A post by bunny on his blog (title: entertainment) made me think about my future plans - how would i see myself in the long term? Where would i be? What would i be working on? Could not come to a proper conclusion even after giving it a thorough thinking... may be it would help if i put the points down and try to analyse everything for myself.

Here are the things that i like

• Free software
• Having my own company
• Operating Systems
• Money, to lead my life without much financial worries
  

The above points give me a hint about what i like myself to be - I would love to see myself in the top chair of a company. At this point, there is one thing that attracts me, trolltech and the dual licensing of Qt. Would love to have my company work on similar dual licensed products (GPL + Commercial).

Probably, the truly determined do not think of alternatives, but when things are not completely in our hands and when fate has a role to play - i think alternatives are a must. As an alternative, i would love to be part of a free software competency center in any company that pays me decently for my work.

If you think you can help me be what i want to be, contact me at s.prasad on gmail.com

A recent post on the OSNews directed me to a register.com article on security comparision between Windows and GNU/Linux. The article apart from concentrating on the Windows and GNU/Linux based argument gives a good picture about what makes free software more secure and bug-free. Its discusses about the common myths of understanding security and ends the article with statistics from the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team)'s database of vulnerabilities.

The following are a few points discussed about in the article. Most of these points are credible-sounding. The author also says that there are glaring logical holes in the reasoning behind the conclusion that GNU/Linux is less secure.

1. Windows only suffers so many attacks because there are more Windows installations than GNU/Linux, therefore GNU/Linux would be just as vulnerable if it had as many installations
2. Open source is inherently less secure because malicious hackers can find flaws more easily
3. There are more security alerts for GNU/Linux than for Windows, therefore GNU/Linux is less secure than Windows
4. There is a longer time between the discovery of a flaw and a patch for the flaw with GNU/Linux than with Windows

The article is available on register.com at http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_report_windows_vs_linux/

The author in many places referred to the GNU/Linux system as Linux, please read it as GNU/Linux in all the places except when reading about the kernel design.

Back to the osdev thread!

When i read documentations and tutorials on writing an operating system and the grub manual i came across a new thing called the multiboot standard. It said kernels are meant to do a lot of work and worrying about the bios and about how to boot the system should not add to the complexity of the kernel... quite right!

I agree that writing a bootstrap would help us better understand the operating systems, but making your kernel boot is not writing an OS. OS has lot more things to do, lot more algorithms to code and a huge number of decisions to make. Then why make developing an OS even more complicated by trying to implement a custom bootstrap - unless you want to prove to yourself and to the world that you can 'code' a bootstrap.

More about the multiboot standard is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot.

btw... there are more reasons why anyone would want to avoid a custom bootstrap! I prefer coding in 'c' to 'assembly'. The kernel that i am interested in is a very simple one meant for understanding the issues involved in implementing the algorithms. Above all, when i always wanted to avoid the E820 and E801 stuff - keeps my kernel easy to understand.

If E820 and E801 seemed strange to you, check out the Ralf Brown's Interrupts List - interrupt number 15.

Recently i came across a few people asking me questions on how to learn gnu/linux. Maybe these questions are common to everyone... and everyone who is interested in gnu/linux would have at some point of time looked for documentations. Following are a few urls that could prove helpful in your adventures with gnu/linux.

• Command Reference
• http://www.computerhope.com/unix.htm
• http://www.ss64.com/bash/
• http://www.linux-tutorial.org/
• http://www.linuxcommand.org/
  
• http://support.math.arizona.edu/linux/commands.php
  
• Downloading Distributions
• http://fedora.redhat.com/
• http://www.debian.org/
• http://www.suse.com/
• http://www.mandrakelinux.com/
  
• System Administration
• http://linux.about.com/library/bl/open/newbie/blnewbie_toc.htm
  
• Migrating from Windows
  
• http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml
  

Redhat 5.2 - that was when i got introduced to gnu/linux and since then have been very loyal to redhat. Be it the 6.0, 6.2, 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, 9.0, EL3 versions or the fedora core one and two i tried all of them without an exception. Bunny introduced me to debian, and deb looks better in many aspects. Debian doesn't seem to be the one for gnu/linux beginers but for those experienced, its worth a switch - the superior packaging quality, as bunny calls it has made an impression on me. Yet to see more of it, but would soon come out with my experiences. Unlike as on my office pc I still maintain a fedora distribution on my home pc - as i said it would be easy for my brother to begin with gnu/linux.

Remember the days when you worked hard just before the examination?  The last few days were very similar to them.  The only difference being, this was a more demanding situation.  I always expected the software industry to be much more organized, but after the last one week i think i will have to change the opinion. Being frank i should not blame the industry, it was me who did not take interest in my work till the deadline came near.  Again, its not me alone, i tried to do the work, but always got a negative response when i approached others about what my next task is - that quite obviously brought down the interest towards the work.  Just for the sake of accounting - i slept for only 9 hours in that last 72 hours, thats less than what many people sleep per day!

know what. i always heard of hunger dying away... but seems like the same is happening for sleep and headache too.  I finished my work at office at 1700hrs and its 0010hrs now, am writing this thing without sleeping!

In my next task i will be working with bunny, and we for sure have a very good frequency match - hence would be more efficient.  Hope I would not again come across a similar situation...