Tsikbal: from my perspective

This article on Linux Journal , called " The Many Paths to a Solution ", really gave an idea to explain to people who don't know much about Linux why are the so many distros out there. Many seem to believe that the main reason that there are so many reason for there being more than 50 actively maintained distros, is that Linux must not be really that good. That's not really the case, since the users of most of those distros could easily make a point for why their distro is great for them. Each distro represents a path to a solution to a problem that a group of users have to solve. That's why not every distro is a fit for every user, and also why many become disenchanted with Linux. In many of those cases, the user wasn't matched to the right distro to begin with. While in other times, the expectations weren't meet to what the distro offered. That's why its vital to match new users to the distro that better suits their needs, not to the d...

Last Monday the SAP server got busted by a virus, and all hell broke out. It took the better part of three days to set it back up, and by the fourth day it wasn't up to speed. Until this happened, nobody really gave a second thought to the fact that we all are dependent on central server to get the info we all need to do our jobs. SAP is vital for every department pass the information needed for all departments work smoothly. And while some of us use local storage to actually work some of the info in a more detailed way, our main source of information is centralized at a single server. At least in my case, and of my coworkers at my department, my work didn't come to a complete halt. Some of the info I work with, isn't dependent on SAP. As such, it means that I still could go ahead with some of my work. The same goes some of the other departments, though having access to the info on SAP sure does makes thing a lot easier. Yet, this event highlights the dangers...

Its official, Apple ditched the 3.5 mm headphone jack in favor of it's Lightning connector on the iPhone 7 . Now, Intel says that the 3.5 mm headphone jack should be replaced with a USB-C connector port. The main problem with the change, is the potential for users to get locked into an ecosystem because of compatibility issues. At this point, if you buy an iPhone 7 you'll need an adapter to use your current headphones. No doubt it the near future headphones using the Lightning connector will hit the market. The main issue here, is if Android smartphones will go with the Lighting connector or with the USB-C connector. The odds are that they go with the USB-C connector since Android already has support for it and they won't have to have to pay license fees to Apple to use it's Lightning connector. To be honest, USB-C connector is becoming ever more common. As such it has better odd of being able to replace the 3.5 mm headphone jack, and has better odds of...

Ever since OpenOffice.org became Apache OpenOffice.org , after Oracle's acquisition of  Sun Microsystems , it has been losing developers. Most of them went to fork, develop LibreOffice out of fear that OpenOffice would become an afterthought for Oracle. Even though Oracle gave contributed OpenOffice and it's source code to the Apache Software Foundation , after it indeed stop the development of the office suite, developers didn't came back to the project. As a consequence, development of OpenOffice has virtually stopped. On the other hand, LibreOffice has gained not only many new developers, but also widespread acceptance. Almost every mayor distro ships with it, and even the Italian government joining. So, learning that there is some serious consideration about shutting down the OpenOffice project all together due to lack of developers comes to the surprise of anyone. For me, its a bittersweet thing. For one, OpenOffice was the first open source offic...