 10 minute testing, I upgraded my servers and workstations the weekend before last. When I restarted my main Desktop yesterday for an unrelated reason, I realized that this is the first time any of the machines have been restarted since the initial install. Pretty damn impressive for a beta product! Maybe others are having a different experience, but from what I can see from the forums, there are a lot of issues (both big and small) being reported about the UI, but very few people seem to be reporting major crashes. I have a not so secret method for figuring out how stable products are. For 20 or so years, Maggie has been a big thorn in my side when it comes to technology. No matter how well I think something is working, or how easy it should be to use, invariably, she manages to break it within 24 hours of implementation. I'm happy to say that I upgraded her to the Beta Client three days ago and I haven't heard a single complaint or issue yet.....

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:50 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Technology
It has been three months since Vista was released and I haven't really seriously thought about upgrading. On the other hand, the first public beta of ND8 was released over the weekend and I am in the process of migrating the majority of servers and workstation. While I readily admit that it is an apples and oranges thing, the fact remains that I find no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista while I couldn't wait to get the new features in Hannover/ND8. There was a time when I never ran anything but beta versions of Windows or for that matter DOS so I am not shy about taking risks, it's just that I don't see any compelling reason to upgrade. XP is working fine and with all of the new productivity features in Domino it's maybe time to start thinking about moving to a Linux desktop. Oh, and yes - ND8 is fabulous - very stable so far. I admit that after struggling with WCS for a year or two, I was very nervous about what ND8 would be like, but my fears were unfounded the product is going to be a great success.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:18 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)