Here is a short list of the things I totally loved this year. Use the comment section to tell us about your favorites too!
Post a Comment
My favourite thing in 2003 was the cute little USB harddisk that I bought. Its smaller than a pack of playing cards, has a capacity of 4.6 GB and does NOT need an external power supply. It runs on the USB power itself. I wonder how I ever lived without it. Great way to carry data around. And it just costs 70 dollars!!
I can see arguments for Mac OS X being the best desktop OS, but Best Server OS: Windows 2003 ???? I'm quite sure that there were much better Server OS out there. Maybe Windows 2003 was most improved Server OS or best really cheap Server OS, but best Server OS.... it would mean that when you have thirty million dollars... you'd still use Windows 2003 on a little tiny Intel machine to run your entire shop.... hmmm.
beos is dead ? sco owns linux ? X11 is old ?
Even though it's "merely" an iMac with a bigger screen, for sheer LCD-beauty and screen real estate desire, my vote goes for the 20" iMac *sigh*
Link to the hard drive manufacturer?
- Innovation/Great Idea of the year: Nothing new ever happens 
- Best Hobby OS: I agree with SkyOS, though I would have to go with OpenBeOS for friendliest hobby OS community 
- Best Desktop OS: I agree with OS X 10.3
- Best Server OS: On the mid-range, Linux. At the high-end, Solaris.
- OS with most overall potential: I agree with Linux.
OS dissapointment of the year: Zeta I want BeOS back!
- Best desktop environment: A tie between MacOS Classic and KDE. MacOS Classic has a better UI, but KDE is more powerful.
- Most profound application of the year: Safari. The first sign of a turning tide in the browser market.
- System/Dev software: Tie between Gwydion Dylan and Python 2.3.
- Best Freeware game: Frozen Bubble is the only freeware game I've ever played for more than an hour!
- Coolest computer: PowerMac Dual 2.0 G5!
- Coolest new processor: K8 (I refuse to use the ridiculous sounding -on names).
- Coolest tech company: IBM
- Best gadget: iPod!!!
- Suxorziest troll: The award goes to those trolls that imitate other peoples' user IDs!
...is for sure my new 17" Powerbook which arrived in late december. It is a nice designed and powerful machine an a real desktop replacement.
...I got a lot of fun with it.
A happy 2004 to the OSNews team and all the folks out there :-)))
Best OS, now and forever: BeOS
... please, just let me have this. :~(
Best Change In The Tides - International movements to dump proprietary OS & software configurations and embrace open source.
Best Greeks Bearing Gifts - SCO, for finally bringing several latent open source issues out into the public forum and inadvertantly jumpstarting the next step of evolution. They will not kill us, they'll make us stronger.
Best New Arcade Experience - Galaxian3 in Theatre setting
Most Unfortunately Disappointing Releases - Matrix sequel (film), Homeworld sequel (game)
Most Surprisingly Good Releases - The Eye (film), Fatal Frame (game)
Best Server OS - TIE: Solaris and Linux (sorry, mate)
Best New American Technology Law - National Do Not Call List
and many more...
zOS - forever
The best hardware: zOS
Guys - it's not funny. This is real server OS.
The runner-up: OpenVMS
The next after: Solaris / HP-UX
The emerging server/desktop: Linux
The desktop os: Windows XP
The second place (or the same 1st - depends) - MacOS X - Panther
Sorry correction:
Best hardware: zOS mainframe z900 in Parallel Sysplex.
Each node 640 cpus.
That's real high end.
Just gotta say how much I have enjoyed OSNews this year. Not only a wide range of useful articles but the many intelligent user comments.
I have about 5 sites I check many times a day and Eugenia somehow seems to always have new postings - weekends, holidays, any time. Does she ever sleep? And she says she is a part time employee now!
A big thank you to all at OSNews. You deserve an award for your work in 2003.
Best i386 OS Server: FreeBSD
Best Desktop Environment: XFCE4
Best New Idea: turn off the pc during week end
Enjoy the next year, guys
Slimdevice's Squeezebox. The evolution of the original Slimp3 includes wireless 802.11a/b/g support for streaming from your computer to any audio device in the house. It rocks!
http://www.slimdevices.com
-fp
Best OS Site of 2003: OSNews.com
Thanks for all your hard work Eugenia!
Discovering free software!
Best Hobby OS: Syllable
Best Desktop OS: Be or Linux
Best Server OS: Linux
OS with most overall potential: Linux, 2nd is OpenBeOS
Best desktop environment: I can't comment, I love most of them!
Most profound application of the year: Firebird, the one browser that may eventually beat IE on ALL platforms
Best Game: Homeworld2 to bad it doesn't run on linux
OH MY GAWD, BEST SERVER OS is Win 2003, I WOULD NOT RUN WINDOWS in a server enviroment to save my life. I am repulsed....ick....(windows server 2003 !?!?!?!).....Oh my god,... I am going to have a nightmare over that
Windows Server 2003 I have heard good things about, but until it is running on something powerful enough to beat Kasparov in chess it is not the best Server OS.
Best desktop, OS X or Linux w/Gnome I would say.
Best hobby OS, for sure Linux. SkyOS may be neat, but it doesn't quite to the range of things Linux does for free .
Best software package: vi (no not really I just wanted to start a vi/emacs war)
Frozen Bubble is so addictive, infact its my favorite unix game :-) Although I wish it was faster on Mac OS X
Any thoughts on the best inexpensive Postscript laser printer (for Linux)?
Oh yes I forgot, Firebird is incredible. It's only problem is startup speed, it needs to start faster.
Your tax dollars at work. >;)
Besides, even us gov't drones get a lunch hour. (Now expanded to 12 minutes by Big Brother. Doubleplusgood, that.)
Everybody believes Eugenia is a person. In fact, it's a bot, invented by JBQ. Eugenia means Electronic Unit Genetically Engineered for News and Information Aquisition.
I agree: best site of the year: OSNews
Geek girl of the year: Eugenia
Happy new year to everybody at OSNews, and a special one to Eugenia;-D
Good List Eugenia, I agreed with everything you listed except for GNOME, I still think KDE is better, Luna is an awesome improvement to Windows and Server 2003 is alot better. I actually like Windows Server 2003 more than Linux Enterprise Server systems.
Innovation/Great Idea Of The Year:
Definitely the GUI-contest enacted by SkyOS's Robert. What a great idea!
Favourite Overall OS:
Windows Server 2003 w/ Talisman 2.7. The best Windows release ever. And when properly tweaked, just as desktop friendly as any other OS. And stable
Favourite "2nd" OS:
Still Mandrake (as of now, the kernel 2.6-test11 based snapshot). In my opinion Mandrake is close to getting the best of both worlds; perfect as a desktop OS, but very customizable.
(2nd meaning other than Windows, Windows is still my main OS, but only because of MSN6... )
OS With The Most Potential:
SkyOS for me. Need I say anything more?
Best Hobby-OS:
Same as above.
OS Surprise Of The Year:
QNX 6.2.1. Just try it. It's stability, it's speed (especially on lower-end computers), it's ease-of-use (best package management system ever, Apt-get eat your haert out!) and it's clean beauty will rock you!
Greatest OS-dissapointment:
The Sun Java Desktop System. I had the privilige (and with me many others) to test the beta, and it just was a huge dissapointment... They promised us a clean and easy-to-use system, but it turned out to be 'just' SuSE with a different
Best Desktop Environment:
A tie between Talisman 2.7 and KDE 3.x. Although of course it's kind of hard to see Talisman as a DE (by the way, they might be overthrown by Panther, though, next year: this house is going to be Mac-enabled! 
)
Best Input Device:
My very cool Optical Trackball. That thing just rocks, I just don't understand why people still use mice :S ...
gots to be FreeBSD hands down - far more stable and able to handle loads much more efficiently. Let's not even get started on worms shall we..
How can you say FreeBSD is a disappointment!
How can you say Windows 2003 is the best server!
You are just looking for a fight...
How about: OS dissapointment of the year: Windows XP
After all the security warnings on XP, I feel Microsoft totally dropped the ball.
Windows 2003 is a very good server OS. I work with it in a production environment for a small web hosting company. In a shared hosting environment it is remarkably stable.
Have all of you that are dissing it even used it?
And I'm a FreeBSD guy as well! It all depends on what kind of application you are trying to server.
Not to play the credit game, but I ran the GUI contest. I did it because I knew that SkyOS needed some big graphics help, and I wanted to take the load off of Robert.
I never imagined we would have so many submissions. I thought maybe we would have 4-5 GUI submissions, and it ended up being something like 40. So many great submissions, I like going back and looking at them all every so often.
> Enjoy the next year, guys
From: dave (IP: ---.41-151.net24.it)
I was gonna say that too.
Your opinions are warped as usual! 
My opinions are better and far more superior. I am SCO, and I own OSNews!
By the way, best OS for any purpose: Linux without a doubt.
Best OS news site: OSNews.com
Best Opinion: Mine
"Windows 2003 is a very good server OS. I work with it in a production environment for a small web hosting company. In a shared hosting environment it is remarkably stable. "
I have used it and it is extremely good for a low end server.... But "Best" does mean best, and Windows 2003 is lacking quite a bit to be considered the best server OS.
Yes, I've used Windows 2003, but it doesn't scale like Solaris, nor remain as stable over time. It's certainly nowhere as mature in its drivers and modular architecture either. And it lacks a lot of the secondary support structures that are easily bolted onto Linux.
As an out-of-the-box solution for a homogenous network it is okay, but not as powerful as the other two when it comes to more "real world" heterogenous setups.
Most innovative Linux distribution:
GoboLinux ( www.gobolinux.org )
Best desktop environment:
ROX desktop, it's not as bloated as KDE/Gnome. ( rox.sf.net )
Greatest idea since sliced bread:
Zero Install ( zero-install.sf.net )
When it come sto free games, you have to take a look at Scorched3D. Frozen-bubble is nice, but you're really not blowing stuff up with artillery.
If you're just sticking with XP for MSN Messenger, fire up Gaim or KMess and get back to your linux box! =)
I just bought the LaserJet 1012 for $180 on sale. Works perfectly with Linux, and prints beautiful text.
it ended the way it had to.
what exactly was the disappointment?
For me, the Best in 2003:
1) With Breadbox PC/GEOS -THE coolest- DOS-GUI EVER comes back to Earth !!!
www.breadbox.com
2) Freaky Peoples work hard to bring AmigaOS back
3) My new Car, Renault Kangoo is amazing...
iPod - Yum. Got mine this holiday season and, man, talk about perfection in a portable music player. And now with calendar, address book and notes, the thing has almost all my favorite features of a PDA.
Chopper (OS X freeware) - My new game addiction.
Adobe's Creative Studio products - Integration among apps (nearly) done right.
OSNews - Always thought-provoking and informative, even amongst the trolls ; )
Happy New Year!
Outch, please learn about the difference of Freeware and Free Software ASAP!
If you want to argue semantics, at least know what you're talking about.
Quoth m-w.com:
freeware: software that is available for use at no cost or for a nominal usually voluntary fee
Is Frozen-bubble software that is available for use at no cost? .... Yes.
Windows 2003 the best server OS? Why does osnews not run it? Why does Microsoft's own hotmail not run it? Maybe you should have made seperate categories like:
1) best server OS
2) easiest to use server OS
Innovation/Great Idea of the year: hmmm... WebGrazer?
Best Hobby OS: hmmm... L4-HURD?
Best Desktop OS: hmmm... GNU/Linux?
Best Server OS: er... GNU/Linux?
OS dissapointment of the year: Mac OS X
Best desktop environment: KDE.
Most profound application of the year: GIMP 1.3
System/Dev software that had huge evolutionary steps this year: GNUstep
Best Freeware game: GDB (Finding and killing bugs)
"1) With Breadbox PC/GEOS -THE coolest- DOS-GUI EVER comes back to Earth !!! www.breadbox.com"
Man! I miss this one so bad! Is there a way to download the original one?
Best open source apps: MozillaFirebird, WinSCP, gaim
Best MS Killer: OpenOffice.org 1.1
Best New Design: the "Plastik" theme
OS with Most Potential: Linux 2.6
Most Overhyped OS: Longhorn
Most Overhyped OS runner-up: Zeta
Most Likely to Make a Comeback: Solaris 10
Most Progress This Year: SkyOS
Most Overlooked OS: Cisco IOS
Best Drama: SCO vs. IBM vs. Linus
Best Distro: Xandros 2.0
Best Idea: Gnome Storage
Best Upgrade: Mandrake 9.0 to 9.1
Best CD Based Distro: Knoppix
Expect Big Things from: DragonflyBSD
Best Corporate ReOrg: Red Hat
Worst PR: Red Hat
Best Received New Distro: MEPIS
Worst Received New Distro: Yoper
Best Bet for 2004: Novell Linux and Ximian
Eugenia, how on earth can you like the Nightcrawler figurine?
*duh* :-)
Batman would soooo win in a fight.
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cmdstore/baziacfidc20.html
This one's new to 2003.
Typically, when something is listed as the Best of the year, it's because it debuted or made some kind of major milesone during that year. Though Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris are all great server OSes, none of them had the kind of major release (as far as an increase in quality or capability) as Windows 2003 Server did. Linux probably has deserved the "best server OS" prize a few times over the past few years for its accomplishments.
Whenever Time's person of the year ends up being a bad guy (Hitler was man of the year one year) it always causes the same controversy. Sometimes the product or person with the biggest impact isn't the one you want to succeed, but the impact is there nonetheless.
Oh yeah windows server 2003 was such an accomplishment. I think the greatest new feature of winodws server 2003 has got to be the new thing they call "Security". Its such a new concept to the computing world. I mean just look at windows 2000 server. There was none of that. Congratulations to Windows 2003 for being best of the year for its new "Security" feature.
"Whenever Time's person of the year ends up being a bad guy (Hitler was man of the year one year) it always causes the same controversy. Sometimes the product or person with the biggest impact isn't the one you want to succeed, but the impact is there nonetheless."
Yeah, but notice for Time, it is call Man Of the Year, not Best Man of the Year. A title of Man of the Year, clearly is a designation for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However, in Eugina's list, it was clearly labelled "Best Server OS".
Besides that, the impact Windows 2003 had was almost nill. Not many people bother to upgrade to it or purchase it. It was just a slightly better version of Windows 2000.
If the category was truly for the most influential/biggest story Server OS of the year, the honor clearly would have gone to Linux. It was everywhere in the news: from lawsuits, to companies adopting it, to pricing changes, to increased enterprise backing, to technical improvements, it was clearly the most talked about server OS of 2003.
David Adams said:
"(Hitler was man of the year one year)"
I did NOT say Eugenia was like Hitler! She ONLY TRIES TO BE!
Dude, tell ya what, lay off. You dont agree with Eugenia? fine, there is no reason for name calling or making yourself look like an a$$. I have found Eugenia to be a very good journalist and for the most part I pretty much agree with her, except for DE's. She does her job well, she has her preferences and she makes them known just like any good journalist would. As for Windows Server 2003, I have found it to be stable, secure and just as reliable as most Linux servers I have seen. Before bashing Server 2003 just because it is from MS, try it, to bash something and not knowing what you are talking about really makes the person look stupid.
<< Yeah, but notice for Time, it is call Man Of the Year, not Best Man of the Year. A title of Man of the Year, clearly is a designation for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However, in Eugina's list, it was clearly labelled "Best Server OS".
Besides that, the impact Windows 2003 had was almost nill. Not many people bother to upgrade to it or purchase it. It was just a slightly better version of Windows 2000.
If the category was truly for the most influential/biggest story Server OS of the year, the honor clearly would have gone to Linux. It was everywhere in the news: from lawsuits, to companies adopting it, to pricing changes, to increased enterprise backing, to technical improvements, it was clearly the most talked about server OS of 2003. >>
Nothing much has happened with Linux, kernel 2.6 while released has not been deployed much. I agree with OSNews. Windows Server 2003 was a major upgrade and really blew Linux away, I have been a Linux/UNIX user since the days of NeXTStep and am currently a GNU Darwin developer and I am very impressed with Windows Server 2003 in terms of reliability, security, and capability even the pricing for Enterprise is not bad.
> it is call Man Of the Year
That would be Havoc Pennington. He was much influencial in the OSS world this year. More than usual.
- Best Change In The Tides: Amsterdam Wireless East project, Free internet workplaces popping up in Europe, (local, regional, country) governments experimenting with FLOSS (Germany, Israel, Netherlands, ...)
- Most Overhyped OS: Longhorn.
- Best Server OS: Debian GNU/Linux Woody.
- OS dissapointment of the year: Debian GNU/Linux Sarge...
- Best desktop environment: XFce4.
- Most profound application of the year: Mozilla Firebird, OOo.
- Best Freeware game: NationStates, Nethack.
- Best gadget: Sharp OpenZaurus SL5500 with WLAN.
- Life saver accessory: Nokia 9210i Communicator.
- Best LiveCD: Knoppix though i never tried Gnoppix or Morphix.
Let's just all agree that Windows Server 2003 was the best server OS for the desktop.
My list would include Fedora Project for most interesting distribution development, GNOME Project for biggest Free Software usability improvements, Epiphany and Inkscape for most valuable forks, freedesktop.org xserver for most exciting technology preview, Enemy Territory for best Linux multiplayer game, Novel buying monkeys and chameleons in a box for most interesting acquisition and of course Mono for just kicking everything's arse. Oh yes and there was something funny involving SCO, but I already forgot what it was all about. :p
Let's see... For me personally, these things are worth noting:
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3
Best Server OS: Windows Server 2003
Best Computer News Site: osnews.com
Best new app: Outlook 2003
Biggest event in computer hardware: The Apple G5.
Biggest event in computer software: Netscape dead.. Mozilla ready for a new broswer war!
Most annoying event in computing: SCO
Most useful app for 2003: Virtual PC.
(all items on this list are my personal favorites for 2003)
I'd amend the Best Server OS category to read "Best Server OS for someone who doesn't know how to run a server", and then you can definetly name Win 2K3 the winner.
And no, I'm not going to say it's Linux either. But clearly, Solaris or AIX would walk all over Win2K3 in most aspects. Try running a high load oracle cluster on Win2K3 and see how it compares to AIX or Solaris.
Thanks!
That doesn't say anything JC. The cost of running AIX and Solaris far exceed the costs running Win2k3. There are several parametres when you choose something. For example, according to your logic, I should have picked ClearCase or a nuclear bomb simulator for the "Most profound application of the year", however it was my choice to pick something more down to earth and more accessible by most people.
You don't have to be so rude just because you don't agree with someone else's personal choice. Get a clue.
You know, I'm really surprised no one's brought up Keynote. I've never used it myself--and as such, I can't actually nominate it as a best _anything_--but I've heard such raves that I thought someone would surely bring it up. What does everyone think?
Here is what a Ximian employee thinks about it: http://joeshaw.org/#20031231
BEST OS != MOST IMPROVED OS
W2k3 is not the best OS and in the same timeframe it took to release it, there were far more improvements in Linux.
Yeah, Keynote is nice, schweet in fact, but I'll wait for 2.0 (or probably 2.1, I can't stand buggy software.) Version 1 has a lot of limitations, like (trying to remember; haven't used it in a while,) 1 QT movie/effect per slide, and a host of small niggles with PPT compatibility. Also, it feels a bit incomplete. Many of the features are rather rudimentary, like the chart feature et al. Sorry I can't give a more verbose report, but I don't have it installed right now. (I have MS Office, which got a macro virus within a week of installing it, so I just deleted the normal Word template, and everything seems back to normal. I wish I could disable macros entirely, and not just on a per document basis.) (I also HATE slideshow presentations. I think from a pedagogical standpoint, they are crap, and only muck up any attempts to convey information.)
Oh, and in case you are wondering what I mean by "pedagogical," I have a professor (economics) who uses it for his classes. It's simply the WORST way to teach anyone anything, or to convey ANY message. You get lost in the show, and your brain goes on autopilot because the students do not contribute to the learning experience (as much). You just copy the words and diagrams verbatim, and do the learning out of the classroom.
Most improved OS: AmigaOS. Almost completely rewritten from BCPL and 68k ASM to portable C, added native TCP/IP stack plus other goodies. after 10 years, its back from the dead.
Several people have mentioned specific brands of Live CD OSes but I think the category should be placed somewhere on the list. It seems several distros came out with Live CDs this year.
Live CDs provide a tool for system admins and network specialist. They are also are fun way to learn and experiment with something new without destroying the main working system.
In a few years there will be Live DVD OSes.
A couple of brands to try. Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, Gnoppix, Knoppix-STD, SuSE, and I think Mandrake has one.
Eug, I'm not talking about costs. If you're talking the best, cost really shouldn't be a consideration. And you may be somewhat shocked to learn that Solaris/AIX really isn't that much more expensive than Win 2K3 in an enterprise setting.
If you're just talking about running a lil or medium sized website, Win 2K3 is fine (altho Linux is probably a better choice for this). If you're talking about the Best, it's not Win 2K3.
And I'm not being rude, just realistic. How is Win 2K3 Server more accessable than Solaris? Isn't Solaris x86 available really cheaply, if not free? Isn't it cheaper than Win 2K3? How is this not accessable?
"Batman would soooo win in a fight."
Because it's New Years and all I just thought I would say HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Not on Batman's best day ever! Not even with Robin and Batgirl and all his battoys and the butler too could he deal with Kurt.
Best hobby O/S: AtheOS
What about AtheOS and Syllable? It seems like a better choice than Sky OS.
And phooey, FreeBSD 5 rocks my socks.
It's funny that the "best server OS" can be only run in the crappiest hardware on earth....
The Xserve (gush, gush).
Saw it in action.
HAD to have it.
Purrrrrrrrrrrrformance.
:-)
It's funny that the "best server OS" can be only run in the crappiest hardware on earth
What other hardware are you talking about? Mac perhaps? Most of the hardware in the Macs are the same as in PCs. The only differences are (probably) the motherboard and CPU.
The best RSS reader is NNTP/RSS (http://www.methodize.org/nntprss/)
It runs a local NNTP server (used by newsgroups), so any program that can read NNTP (Outlook Express, Pan, Agent, XNews, SLRN, Opera etc.) can be used.
Since it's made with Java, it's platform independent.
Now I can just syncronize the "newsgroups", and see when OSNews has published a new article :-)
<< really? its funny i didn't know windows 2003 ran on mac hardware! >>
Actually there is a rumor that Microsoft is doing a port to support IBM's PowerPC servers, workstations and blades so you never know, it may be able to run on Macs one day.
I don't see how freebsd could be the greatest dissapointment. 5.x branch has seen more improvements and features than freebsd has seen in a while.
"I don't see how freebsd could be the greatest dissapointment. 5.x branch has seen more improvements and features than freebsd has seen in a while."
I love BSD but I actually agree with Eugenia on this. 5.x branch is still beta, so you shouldn't even consider it as released. So FreeBSD basically released 4.8 and 4.9, pretty dissapointing to me. Also considering we were supposed to have 5 stable around mid-summer of 2003... it really is dissapointing.
Hmm...
Best Desktop OS: Lindows 4.5
Second Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3
Best Open-Source Applications: Mozilla Firebird / Thunderbird
Best Office Suite: OpenOffice 1.1
Best Gadget: Palm Tungsten T|3
Biggest Disappointment: Windows Server 20003
Well, I can understand the reason why OSX is selected best Desktop OS. But I think selecting Windows Server 2003 as the best server OS is unintelligible.
Let's see:
Number of platforms that you can run WS2003: 1 (i386)
Number of platforms you can run Linux: 20
Number of platforms you can run NetBSD (approx.): Anything that has a cpu
Well, I think the comparison is over. There is no need to look at other areas like cluster-computing, number of cpu's per machine, scalablity (can run in watches, pdas, desktops, low-end servers, and server-farms. guess what it is)...
But of course if you want to just click and run a web server, WS2003 might be ideal...
Happy New Year everybody.
Thank you Eugenia and all the team of osnews.com for bringing us a great website, the best OS website.
Expectations for 2004: java sdk 1.5, hope that Linux DE will be faster.
>>"Number of platforms that you can run WS2003: 1 (i386) "
Number platforms that matter: 1 (i386)
Now, before people go nuts about Sun, etc., ask yourself this:
If someone demonstrated to your boss that she could replace every piece of (fill-in-the-blank.. but think Sun) hardware with x86 machines that ran W2K3, maintain the same levels of performance and reliability, drop the Sun maintenance contract, and replace her expensive Solaris admins with cheap Windows admins, what do you think she might do?
I once worked at a place that had several dozen commodity Dell servers running NT, and several big pieces of Sun hardware. The NT servers were more reliable than the Sun machines, and they could support them in-house with salaried employees. Whenever the chance arose to replace a Sun machine with an x86 box, they took it without hesitation or regret.
The award goes to those trolls that imitate other peoples' user IDs!
Amen, brother.
Oh, and a Happy new year to all!!!
Best Rediscovered OS: Irix. I got an Indy on ebay and run the latest Irix 6.5.22 on it. Its fast and rock stable.
"If someone demonstrated to your boss that she could replace every piece of (fill-in-the-blank.. but think Sun) hardware with x86 machines that ran W2K3, maintain the same levels of performance and reliability, drop the Sun maintenance contract, and replace her expensive Solaris admins with cheap Windows admins, what do you think she might do?"
Yes, and I am the pope...and she is not blond.
"The NT servers were more reliable than the Sun machines..."
Yeah right, that's why so many "mission critical" systems run NT...are you still sleeping or what ?
And running IIS ? Forget about it....
Eric
Best PDA Device - Treo 600
Best Home OS - Lindows 4.5
Worst Microsoft Move - Backing SCO
Worst Software Company - Intuit
Best cancelled TV series - Futurama
Dumbest TV Network - Spike TV
Strangest Thing I Purchased This Year - Roomba
Win2K03 is _the_ Server OS of the year.
Once again MS released a better product and didn't break the backward compatibility. That is no small feat (and all too often dismissed by *NIX fans). As a BSD freak I still continue to impressed by the newest versions from MS. Now if they'd only make MKS Toolkit a auto-addin for the darn thing! Given the power there is no reason why mapped *NIX commands shouldn't work "out of the box".
'03 will be remembered as the year things changed for Linux. The big proprietary versions are up and coming - this will be the next wave and the results will be good and bad. Look for continuing "lock-in" by the big players (IBM and HP) as you will only be supported on certain controlled versions. As has been predicted over and over, the ROI argument is a red herring. You _will_ pay for Linux if you want to be supported, and the "disturbed" (as Eugenia terms them) had better get used to it. RH on IBM, or NOVELL/SUSE on HP, or JD on Sun I386 will be _different_ from Win32; it will NOT be cheaper. IBM will take the "MS strategy" of "extend" to new heights with Linux (and NOVELL and RH will probably benefit). Accordingly, look for "choices" for companies to be radically reduced as Linux becomes truly a "data-center OS". And SUN has been counted out much too early, as the vendor "lock in" for Linux versions will increase their chances with Solaris as the "real" cost of using supported Linux will be judged against it.
Alas, Eugenia is also correct about BSD. My favorite OS is disappointing in the speed of its evolution. Whether this is simply due to its overall maturity is a matter of debate.
Finally, my hope is that OSNews will continue to prosper in '04, though a little civility would be nice :-). And if we can all stay on topic a little more! Let's talk about BSD in BSD threads, and Linux in Linux threads. And what's with the slamming of Amiga people? Damn I'm impressed by their heart after all these years! And freakin' SKYOS - Robert, man, you rock. Keep up the good work.
Best Desktop OS: Linux Mandrake 9.2 and SUSE 9.0
Best Server OS: Linux Redhat AE 3.0 / SUSE AE
Eugenia Mono sucks like .Not. You must be crazy to pick mono I would pick Ruby. It seems like you development experience is as shallow as crappy/buggy windoze 2003 server .not server.
Didnt anyone notice the rise of the Nostalgic Hobby OS? You've got new Amiga's, new Commadors and new RiscOS machines. As well as MorphOS. Im sure theres more but that's my little corner mentioned!
Have to agreee on the Canon 10D, _very_ good piece of kit.
Spose I should finish my review sometime...
Bonne Année*, and keep up the good work!
*Thats "Happy New Year" to the rest of you :-D
I worked there, you didn't, so please leave your biases elsewhere.
If you have ever actually shared responsibility for an IT department of that scale, feel free to share your own experience. Until then, please don't try to cover up an obvious avoidance of clear and rational thought with cultish slogans ("mission critical") and fanboy enthusiasms.
Managers care about reliability, but they care more about money. There's no reason to spend money to achieve a level of reliability and performance that are not needed. If a business could operate successfully using a squadron of Sinclair QL machines, that's exactly what they ought to do.
None of the servers in question -- NT or those running Solaris -- ran IIS. (There are other kinds of servers, you know, besides web servers.) We ran only a few web servers -- Apache on the Sun's and then Lotus servers when we ditched the Sun boxes for Wintel.
We found Sun support to be costly and inadequate. We found Sun hardware to be no more reliable than our Wintel boxes, and considerably more expensive to maintain. (Commodity hardware and peripherals were, by and large, unavailable for the Suns. If something broke, you paid Sun prices for Sun hardware. When your boss knows that a Sun hard drive costs 10 times as much as an equivalent Wintel drive, you won't bew able to convince her that the Sun drive is worth cost.
Others may have had different experiences. In my case, the cost of Sun and Solaris weren't commensurate with performance and reliability.
Most Promising: Definitely DragonflyBSD, it looks like its going to take BSD and Linux by storm (well, maybe I'm overstating it, but its a new year )
Desktop: Linux 2.6, even though I love FreeBSD 4.9, and don't really have any problems with it, it looks like 2.6 is a big step forward for Linux
Server: Solaris (I don't think anything beats this) or VMS (this is one of those OSes that I was happy to discover recently)
Embedded Systems: Tron/ITron, looks like the way to go for embedded tech, if not Tron then maybe NetBSD
Hobbiest: MorphOS, it looks like a modern day Amiga. If only I had a PPC, I would *love* to try it out
Disappointment: FreeBSD 5.x because I want to see more releases now.... It seems pretty innovative, but it needs more polishing. I think *BSD will make a comeback though, next year.
Trollmanship: Any BSD Thread. Literally crawling with "BSD is dying trolls," and I must admit, "BSD is superior to everything trolls" (though they were far more anti-bsd trolls)
Just so Eugena knows, there needs to be a better moderation system to quell a certain two or three trolls that appear in every one of the *BSD threads. I find it saddening that some people hate BSD with such a passion find an excuse to troll on these threads. Instead of being with insightful commentary, they have been filled with flamage.
Also, the anti-Amiga trolls disgusted me.
Best Hobby OS: definitely eComStation 1.1. If you take into account that the group of developers and the test base is a lot smaller than the Linux groups than they have done a good job.
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. I completely agree with this one.
Best Server OS: Novell
OS with most overall potential: NetBSD
Best desktop environment: OS/2 WPS
> Best Rediscovered OS: Irix. I got an Indy on ebay and run the latest Irix 6.5.22 on it. Its fast and rock stable.
Same here! I got an Indigo for free from my old job. THEY WERE GONNA THROW HIM OUT!! Er, it... they were gonna throw it out. Ivy league university my arse.
I named him Indy, he plays nice with my iBook.
while i vehemently disagree with most of your choices there, have a good new year anyway Euginia
Best waste of AA batteries: Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for bluetooth
Best platform I refuse to admit is dead: Newton
Best reason not to use Windows for web serving: ASP.NET
Best OS I refuse to admit is dead: BeOS (I'm not the only one!)
Best online service: iTunes Music Store (DRM be damned)
Biggest shock in movie theaters: Pirates of the Caribbean (how did it manage to not be bad?)
Best software I heard about in 2004: OmniWeb 5 (I think I wet myself)
BeOS is the best OS! But i vote for WindowsXP:)
Win2003 is the best server:)
My PC is the best computer!
Linux suxx:)
best OS of the year: without question goes to
Mac OS X panther
To date nothing touches this OS. And thats a fact.
Yeah i agree with OSNEWS win2003 is a remarkable server, it's rock solid and has loads of excellent features.
Best server OS: FreeBSD + Best DE: KDE = Best desktop OS
Best linux distro: Gentoo
Best browser: Opera
Biggest disappointment: the end of RHL
Best project: Apache (keeps kickin' m$ butt)
Happy New Year to everybody!
Hi PeaceMaker!
>> 1) With Breadbox PC/GEOS -THE coolest- DOS-GUI EVER comes back to Earth !!!
>> www.breadbox.com"
> Man! I miss this one so bad! Is there a way to download the original one?
No, there are no illegal Downloads at the Net...
You wanna have the newest PC/GEOS - legal?
Look here:
http://www.devicelogics.com/store.html
http://www.sun2k.com/Software%20-%20Ensemble.htm
Download the free trial Version of "Breadbox Ensemble" (the new PC/GEOS) here:
ftp://ftp.breadbox.com/Ensemble%20Lite/enslite.zip
Wanna have cool Software for PC/GEOS, Nokia9000, MyTurn GlobalPC and other GEOS Products?
https://store.wsg.net/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Store_Code=BREADBOX
Wanna have cool Software (Free- & Shareware) for PC/GEOS? Look:
http://www.tvakatter.org
http://www.rbettsteller.de
http://www.mgroeber.de/
Wanna have German Infos for PC/GEOS? Look:
http://www.geos-infobase.de/INDEX.HTM
For C Programmers: Have you ever learned GOC ???
Write Software for a good Market: PC/GEOS.
With the SDK and Borland C
Infos and Download here:
http://www.geos-infobase.de/SDK/SDK2.HTM
Good Luck in 2004
PC/GEOS FOREVER!
Best Hobby OS: SkyOS. Robert, a single developer, has really put lots of work into it this year, outpacing in development OpenBeOS, MenuetOS and Syllable put together!
Fair enough that SkyOS development is impressive for one person, but outpacing Syllable? I believe we started 2003 behind SkyOS in a lot of places (We didn't even have support for CD-ROMs until 0.4.4 which was released in May!), yet we've finished equal in most respects and we have SkyOS beat with our hardware support and media framework.
Still, there'll be no question of it next year; Syllable is and will be the Best Hobby OS of 2004!
For the "OS with most overall potential" I'd have to say DragonFlyBSD myself. If you were to have said "OS with most commercial potential," then yeah, I'd agree with an answer of "Linux."
"Just gotta say how much I have enjoyed OSNews this year. Not only a wide range of useful articles but the many intelligent user comments."
I agree with that. I have learnt quite a lot here.
Things that made 2003 for me:
1. a big collection of MP3s of Grigory Sokolov playing the piano, which somebody kindly sent me. Tremendous performances.
2. replaced my CD player and amplifier with much better ones made by Musical Fidelity (I got a second-hand bargain here)
3. read "The Horseman on the Roof" - a great book
Nothing much in the computer field got me excited, although the PPC 970 and 980 look promising.
If you find MS Windows Server 2003 so very good, which i do not doubt if you say so, i take it you'll switch to a hosting company which'll run MS Windows Server 2003?
Since you've always ran Linux
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=osnews.com
I mean, why run this Linux thing if you clearly find MS Windows Server 2003 much more better?
Nuance? Beyond our control? What'll be it?
Flamebait is what it will be. ;-)
Let me clarify my position regarding the "OS with most overall potential." Also note that it is based on my current (probably flawed) understanding of the technology.
Matt lost his commit bit in FreeBSD land in early 2003 (late january of early february, I can't remember). DragonFlyBSD was first announced on 16 July 2003 by Matt Dillon om the FreeBSD mailing lists. It was derived from FreeBSD 4.8 which was released on 3 Apr 2003 by the FreeBSD project.
After "destressing" for a few months, he says that he decided to implement one major subsystem 'goal' before announcing it. This initial subsystem was the Light weight kernel threading subsystem. This means that in the space of a few months, he nearly single-handedly wrote a brand new completely mutexless threading system for the kernel, as well as the beginings of the light weight ports/messaging system to go along with it. A number of former kernel processes (such as the pageout daemon) have been reimplemented entirely as threads, and under the LWKT system are free from both any process context, as well as from the Giant kernel lock.
The ports/messaging system will allow DragonFly to natively support clustering, without the need for a third party message passing system. The fact that each CPU in a system has it's own self-comtained LWKT scheduler, and the fact that the threads are per-CPU, and are not preemptively moved from one processor to another except through the "asyncronous IPI messaging interface," should allow the DragonFly kernel to scale much better than other OSs, as there is less "guessing" involved in thread migration operations among other things. I am told that the message passing system also (nearly) completely removes many situations where deadlocks could occur in various opperations.
Since becoming a public project, a few interesting new features (new to BSD if not to computer science in general) like Application Checkpointing, and Variant Symlinks, have been written, and ACPI, PAE and the ATAng frameworks have been imported from FreeBSD. There is a hack that allows the use of the FreeBSD ports collection until DragonFly gets it's own based on either the Variant Symlinks or the forthcoming message based VFS framework. The nVidia drivers have been ported to the kernel. The conversion of numerous subsystems in the kernel to the new ports/messaging system is also seeing tremendous advancement.
This is a hell of a lot of progress for such a new project, to have occured in so short a time, and with so few people. Currently the project includes seven committers and a handful of people submitting patches.
DragonFly is still a development OS and is not claimed to be ready for production use, although in my own experiences, and in those of others, it seems that it is. It is fast (I'd REALLY like to perform the bulk.fefe.de/scalability tests on DragonFly ASAP!), and it seems every bit as stable as FreeBSD 4.8.
If indeed it proves to be as scalable, debuggable, maintainable and extensible as Matt Dillon believes that it will be (in the first few releases), than I can see DragonFly BSD giving both Linux and FreeBSD (as well as a number of other OSs for that matter) a run for their money, in other words, it is IMO the OS with the most potential.
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/03/239238.shtml?tid=122&tid=156
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006889...
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.8R/announce.html
http://www.slashnet.org/forums/DragonflyBSD-20031009.html
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/Main/team.cgi
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
Best Mainboard 2003: ABiT NF7-S Rev. 2.0
Best Hardware Innovation: AMD Athlon64
Best MP3 Portable Player: Apple iPod
Best Software Development: Linux Kernel 2.6
Hardly. Let's compare:
1) Syllable has a graphical browser that works (Skykruzer just sits and spins, and spins, and spins).
2) It has support for multiple users (though doesn't, yet, enforce permissions).
3) Has a fully functional media framework.
4) Syllable remembers your network settings between boots.
5) Has it's own journalled filesyste (which, admittedly, has shown stability issues for some people, myself included).
6) Self-hosting (you can compile Syllable from within Syllable).
SkyOS:
1) Has a semifunctional browser (has any user gotten it to work properly?)
2) Single-user
3) Has a port of VLC.
4) Forgets network settings.
5) Uses fat partitions (and, as I understand it, ext2 partitions).
6) Requires windows+cygwin+djgpp to build drivers and applications according to the developers book.
How about hardware support, then?
Syllable:
Networ
1) Realtek 8139
2) NE2000
3) 3c90x
4) Intel Etherexpress Pro
5) AMD PCnet
USB
6) USB mass storage
7) USB mice + keyboards
Sound
8) SB Audigy
9) SB Live!
10) SoundBlaster PCI (es137x)
11) i810 ICH audio
12) VT82xx audio
13) SoundBlaster Pro
Video
14) Matrox G200/G400/G450
15) nVidia (every model?)
16) SiS 3xx
I know I'm missing some hardware, but this is all I could think of.
SkyOS:
Network
1) AMD PCnet
2) Realtek 8139
3) 3c509
Sound
4) SoundBlaster Pro
5) SoundBlaster PCI (es137x)
Video
6) Vesa only, at the moment (with Radeon and nVidia support on the way for 5.0)
USB
7) USB mice + keyboards
8) USB Mass storage (though is that available now, or only in 5.0?)
Missing anything?
There are, of course, some other hardware they both support that's fairly common (PS/2 mice+keyboards, IDE+ATA support, etc).
In addition, Robert has said that there isn't likely to be any network support (except for a loopback driver) in 5.0, and the SoundBlaster will be the only soundcard supported since he's rewriting the driver interface. So there go a few more items when 5.0 comes out.
Now, none of this is mean to degrade Robert's work. He has done an absolutely incredible job, and I'd love to see SkyOS go far, but to say that SkyOS is outpacing Syllable is just a tad bit delusional :-)
Adam
I know I'm missing some hardware, but this is all I could think of.
Network
DEC Tulip
Via Rhine
3Com 3c509
In fact, almost all common cards are supported. The only one currently unsupported is the DP83815/SiS NIC
Sound
Via 82C686 (Seperate from the VT82xx at the moment)
Trident
A lot of the sound drivers support compatable chipsets E.g. the Trident & i810 drivers also support chipsets from SiS, ALi & nVidia.
Video
Matrox driver also supports older cards E.g. Millenium
nVidia support for everything from a TNT upto GeForceFX
S3 Virge DX/GX
Trident (VLB & PCI)
ATi Mach64
Savage IX/MX
A VMWare video driver is available but not yet in Syllable.
The nVidia, GeForceFX, SiS & Mach64 drivers support video overlays. Again it is almost easier to list common cards we do not currently support (Radeon, Intel Extreme, some Savage cards)
You can check http://azaka.nutus.com.ar for a list of "Known Good" hardware with Syllable, although it is not always upto date with the latest drivers & updates.
being "of the year" favorites, may be she wants to talking about improvements.
so i think Eugenia's list is acceptable
I agree with the Epson Scanner. The 32xx and 24xx series are just wonderful. Fast, great quality, inexpensive.
However, the new Canon i series of printers (i860, etc.) ROCK.
Fast, EXCELLENT quality, all for about $0.04 a page b&w, and about $0.06 color.
I love my Epson/Canon combo.
Second, Firebird & Thunderbird are AWESOME. After a few weeks with each, you'll begin to wonder how M$ "won" the browser wars. IE sucks.
Third, PIMEX is a great PIM. Simple, easy to learn and use. Inexpensive.
Just my 2 cents . . .
Chack out Ebay I picked brand new copy of NDO 97,which is almost identical to the old GEOS(no skipper,or Win95 look,Just the old GEOS desktop)there for about 10 bucks ,seems a guy up in Canada has a bunch of these he auctiond off there,and they are fully liscenced copys not reproductions on 4 floppies in the original evelope with the original book of docs,keep looking back there it's advertised as DOS into point&click.,And while you are looking for an OS that runs on top of DOS check out SEAL it doesn't do much yet but it sure looks nice,looks like MacOS X running on an X86,kinda all it has so far is a Media player for sound and Midi,Picture veiwer,a paintbrush,some simple games,a very basic tevt editor,a file manger and some development tools,ther's not browser or internet stuff yet, but it's agood start and it's Open Source Freeware.I would like to see this go somewhere,it would be a really nice alternative on older slower boxes.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
I bought a Lexmark E321 from Newegg when they were running their $50 rebate. A quality 20ppm laser for $208 shipped get my vote for best new laser printer of the year.
I also vote for the GeforceFX 5900 Non-Ultra as a winner for the year. ~$200 for performance within a few percent of its much more expensive bigger brothers (5900/5950 Ultra) and high-end ATI cards (9800-series).
Biggest Comp Business News of the year?
Ximian and SuSE being purchased by Novell
I'd have to disagree with the "Best Server OS" choice here. Windows 2003 is simply not it. Although new in 2003 and that might well have been the reason for being chosen here by Eugenia, but it is by no means the "Best Server OS" for 2003 or any other year, for that matter.
My favorite OS and server OS of choice is FreeBSD, but here I'll have to choose Linux. Linux 2.6 is very promising and it also came out in 2003.
-3BSD
I don't think that Windows 2003 is the best server OS ...
I think that NetWare 6.5 is better than W2K3 and is really very good Server NOS product which offers J2EE server, PHP, MySQL, Jakarta-Tomcat, iFolder, iPrint, Virtual Office, NetStorage, eDirectory based administration of Apache2, AFP, CIFS and NFS support, etc. Yes - many of these components are part of the most of the Linux distributions but now they fit perfectly in NetWare 6.5 and they are supported by Novell.
The addition of SuSE LINUX to the Novell's products is great as it will be possible many of the eDirectory based technologies to be available to Linux too.
I want to mention as a very good product for desktop management Novell's ZENworks for Desktops 4. It manages now only Windows based PCs but with the acquisition of Ximian I hope that Novell will be able to add a lot of the functionality of ZENworks for Desktops to Linux in addition to the Red Carpet functionality.
Nterprice Linux Services which Novell relaesed soon looks very promising too:
http://www.novell.com/products/linux/index.html?sourceidint=nlshome...
I believe that 2004 will be very exciting year as I hope a lot of new functionality to be added to Linux and its adoption to continue to increase!
I'd have to agree. Windows 2003 is quite lame and incomplete when compared to Netware 6.5.
Eugenia, I'm curious why you chose Windows 2003 Server for the best server OS? There are obviously far superior server OS available (Netware, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX spring readily to mind), wouldn't you agree?
The best in 2003 was the fantastic an powerfull GUI PC/GEOS. What ever you want...
My personal favorites for the year 2003 (in no particular order or category):
Python 2.3
PostgreSQL
Apache
The GIMP 1.3
Enigma (The free puzzle game, not the encoding device)
Debian
OpenBSD 3.4
AMD Processors
Gnome
XFce4
The Lord of the Rings movies
Mozilla
C
BASH shell scripting
Zope
and probably many more...
Innovation/Idea: That I realized that I should be focusing on making art and music instead of wasting my time with computers. That certainly changed my life for the better.
Best computer hardware: STAudio DSP 3000! it works great, it sounds great and it's fairly cheap. (Even though the DSP 2000 is a bit old it's still a better low budget choice though).
Most annoying trend: USB gadgets, and USB devices in general. Some things just aren't meant to be portable.
Biggest dissapointment: Zeta. It just keeps getting worse, and the company behind it scares me. AmigaOS 4 doesn't look very promising either.
Best desktop environment: None. They are all both good and annoying. The least annoying to me is still BeOS, I think Luna or Gnome comes second.
Best development tool/language: REBOL! best way to develop internet-tools in no-time.
Coolest OS: Contiki
Application with most potential: Mozilla Firebird. After being a fan of opera for many years, this saddens me, but Firebird does provide a much nicer experience these days. Opera needs to work hard to clean up their UI or else they'll have no future.
OS with most potential: I'd like to say OBOS but it's too early, I'll have to go with linux on this one.
Question of the year:
Oh, Vanders, what did you do that scared Kurt Skauen away?
Best HobbyOS: Visopsys. This one is really cool.
Best DesktopOS: Hmmm ... I don't care. Linux is good, windows is good.
Best ServerOS: I vote for Linux or any Unix; And, under all circumstances: Novell Netware.
Best Computer: 'tough not tested yet, I've got a hankering for apples Dual G5.
Best Old Computer: Still the C64. *gg*
Most Promising OS: Syllable (famous Atheos fork) and SkyOS(famous self made os). Syllable team should apply some recent screenshots of the os. and anyway, what is kurt up to?
Best Books: Lord Of The Rings (& of course the 3 films!), the harry potter series
I worked there, you didn't, so please leave your biases elsewhere.
Now young man, was there any need for that surliness and arrogance? no. Grow some maturity and actually argue on the facts rather than bringing in emotive and provocative language in the vein hope of receiving what has is commonly referred to as a "flame".
If you have ever actually shared responsibility for an IT department of that scale, feel free to share your own experience. Until then, please don't try to cover up an obvious avoidance of clear and rational thought with cultish slogans ("mission critical") and fanboy enthusiasms.
Again, more use of emotive and derogatory language in the vein hope of puffing ones chest up and exclaiming that one is more experienced.
I owned a business and sold x86 servers and I know what they are and aren't capable of doing. Unlike your original post, I am under no illusions that there are places where expensive SUN systems can be replaced, however, I also see places where SUN machines still play a major roll in the over all machinary of the business.
Managers care about reliability, but they care more about money. There's no reason to spend money to achieve a level of reliability and performance that are not needed. If a business could operate successfully using a squadron of Sinclair QL machines, that's exactly what they ought to do.
Yes, that is true, however you will find that although for you a certain configuration may be perfectly acceptable as the mean time of failure falls into the companies acceptable limits, another company may find that this mean time to failure is too high for the type of functions that are to be carried out using the equipment.
None of the servers in question -- NT or those running Solaris -- ran IIS. (There are other kinds of servers, you know, besides web servers.) We ran only a few web servers -- Apache on the Sun's and then Lotus servers when we ditched the Sun boxes for Wintel.
We found Sun support to be costly and inadequate. We found Sun hardware to be no more reliable than our Wintel boxes, and considerably more expensive to maintain. (Commodity hardware and peripherals were, by and large, unavailable for the Suns. If something broke, you paid Sun prices for Sun hardware. When your boss knows that a Sun hard drive costs 10 times as much as an equivalent Wintel drive, you won't bew able to convince her that the Sun drive is worth cost.
You bring up figures such as "Sun hard drive costs 10 times as much as an equivalent Wintel drive" when in actual fact from my last contact with a sun machine, they use a standard Fujitsu SCSI hard disk that one can purchase from any third party vendor and 9/10, the only thing that SUN do get picky about is the use of non-certified third party memory modules. Since most new SUN machines now use standard PC modules, one can purchase certified modules from kingston and a few other memory vendors who are licensed to produced SUN certified modules.
Others may have had different experiences. In my case, the cost of Sun and Solaris weren't commensurate with performance and reliability.
The experience you had was running Solaris on SPARC hardware. You lack of configuration details of these servers mearly re-enforces a number of other posters notions that you have no idea what you are talking about.
I've seen Solaris running just as reliably on x86 hardware as on SPARC, minus a few high end features, however, it seems to me that your organisation did not partake in due diligence and investigate all the options that were at their disposal. Not only is that reckless management but completely unacceptable in any organisation who demand accountability by all decision makers.
If the above senario is an example of the type of management that took place at your place of employment, I would question the competency of your management team and ability to analyse and make a decision based purely on the facts rather than emotive, vendor induced hyped.
We have some newer screenshots on http://syllable.sourceforge.net E.g
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGal...
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGal...
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGal...
Not much has changed that you could see since we did those. We'll do some more once Syllable 0.5.2 is released.
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3
Best Server OS: Mac OS X Server 10.3
2nd Best Server OS: FreeBSD
Best Hobby OS: Darwin
Best Computer News Site: OsNews.com(thanks to the great team and the editor-in-chief)
Best new app: Safari
Biggest event in computer hardware: The Apple G5
Biggest event in computer software: release of iTunes for windows
Cool ideas: Expose from Apple and the design of Storage from GNOME team
Best gedget: iPod with iTrip
so you see now that I am a big apple fan... :-)
Best Server OS: Linux
Best Linux Distro: Mandrake
Best Desktop OS: Mandrake
Best Desktop: Gnome
Best Application: Firebird
Best Office App: OO
Best Free SW App: Php[PM][gy]Admin
Best Movie: Lord of the Rings
Best Choice: Mine :-D.
Happy 2K4, Pals.
