Herman Verkade

There are various ways to give your user community access to Linux applications, without wiping the hard disks of their PCs. The most commonly used ones are to give a user a second PC which runs Linux, to install a dual-boot environment with Windows and Linux, or to install Linux into a virtual PC environment such as VMware. But none of these methods provide a smooth and transparent mixed environment because the user will need to explicitly switch between the Windows and Linux environments. Back in the old days, I managed mixed VMS and Unix environments. Although these two are very different platforms, both supported X Windows. Using the network capabilities of X, I was always able to create transparent mixed environments, where users would have only one workstation, but with access to applications running on both platforms simultaneously. I decided to investigate wh... (more)

DHCP Servers – Microsoft v Linux

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that sends network configuration information to computers (and other devices) on a network. It allows a system administrator to manage an IP address range from a central location and to maintain network parameters for all systems from that same central point. DHCP is an internet standard, published as RFC2131. Implementations exist for many different platforms, covering clients and servers. As a standard protocol there is no need to run the same implementation on clients and servers. A Linux client will happily ... (more)

Linux Lunch

Over the past few months I've had lunch with a lot of old friends who were techies 10 years ago, but are now IT managers at large financial institutions. Linux came up in the conversations with most of them, and I was surprised by the misconceptions they have about the whole open source environment. I ended up debunking the myths that seem to exist around Linux. This is how most of my conversations went.... You've got to be kidding! I wouldn't want to bet my entire business on Linux, would I? Funny you should say that. I remember you saying the same thing 10 years ago, but then ... (more)

Upgrading or Migrating?

Earlier this year, I dealt with a small company with three users. They also had three servers: 300 MHz web server running NT4 Server and IIS 233 MHz file server running NT4 Server 500 MHz mail and database server running NT4, Exchange 5.5 and SQL Server 7.0 The services were split across three machines to spread risks. Through their firewall, only the web server was fully visible from the Internet, whilst the mail server was visible from an off-site mail forwarder. The file server was not at all visible from the Internet. Because Microsoft will be withdrawing support for NT4 Serv... (more)