... rants ...

I just finished reading the troll post number one-zillion and something, over the windows versus Linux OS battle, that other unknown troll has digged, causing a surge of arguing as usual. By the way, the Steve Jobs of Linux are at least two, Stallman and Torvalds, and money is not the metric of everything in the universe as you folks think in amerika.

That's why Saint Francis may have not lived a comfortable life like reverend Dollar (is not a joke, it is his name, Google 'IRS Dollar' and you get the article), but Saint Francis is part of history while reverend Dollar may only remain in the history of the IRS claims, suppose they keep the records of the deceased after death.

Anyways, while I was reading the article, flashes from the past came to my mind, from the times the only Microsoft thing existing, was a BASIC compiler, I think it was called BASCom, was not that bad for the times of CP/M but I used Nevada FORTRAN and COBOL, cheaper, producing portable source for other places than PC's and more useful work.

In the early 80's I was asked an opinion on appropriation plans, and I suggested to give a try to a distributed architecture of servers/workstations of the AT&T B class. For various reasons the choices were however going in different directions, and I therefore opted for Honeywell.

I never had an MS/DOS machine, until Windows became a "standard", mainly for lack of decently priced competitors, Concurrent DOS and DESQviewX were clearly superior, but nobody really bought them for serious projects around the environment I was in, nor bothered to ask what we could have wanted.

Anyways, one day I found out that the geniuses in the engineering area, had appropriated a zillion of DOS machines with Windows 3.0 to build a distributed architecture using the Honeywell servers and LAN Manager network. That's when my battle with viruses started.

Never seen a virus before. Not in VMS, not in GCOS, not in CP/M, not in Xenix, not on Mac OS, so I assume, unless anybody can prove me wrong, viruses officially were introduced to computing with the advent of Microsoft introduced features. The introduction of the problem created two new working positions in my branch, and an entire new office at general services, just to support the PCs (I can't resist not to laugh when somebody talks of windows TCO, I had a GCOS machine with years of uptime, all it did in NINE years was crashing one single LARK disk, and the VAX did not even have a single failure in the same time period, I did not check the uptime but I'm quite sure it was the same).

At this times, the Windows machines troubles, in addition to the other folks mentioned, took half my time, and some unaccountable time from the users trying to fix their system before finally giving up and calling from help, admitting of having been 'bugged' somehow. For whatever reason, my Xenix box was not having any issues either, nor it was the OS/2 server, nor the VAX, nor the GCOS systems, not the Mac's, all on the same network, just DOS and Windows.

Next, I left for a new life and now I had to pay for my own software (sigh). I found some work with this software company, and they had a few VAX, a few Alpha, and a few PCs, we ran Tru64, SCO, VMS and NT. The miracle discovery was that there were no viruses running on the Alpha NT, so in a minute of hope I thought that finally windows x86 and PCs were going to be in a giant future trash can, and Alpha would have became the paradise of Windows computing.

In the mean time, I was running Windows at home, and at the business, struggling with the viruses, and hoping that the new emerging Linux would catch up to be usable as SCO. The main issue was recompiling the kernel, on a 386 sometimes it would take all night. At one point I even had one of the first Slackware and Debian running, with dial-in over the phone, so I could provide a cheap x86 stations running a free OS.

For about seven years after, I was out of the computing business, and during this time my systems were dual boot until the advent of XP. Microsoft in the mean time cancelled the Alpha version, obviously when you have something that works and with no viruses, why keep it, it would look bad if you are in the virus distribution servers market (I did not claim the right for this one, he he).

With XP I decided I was done with MS. I bought one for my kid, that's it. I still run 2k versions, only inside virtual machines, most of the times with the network disconnected, and just to run legacy applications until they are ready for the garbage. I may have to buy one more XP64 maybe, but I hope by the time this XP64 will be good to trash, there may be no more need of Windows and MS for the things I do.

Now I run Debian GNU for multimedia, and develop on Oracle on Fedora, Suse and Solaris. I could use Designer in the Windows VM if I have to, but I generally use XE on the Fedora installs. I found peace, no more viruses, no more wasted time, so hopefully as there were no viruses before Microsoft, the hope remains that there will be none left after Microsoft.

If I had to give advice to anybody, I would suggest to buy a Sparc, dual boot with Solaris and Fedora Core, and an AMD_64, quadruple boot with Fedora, Debian, Suse and Solaris. Also, for the ones that are nostalgic of the times of reliable computing, an old Alpha dual boot with Fedora and VMS is a kick, Alpha core runs very very nice on my Miata. I have not had a chance to own an Itanium 64, that would have been my next wish, possibly with VMS, HP-UX and Debian, and maybe also a newer Ibm 6000, but it may not happen any soon.