Look on the bright side, if you write desktop software you'll still have to be paid to write it for every platform. Have fun. :)

Mooning a giant is seldom a good idea. Just ask Netscape. Snark Mark may have his own fortunes safe in a tax-free lockbox on the Isle of Man, but Ubuntu will face increasing pressure from "Linux vendors" who aren't actually Linux vendors, such as Microsoft and Google. That is, if Ehmke doesn't burn the whole thing down first, of course.

The funny thing is, he's actually correct, but crowing about it might not be the best idea at this stage.

So, folks here at work want to move Oracle from AIX to Linux. My boss has assigned me to teach the AIX Admins our Linuxy ways. Holy crap.

One of them supposedly knows Linux... the other is a former AIX kernel developer who now does admin work here at the city. *shrug*

I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of people already asking "wow, is AIX actually still around?"

but in the not too distant future people might say the same about Oracle

Are they going to move from AIX to Linux on the same hardware, or are they switching to x86 as well?

If it's a GUI, the smart money seems to be on writing it on something like Electron, where you blend web development with application development in a way that lets you create something that's cross platform.

You're mostly writing for Chrome at that point.

Hrm.

I wonder how much of Ubuntu's success relies more on Debian than whatever value they've brought to the whole thing.

But then, I look with frustration at what I needed to do to package something in RPM terms vs. Debian. Packaging is frustrating regardless of what system you use, but RPMs seem less robust than Debian, requiring a more manual process to address certain things. Debian seemed to have figured it out, and made their packaging system far simpler for the end user, if more complex to the developer.

I wonder about this because it'd be kind of funny if IBM addresses this shortcoming in RPM (as well as maybe getting Redhat to move a tad faster on providing reliable updates and regular releases), Redhat might kick ass again.

They'd be moving to the vmware environment from the ibm gear.

2018-12-07 10:45 from pandora
So, folks here at work want to move Oracle from AIX to Linux. My boss

has assigned me to teach the AIX Admins our Linuxy ways. Holy crap.

Awesome! It's the right move. Now they should hire me to teach my AWS ways.

pandora: congratulations on the recognition you're receiving.

I wonder how much of Ubuntu's success relies more on Debian than
whatever value they've brought to the whole thing.

Yeah, they get a lot of value from debian... although they are a fork, and I wonder how wise that is.

Ubuntu invests significantly in actual Linux development though. They contribute a lot to kernel and openjdk and gnome and countless other things no doubt.

But yeah, they are a paid-support org for a Debian variant.

Little by little, I'm warming up to Docker. It's a great way to deploy services.

Logging? Just send it all to stdout/stderr. If you're deploying within a proper docker-friendly environment, you don't need to do anything more. Disks will never fill up with logs, it all just goes to CloudWatch (or similar.)

I'm getting that impression ... the whole world seems to be converging around Docker as the universal way to package a service for deployment in arbitrary environments. And I think I'm ok with that.

Years ago I was invited to do some brainstorming with a startup that wanted to build a PaaS cloud dedicated to a specific vertical market. (They utterly failed at it, but they're still around doing consulting work.) The big thing I was looking for at the time was a way for participants to register services with the platform, so that those services could be provided from any location in the network, from as many instances as were required for scale, and the front end would just "find" them. None of the front end load balancing services we looked at were capable of accepting an inbound registration from a service which could declare "I'm a provider of service X, and here I am at address Y port Z".

The kind of infrastructures being built now with Docker and Kubernetes seem to be targeted at doing exactly that.

2018-12-13 18:32 from IGnatius T Foobar
I'm getting that impression ... the whole world seems to be converging

around Docker as the universal way to package a service for deployment

in arbitrary environments. And I think I'm ok with that.

That's exactly what's happening. Maybe you deploy it on top of an Ansible cluster, a Kubernetes cluster, or Amazon ECS, which is Amazon's kubernetes competitor. Either way, all 3 of those things know how to ingest Docker images (and the latter two *only* support docker)


So this is exactly what's happening, actually the consultants that built the UI for my current employer are a little behind the curve (other consulting groups tend to LEAD the curve with more modern practices than their clients) -- they built standard Ansible packages (non-Docker) -- they did a little bit of Docker work but it's only configured to run on the local developer laptops. So it goes.

LS: thanks, I'm really proud of myself these days. This past week my boss has come to me instead of the team lead to ask questions on stuff, and it totally feeds my ego. (especially since he's coming to me and not the senior admin between me and the lead)

(other consulting groups tend to LEAD the curve with more modern
practices than their clients) -- they built standard Ansible packages

I think you meant to say, other consulting groups tend to learn brand new technologies while charging clients for the time they spend doing it. At least that's what I've observed.

But yes, I'm excited about Docker, even though I haven't yet taken the time to learn how to build containers or run a K8S infrastructure. I probably ought to do that but haven't quite figured out how to get started.

That's not an unfair statement. I've seen that happen too.

But at my previous employer, it was the consultants who were driving a more modern architecture. In many respects.

Yes, they went too far on occasion; they can seem to run off in search of perfection while we just want a product shipped. They did a long-lasting K8S spike, and we didn't want nor need K8S (we went with ECS instead.) It's not that all the investigating-new-technologies shouldn't happen; it's that it should be communicating in advance and coordinated with the senior (non-consultant) architect; communication fails are not OK!

Nonetheless, docker (not necessarily k8s; you don't need k8s to do docker) is the new standard and in most respects, our consultants dragged us kicking and screaming into the new reality. And they were right.

WSL enhancements in the October Update: https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/11/05/windows-10-version-1809-linux-support.aspx