With the rising popularity of Microsoft, personal computers have entered the mainstream and all but replaced the abacus and etch-a-sketch that they resemble. However the technologist community have had a mixed opinion of MS offerings and viable alternatives have been quietly queuing up for attention. There are a lot of reasons to take what you are given and like it without questioning what you are getting, everything is simpler. I'd be happy that a computer works in the same way that a car does. I have a vague idea what makes it go, and I understand that there are people who do - but I don't need to be one of them to be happy.
But then you can raise your head above the trenches and take a good look around. What is new, what works, what can I achieve? What can I do to push myself, what can I do to push the technology around me?
Apple are seeing a return to glory, clinging on to the mainframe age with their thin-client Pods and Pads and whatnot which provide a user interface to a real computer somewhere that handles All Your Stuff. Almost under the security radar because of an historically small user base, Apples consumer devices are more at risk from physical theft than virus attacks and probably will remain so for some time. Heads are nodded to their white plasticy appliance computing and its user-first paradigm.
Unix famously is still in the Data Centre game, with Sun Solaris breaking new ground with ZFS which provides a number of advantages over traditional RAID-5 solutions. This alone shows the company is alive on the cutting edge of its field, and data hosting is a billion dollar market worldwide.
Linux in all its forms is pushing to be desktop contender, but marginal games and application support put Linux third in a two-horse race for the mainstream market despite a low price point. Good flexibility and security make it more viable in the media-centre and netbook market. Despite being a tremendous community driven OS with all of the virtues of Open Source development, a lack of direction has kept Linux in the shadows and publicity like Xandros, and ChromeOS could significantly raise public awareness.
Back from theory to reality - This leaves me with a Windows desktop PC because I play games. An Ubuntu-Linux media centre, a BSD-ZFS file server and a Google-Linux netbook. I'll keep my apples in the fruit bowl for now. While it all seems like an unlikely mix, each decision has been made on its own merits and I've had the freedom to make that decision myself.
Technology integration being what it is, the compatibility problems of lifestyle are still too common and too painful for my liking. An entire Microsoft or Entire Apple setup would probably be a little smoother to troubleshoot but the lack of choice and control in both worlds is a little off-putting. At the moment I can solve my Windows problems with a reformat/reinstall, while the *nix problems generally take a kernel patch and a bit of googling.
The latest such problem has been reboots/dropouts and timeouts on my file server. The machine is an old Intel P4 running FreeNAS 7 with ZFS providing me a four drive RAID-Z pool of around 4.0TB. Its the sort of problem that makes you want to buy a prepackaged solution, however the domestic fileserver market hasn't really picked up to my needs and enterprise offerings start and budgets I can't justify.
Google hinted that the problem could actually be the Silicon Image 3512 ATA controller (and drivers) rather than a disk problem or an issue with BSD, so I've replaced the controller with a Primise FastTrak TX4310 controller and all of my problems have gone away. With the SiI controller it took a lot of luck to copy more than a couple of GB without fail, but the first impressions of the Promise card are that its delivering.
The Final Score?
Silicon Image NILL - Promise Technology ONE.
And that concludes it. Another problem vaguely hopefully black-boxed. Find problem, find solution and apply one to the other until it all works.
It was a £100 investment for the controller, but an otherwise recycled PC has life for a few more years and now I have a lot more faith in the Promise Land of unlimited* local storage with world class redundancy to keep my data safe.
* 4TB isn't unlimited local storage, but its quite a bit.
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