I spent the better part of a decade as a Debian user, and for somewhere between sixteen months to two years I’ve run my computers on BSDs exclusively. (Mostly NetBSD and FreeBSD). I’ve developed a lot of respect and outright affection for them; but seeing as I make a big deal over the OS I run, and I am switching back to GNU/Linux it struck me that it might be good to articulate my journey so far. Read on →

In which I try very hard to not wax philosophical on their strategy or the state of Android or talk about how weird the name is and instead just talk about the beta release itself. My experience is largely from v0.1-201809161427 on a HTC One m8 Observant readers may notice that this commentary is posting several weeks after that build version. C’est la vie. What is /e/? Gaël Duval, founder of Mandrak GNU/Linux ran a crowdfunding campaign to fund the initial development of a mobile OS called /e/ earlier this year. Read on →

A journey through many operating systems. DOS MS DOS 5.0 was my first operating system on an IBM PS/2. It came complete with a simple batchfile driven menu system dropped onto it by it’s previous owner capable of launching previous installed applications making it possible to use without ever touching the commandline. One day as I was mucking about downloading zip files from bulletin boards (over a 2400 baud modem) extracting them, fiddling with their contents and deleting them; I inadvertently issued a “del . Read on →

Environmental science and agriculture have concepts referred to as biodiversity and monoculture. Biodiversity is the measurement of variation and complexity over a certain sample size. Within a species or within an environment. A one square acre of a rain forest, teaming with plants and animals has a lot of biodiversity. A field of cows all hailing from the same stock has very low biodiversity. Monocultures arise when you have extremely low biodiversity in your environment. Read on →

A Rambling Review by a Long Time Debian User A Dangerously Oversimplified History - What is BSD? How is it different from GNU/Linux? Unix is a family of operating systems that conform to a specific and evolving standard and philosophy of operation. Unix systems took off in a big way in multiple industries and academia between the 70s and the 90s including education and several major players had their own proprietary versions running on all sorts of different make and model machines. Read on →

When I was a kid somewhere between age 10 and 12 my family got our first computer. It was used and ancient even by the standard of the day. It was an IBM PS2 and it ran DOS 5.0, complete with a density floppy drive. My father had bartered for it at a construction site as buying a computer retail was unimaginable to us at the time. My first real programming language was Turbo Pascal, which I had spotted complete with manual at the flea market. Read on →