Bridging Unix and Windows At NASA 293
slashdotess writes "Information Week reports: "About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment that could also run government-mandated Microsoft apps. This let his team of 30 engineers continue to program in a Unixlike environment and create Word documents and Outlook E-mail all on the same PC. This mixed-use scenario is slowly taking hold, encouraged by a growing number of applications for running Linux on PC desktops." Score another one for Linux on the Desktop."
Re:OS X... (Score:2, Interesting)
More MS bashing for fark's sake?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Sounds to me like there are a lot more of your so called 'script kiddies' running *ix boxes than there are Windows these days.
Re:They kept the worst demons... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well the asinine installation program that for some god unknown reason needs to 'configure' itself everytime you look at it the wrong way or some other user logs onto the computer helps keep me employed... =) (yes, blah we just made a custom
FOR GODS SAKE WHY WHY WHY DOES MSOFFICE NEED TO FSCKING CONFIGURE ITSELF? WHY CAN"T IT JUST BE INSTALLED LIKE EVERY OTHER FSCKING APPLICATION? WHY GOD WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY WHY?
Sorry. See what I mean?
Re:OS X... (Score:3, Interesting)
Better multimedia performance?
A simpler GUI?
Proprietary crap masquerading as open source?
This is NASA. These are scientists and mathematicians and people that are smarter than the average visual basic programmer that think that the success of the computer is by slapping on as much meaningless cruft as possible! People that have been using mainframes for years. Scientists.
What does the average mac advocate usually present as the case for the mac since the release of OS X? "It's Unix! Really! We think so! We never use the terminal because we've got crap like iTunes and iMovie and iChat and iBlow! These are innovative apps that aren't at all like winamp, xmms, windows media player, gqmpeg, the numerous windows apps that get bundled with hardware (ulead), broadcast 2k, or any of the players like mplayer, xine, videolan, etc. These are innovative! They've got skins! Just like all those others, but it's got Quartz and displaypdf. We don't know what it does, but damn, does it sound cool! Don't you want to be cool? I've got a TiBook. I'm cool. Some teenage girl on allergy meds says I'm cool. Isn't that what computing is about?"
Ok, so I've gone way overboard into the land of flamebait. But still, why are all the people that claimed any technical merit a year or so ago now collectively creaming their jeans over eyecandy and pretending it to be the greatest contribution to the advancement of technology ever?
My problem with OS X is that it presents so little to the core while trying to slap on a pretty facade. They failed on both accounts. I find aqua to be pretty darn ugly, and beneath the whitewash, nothing that would make me shell out the money to move away from LinuxPPC on the same hardware.
-transiit
Hybrids are good for linux. (Score:3, Interesting)
Kjella
Re:OS X... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's kind of strange because my terminal is about always open, often in an SSH to one of my *BSD boxen. You want to know what was the selling point for a Mac for me? It was (and still is) OS X, I don't have to use the mess that Windows is, but I don't have the hassle of managing a Linux system. (I prefer BSD anyway) I may not be a typical Mac OS X user, and you will never hear me say "it comes bundled with flashy apps" because I hate that, you'll never hear me say a Mac is faster because it's not. I couldn't care less about "displayPDF", and I know only about displayPDF because I read it on slashdot: I guess the "standard" Mac user doesn't know and doesn't care.
No, you're right. Your comment was flamebait. If you don't like Macs, buy yourself a Dell with bloated XP and shut up. Besides, you claim to run LinuxPPC. Okay, that is very 31337, I have reserved a 5 Gig partition for it on my iBook. Yet strangely enough I am very satisfied with what OS X offers. LinuxPPC... I'll think about it when my iBook cannot cope OS XI, or I could just stick with OS X 10.1.5 as I do now.
Re:Slowly does it (Score:1, Interesting)
You've just described what already happens every couple of years when you are forced to upgrade to a new version of Office.
Or, in the case of the unexpected dialog pop-ups, what already happens after applying service packs or after reinstalling due to a "windows ate itself" situation.
Re:Use Linux-only (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, most users are no more interested in their computers than they are in their televisions. They just want them to do what they want them to do in the way they're used to doing that.
Linux kills Unix Vendors (Score:2, Interesting)
The Johnson Center has also been able to replace a $1.6 million SGI Inc. mainframe server with a cluster of 12 PCs running Red Hat Linux for developing simulation software. The PCs were a $25,000 investment, less than half the cost of annual maintenance on the SGI server.
1.6 Million with a 50,000 dollar a year maintenance fee and yet