Scrolling through my games and some online stores like Steam and GOG and don't know what to play.

Maybe C&C Generals Zero Hour once again?

I'm a developer and never been a friend to courses like these, but that's maybe because I'm the autodidactic type.

IMHO, there's one single thing in programming: You do understand the basic principles, or you don't. There's nothing in between. I'm not talking about variables here, but about actually understanding control structures, boolean comparisons, arithmetics, loops, OO, inheritance, instantiation, pointer, addresses, heap and stack, even the invisible beauty of well-written code and so on. But you also need to understand how a linker works, what a compiler does, what an interpreter is.

Programming is more like an art, nearly impossible to master without a passion. Long story short: Learn one language, take your time, don't pick from a catalog and never master a single one. Use something that's widely in use, maybe C, C++ or even C# or Java (not a fan of Java at all. The language is more or less ok, but at least the runtime is a nightmare - and I'm not even talking about security here). I wouldn't recommend a scripting language for learning, a good compiler will tell you what's wrong with your code, a good debugger is also of great help.

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Time for VMware in the SMB Over?:

@AsherN said in Is the Time for VMware in the SMB Over?:

With 2012R2, MS is coming very close. And while you do need SCCM to manage a larger Hyper-V deployment, it can still come out cheaper than ESXi. I just did the math. I have 30 sockets of vSphere Enterprise. I license WIndows Datacenter anyway, so that is not a cost. If I was do do it over, it would cost me half in SCCM licenses for the same infrastructure as it does on vSphere licenses.

As far as moving to the cloud, Reliable, fast connectivity and storage ramp up pretty quickly.

And now Hyper-V 2016 is right around the corner and XenServer 7 are both out. And with the last year's learning about XenOrchestra and how much that can and does do to improve the plight of XenServer in the SMB space it seems that there are a lot of new reasons to be taking a very strong look at Hyper-V, XenServer and, of course, KVM continues to play an important role.

VMware has gotten ESXi 6 out the door since we started the topic, they have not stood still. But it feels like the Hyper-V and XS camps have had the big gains in the last twelve months specifically.

Small correction: SCCM is a deployment, configuration and maybe a MDM and license / asset management tool. What you mean is probably SCVMM (Virtual Machine Manager)

@scottalanmiller said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:

Let's take two extremes. CentOS / RHEL is server focused. Linux Mint is desktop focused.

CentOS puts all research and engineering into the needs of a server. The assumption is GUIless deployments and almost all tools are server ones.

Linux Mint assumes desktop only usage. All of the design and engineering effort goes into making a modern, sleek, smooth desktop experience with all GUI tools. They go so far as to develop two of their own desktops just for Mint (Cinnamon and Mate.) Pretty much all packages maintained for Mint are desktop ones for end users to use, not server products.

Good example, would put that in a dedicated thread in your Linux tutorial series. Maybe with a title like "Linux: About distributions and flavors"

@BRRABill said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:

So Mint makes Cinnamon and Mate. Both of which are just desktop GUIs?

Correct. Mate for example is a fork of Gnome which is "just" a Desktop Environment running on X11/Xorg or Wayland.

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@hobbit666 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Harrrr... You are on GMT, right? I'm already at home. Sad thing is, I'll be at work on Monday one hour before you

Yeah in Wales UK have seen a few posts when you mentioned the time lol we're on Summer time at the mo

That isn't too far away, maybe we'll have a drink one day

On the other hand... Do I need a visa for the UK now?

@hobbit666 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Harrrr... You are on GMT, right? I'm already at home. Sad thing is, I'll be at work on Monday one hour before you

Yeah in Wales UK have seen a few posts when you mentioned the time lol we're on Summer time at the mo

That isn't too far away, maybe we'll have a drink one day

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I'm wondering if this is true...

http://fossbytes.com/rip-debian-linux-founder-ian-murdock-dies-probable-suicide-twitter/

Has anybody else heard about this?

Yes, it was a scary story. If I remember correctly including some police officers harassing him or something like that.

@hobbit666 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just hit random on my MP3 folder.....listen to some tunes before home time (in 10mins)

Harrrr... You are on GMT, right? I'm already at home. Sad thing is, I'll be at work on Monday one hour before you

@BRRABill said in What is Linux Mint:

@scottalanmiller said>

Thenstart asking questions!

OK.

So, what is Mint, exactly. I thought the "Mint" part of it was the desktop. Like that is what made Mint "for the masses".

But then you can install all these other desktops. So, what gives?

Could you just install those desktop GUIs on other distributions and get the same thing?

You can basically do everything with every distro. Some distros are specialized in some way, like Kali (based on Debian) SystemRescueCD (based on Gentoo) or Knoppix (also based on Debian) for example. Other distros, like OpenSuSE or Debian are more general purpose distros without much of a focus.

You can use the very same pen testing tools you are using in Kali in Mint without much of an issue for example (expect for dependencies).

Some Desktop-focused distros, like Mint, tend to have more up to date packages regarding the desktop experience and tools like Libre/OpenOffice. On the other hand, you'll find more up to date server packages in distros like Ubuntu or Debian. Gentoo is another special flavor where you have the option to compile everything from source with a package manager in front (portage). It can be optimized to any degree (make flags etc) and they tend to have the most up to date packages.

Linux guys tend to call distros "flavors", because they are just that: flavors. They are all running some customized version of the very same Linux kernel behind the scenes.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

And another micro SD card (in a RPi3) is going the way of all mortal beings... :cross:

Began with some cryptic error from dpkg which turned out to be a filesystem warning (structure needs cleaning), did an fsck and now the card is dead. Still booting up to some point until it starts to complain about bad ELF headers

SD cards for operating systems are such a bad idea... I'm thinking about just using cheap SD cards in the future which will hold /boot, everything else will be on a USB thumb drive. Or I will use another platform in the future, Banana Pi for example is a far superior platform overall: SATA, NIC not attached via USB 2, WiFi onboard...

SD cards are generally fine or even great of OSes. But you can't be writing to them, especially for logging. If you make sure that you are using an OS designed for this kind of use (a Live one) or you modify one for this use, they are very reliable.

Sure, they are fine for readonly access. I think I will build something myself, unionfs based maybe (or some successor).

Yup, which is how things being installed to them should be. Same as running off of a LiveCD or LiveDVD which are not even writeable.

But he was trying to install XenServer... Isn't that one of the Hypervisors that everybody has been telling us should be run from an SD card? ... I wonder if it could be an issue with XS7?

Yes BUT requires that you modify it so as not to write locally. You can't skip that part.

I was under the impression that XS takes that into account when installing to SD, etc.

Nope

So the question is @scottalanmiller when are we going to see a guide on how to easily redirect all logging to a remote location?

Isn't Xen running on top of some Linux kernel? Something like rsyslog should do the job just fine in this case.

The LOGGING of XenServer is running on CentOS, Xen itself runs right on the bare metal.

Ah sure, Xen is a Type 1 hypervisor... stupid me

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

And another micro SD card (in a RPi3) is going the way of all mortal beings... :cross:

Began with some cryptic error from dpkg which turned out to be a filesystem warning (structure needs cleaning), did an fsck and now the card is dead. Still booting up to some point until it starts to complain about bad ELF headers

SD cards for operating systems are such a bad idea... I'm thinking about just using cheap SD cards in the future which will hold /boot, everything else will be on a USB thumb drive. Or I will use another platform in the future, Banana Pi for example is a far superior platform overall: SATA, NIC not attached via USB 2, WiFi onboard...

SD cards are generally fine or even great of OSes. But you can't be writing to them, especially for logging. If you make sure that you are using an OS designed for this kind of use (a Live one) or you modify one for this use, they are very reliable.

Sure, they are fine for readonly access. I think I will build something myself, unionfs based maybe (or some successor).

Yup, which is how things being installed to them should be. Same as running off of a LiveCD or LiveDVD which are not even writeable.

But he was trying to install XenServer... Isn't that one of the Hypervisors that everybody has been telling us should be run from an SD card? ... I wonder if it could be an issue with XS7?

Yes BUT requires that you modify it so as not to write locally. You can't skip that part.

I was under the impression that XS takes that into account when installing to SD, etc.

Nope

So the question is @scottalanmiller when are we going to see a guide on how to easily redirect all logging to a remote location?

Isn't Xen running on top of some Linux kernel? Something like rsyslog should do the job just fine in this case.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

And another micro SD card (in a RPi3) is going the way of all mortal beings... :cross:

Began with some cryptic error from dpkg which turned out to be a filesystem warning (structure needs cleaning), did an fsck and now the card is dead. Still booting up to some point until it starts to complain about bad ELF headers

SD cards for operating systems are such a bad idea... I'm thinking about just using cheap SD cards in the future which will hold /boot, everything else will be on a USB thumb drive. Or I will use another platform in the future, Banana Pi for example is a far superior platform overall: SATA, NIC not attached via USB 2, WiFi onboard...

SD cards are generally fine or even great of OSes. But you can't be writing to them, especially for logging. If you make sure that you are using an OS designed for this kind of use (a Live one) or you modify one for this use, they are very reliable.

Sure, they are fine for readonly access. I think I will build something myself, unionfs based maybe (or some successor).

And another micro SD card (in a RPi3) is going the way of all mortal beings... :cross:

Began with some cryptic error from dpkg which turned out to be a filesystem warning (structure needs cleaning), did an fsck and now the card is dead. Still booting up to some point until it starts to complain about bad ELF headers

SD cards for operating systems are such a bad idea... I'm thinking about just using cheap SD cards in the future which will hold /boot, everything else will be on a USB thumb drive. Or I will use another platform in the future, Banana Pi for example is a far superior platform overall: SATA, NIC not attached via USB 2, WiFi onboard...

@AlexK said in MS System Center Licensing:

Oh damnit, sorry. Totally forgot to drop you a mail Alex.

@scottalanmiller good night, I'm en route to work right now (8:47am)

@scottalanmiller said in Designing a Reliable Web Application:

@thwr said in Designing a Reliable Web Application:

@scottalanmiller said in Designing a Reliable Web Application:

@thwr said in Designing a Reliable Web Application:

Don't know if KVM or Xen can do active standby VM's (mirrored VMs) like VMWare, at least Hyper-V can't do that (as of 2012R2)

Do you mean shared memory where there is full fault tolerance and absolutely zero downtime and zero crash consistency issues? Then no, no one does that except for VMware right now. It's the biggest feature that I think makes VMware worth it for shops that need VMware. But it is a massively expensive feature both in terms of VMware licensing as well as in terms of performance hits, OS licensing and system overhead. Doing memory mirroring across nodes is very, very painful in terms of system resources.

Exactly. It's like a RAID-1-ish VM.

Yeah, that's a VMware exclusive. Not very applicable to the SMB market, but when you need it that's my top pick for "when to look at VMware." It's the most significant (to me anyway) "only on Vmware" feature. Most other things that VMware does well are soft benefits, like better memory management, but you might be able to offset that by just buying more memory on another platform. It's not a pure win. But their shared memory fault tolerance is an absolute win. When you need it, you either leave the commodity server world completely or you use VMware.

@John-Nicholson can talk more about that as well.

Hyper-V 's memory management is also awesome, IMHO. But you are right, the gap between VMware and the other major players is getting smaller and smaller with every release cycle. It's next to non-existing as of today. Remember very well when people laughed at me a few years ago for choosing Hyper-V to replace an existing VMware vSphere EP environment. I have yet to regret it.

@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Wow, France is pwning the Germans...

Not a problem at all. Will be much quieter here, no more fireworks, no more honking car parades, lesser drunks on the streets...