Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 16th Oct 2008 22:08 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Linux Kexec is a feature that allows to boot kernels from a working kernel. It was originally intended for use by kernel and system developers who had to reboot several times a day. Soon, system administrators for high-availability servers found use for it as well. As systems get more and more advanced, and boot times get longer, end users can now benefit from it.
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bornagainenguin
Member since:
2005-08-07

morph pointed out...

Sounds like the problem is (partly) with FOSS culture, then!?


Yes, but not really. Corporate developers are all too happy to pass the buck whenever they can as well. And as someone else has already said, this makes sense for them because they can't fix what they can't see.

morph posted...
"look as far as IE6 to see what happens with Microsoft when there isn't someone around to push and prod them into actually innovating

Yeah, that's a good (bad!) example. Fortunately Microsoft's standards have improved a lot since the bad-old-days of Windows 9x and IE4-6. IE8 is quite developer-friendly and has eg tabs-in-separate-processes, and Vista has some great UI and under-the-hood improvements (don't believe every criticism you read!). Competition surely did play a role here. I'd guess that Apple, Google and Mozilla are mostly to thank for that!
"

As far as I can see IE 7 was more or less a new coat of paint, but one which broke quite a few intranet apps due to their reliance on doing things the "IE way" instead of following standards. IE8 looks like the team got back together and have been trying to do something good, something new. I'm actually looking forward to trying ot out if they release it on XP, but I doubt I'll switch from Firefox without some serious benefits and even then it would have to be able to do everything I can currently do with Firefox as well.

As for Vista? Don't make me laugh--I'm sorry but as far as I'm concerned Vista is in the same place IE was in with IE6...

It has inhaled air every time I've had to deal with it, and the fact it needs three or four times the RAM just to be able to do smoothly what XP can do on half that just shows how broken it is IMHO.

Still...I'm hoping now that Apple is gobbling up mindshare and their usershare is increasing and people are being exposed to Linux on netbooks as well as all the incrememntal improvements to Linux we're seeing...

I'm hoping all this will be enough to trigger a reaction in Redmond and inspire some competition in Windows beyond the PR campaign.

Still it works both ways too--kexec has been around for years now and this looks like the first time its been mentioned with home users in mind. Makes me wonder what else there is we could be using at home?

--bornagainpenguin

Edited 2008-10-17 14:27 UTC

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