This won't fragment Android, this non-profit entity is designed to make installing Linux on an ARM licensee's silicon easier. There is still a bit of catching up the ARM folks have to do, this project aims to enable it.
I agree it looks like there will be lots of competing interests, but there should be enough of a common denominator amongst the ARM chip makers to at least make porting Linux to their platform less painful. That will enable Android - not fracture it.
The debian <--> CPAN interface is easily managed, and there are more that a thousand CPAN modules in debian. (See the debian-perl web site: http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/)
The great thing about debian packages is that they not only manage all your perl dependencies for you, but they also manage operating system dependencies too. Gems can't do that.
Any changes made by hand to a configuration file on a debian-like system are noted and respected by aptitude and apt-get, so your configuration files will not be over-written (unless you want them to.)
All services are "off" by default on the LTS server and debian tries to conform to the Linux Standards Base so what you find in /etc/ is most likely similar to other distros.
The Cent OS community is not anywhere near as large as the debian community, and when you add in commercial support from Canonical, that makes for a pretty good value for money when you chose Ubuntu.
What would be required to get Unbuntu to perform as a server in your mind? Removing X windows? Hardening? Why wouldn't you just perform a minimal install of Ubunut's LTS for example? That has X disabled and no open ports by default - that is an excellent start for a public-facing server.
Further more, Fedora is a johnny-come-lately, created when Red Hat closed their once open linux version. While they claim that Fedora will always be free, one wonders how much Red Hat supports Fedora since it obviously competes with their product. I think a truly, permanently free distro is a much better choice.
Not sure I agree with you there. Red Hat has gone a long way with their documentation - being a commercial linux distro requires solid documentation. So, to be fair, Red Hat probably has the best documentation. I have used debian / ubuntu for years and documentation can be quite spotty unfortunately.
debian is the "universal" operating system and runs on more hardware than any other linux distribution.
I love the *BSD UNIXes, but there are also "issues" there as well. The FreeBSD threading model does not work well with MySQL for example and you can see database problems there. I suspect Postgres on FreeBSD is more common and works rather well so you can go that route instead.
However, the original poster wanted info specifically about linux, and while a BSD UNIX is similar, there are enough differences that productivity at first might be diminished while one learns about the port system for packages as well as other differences.
I think it is a bit misleading to say that a distro like debian "opens all doors", that is not the case. And the recent OpenSSL problem not withstanding, debian is quite secure. In fact, the OpenSSL packaging issue shows that the debian security apparatus mostly works, and that the lessons learned are quickly being implemented. One must acknowledge however that this was a serious security problem on debian's side and in contrast OpenBSD has had _two_ exploits in _ten_ years. Those are some pretty sterling security credentials for OpenBSD.
Ubuntu is mostly debian, and they even support a LTS (Long Term Support) version of their software. debian has more software packages (@18,000) than any other distro, so you would have any linux software you need right at your fingertips. Ubuntu comes with commercial support from Canonical if you should need that, but I think you will find lots of Ubuntuistas out there willing to help for free in the fora and such.
My personal preference is for debian, but if you are already familiar with Ubuntu, then use that for you web server since you will be able to use your already hard-won knowledege and Ubuntu performs admirably.
Actually the Fed is the right place to do this because it is banking not securities. Wall Street and its flora and fauna are fairly well regulated, but the "shadow banking system" is not, and much of the current housing loan crisis is due to the lack of the Fed using its already granted regulatory powers.
What we need is a Fed chairman who believes that regulation makes for more transparent and effective credit markets, not one that follows the political dictates of questionably informed politicians.
There is definitely a need for this service. Having machines running three OSes, and a plethora of browsers, on your desktop is not yet an option. While it certainly is possible to _have_ a server farm with all these OSes, why not just let someone else maintain that nightmare? Sysadmin hell is what I call that.
The service is slow, but that will change. It "just worked" for me running OS X 10.5 with Firefox 3b5 - I didn't even check if I had Java or which version my Java was, everything went smoothly. There were some artifacts from moving the mouse, but it let me view several of my pages and gave me some good views of how others see my sites.
I think the pricing model is reasonable.
Perhaps what you can do to extend the service is allow users to pay for a set of mouse movements, record them, and run them on every OS/browser/flash combination. Then allow customers to play those files back on their own machines at their leisure, instead of doing it in real time. This would allow a web developer a way to create a 'use case' for their page, and see how it behaved across various platforms. Also, you would not have to supply so much bandwidth, just compress the results and provide them for downloading later.
I'm a little disappointed in Hacker news for the negative comments on Java. While I don't write Java, and lots of my perl colleagues dis Java, I would have thought that this Lisp-centric community would be more tolerant and agnostic when it comes to choice of programming languages. After all, it the innovation of the final result that matters, not the tools used.
I wish you luck Tony with your service, I am sure it will be a success!
I think you are absolutely right about pleasing the stakeholders, especially because good engineers are hard to find and if the engineers leave en masse, there will be problems.
I see the culture of the two companies as incompatible. Yahoo! is a FreeBSD shop, they use lots of Free Software, MySQL, etc. Is Microsoft going to rip and replace all those servers? If they don't, they are saying FreeBSD and Free Software is better than Windows. I see this problem as being a very expensive issue.
Secondly, Microsoft has never borrowed money before to purchase a company. They were having Bear Stearns help them with this purchase, and while Bear Stearns is gone, they still will need some serious capital and will go into debt. This will change their culture, their ability to attract investors, and the bottom line.
Matt Maroon's comment is more anecdotal than factual. Apple consistently gets the highest marks in unbiased studies (Consumer Reports) for both the quality of its hardware, customer service and support.
To counter his anecdotal view I'll add mine; I also own a number of Macs and while I had problems with my 1400cs I have not had problems with my refurbished PowerBook. In fact, I dropped it from a meter's height and it is still performing admirably.
Vlad's recipe is a good one. It might be more than you want to pay, but it is an excellent investment in learning about operating systems. Nowadays computing is more heterogeneous than ever with virtualization becoming more and more important. If you follow Vlad's advice you will be ahead of the game, learn important new technologies, and somewhat future-proof your investment.
What you are asking for pg is civil discourse. This does not come from enumerating a disagreement hierarchy. It comes from a learned, well-read education where public speaking and debate is a part.
In our wonderful country, even in our wonderful wider world, this is sorely lacking. While your contributions are consistently wise and useful, we need to work together as a society to fundamentally change the climate for education, we need to ensure that an excellent education is enjoyed by all, that will make your hierarchy moot.
Thats just it. Downtime is expensive if you rely on your web site to make you money. If you are a small eCommerce shop with all your eggs in the EC2 basket, downtime can be expensive.
I think it is somewhat presumptuous of techcrunch to consider themselves as determining what is under or over the radar, as the metaphor goes. Techcrunch has less influence that it supposes.