Edge Software

Some software out there (free, shareware, or commercial) just makes the difference; give you an edge, lets you communicate, see, or share. I’d like award a few companies or open source projects my first and only awards of Good Edge Software ™. So here goes:

VMware - what a novel concept! Boot one OS inside another OS. Not good enough, you say? Lets share OS’es across a network. Lets make it possible for teams to collaborate but all virtually. We can create whole virtual communities, worlds, networks. Its VMware dudes.

Hyper-V - but no one can own the sphere. Then there is Hyper-V from Microsoft that challenges and is a new kid so to speak. More on Hyper-V in my OS awards below.

Mozilla - Well, Mozilla deserves a spot for so many good reasons. Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird. You can use their products so many ways.

Office System - Office 2007 is coolness and I use it everyday. Outlook 2007 is light years better and the office group seems so much better, different, more involved; yet complicated in some ways. More to learn. Notice where we’re going here? See the pattern?

OpenOffice.org - a worthy alternative that I’ve used for some years. Great PDF export, great for work and play. But there is no collaboration and calendaring system. That may hurt. I don’t view Evolution as worthy really.

OS Systems

Linux 2.6 or Ubuntu - well, I’m not hinting that one really has become the other; but why would one want to run a RPM-based distribution if you can run Ubuntu? But I have a downside to this. Where is the true revolution here? I don’t see what the desktops want to become next. We have Gnome and KDE. But what are they going to be next? Honestly speaking, sometimes I see Linux as growing a bit more static with upgrades and updates not evolving but just revolving.

Vista - not really worthy of comment as far as I can see. It does not deliver just frustrates. No link here. Sure you can turn off UAC and do some stuff with SP1. I’ll just take XP instead for most things. That was until I saw the next thing…

Server 2008 - now this seems to be the core OS that Microsoft should have released and built upon for us all. Geez, Microsoft. Make it a desktop and shoot Vista and put it out of its misery. Server 2008 standard will let you Hyper-V if your system is worthy; but it comes bundled. It also seems responsive, fun, quick to please. You can make it into a desktop if you want. Check it out here.

Conclusions

The new breed of OS System goes a long way to make systems and servers blur their edges and I think that’s good. We want responsive systems and if they are server based, that’s okay too. I use Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 64b as a desktop too. Why? Because it just runs and does its tasks and I like it. I think Linux has to make a decision. What does it want to be? I will always be a Linux user but I have questions around where its going these days. It seems to spin out new kernels and software and libraries. But what does it want to be next? I’ll just continue to use Ubuntu 7.10 because I like how it works.

I’ll be watching as I move farther from the mainstream. Opposites attract though and in the end I foresee that Microsoft will need Linux and particularly Open Source and the same is true the other way. We need both and one will move one way and the other will be forced to adopt things it may think unworthy. I’ll be on the sidelines being a habilis boy and just using. Thanks to the guys everywhere that write the cool tools and systems for making it all available.