For anyone who has been as disenchanted with Vista as I have become (more on this later – maybe), and who also got their copy of Vista preloaded on a computer, and who’s copies of Vista are Ultimate or Business, then you’re in luck. Microsoft and it’s partners (read as computer manufacturers) are in some cases allowing customers to downgrade to Windows XP. You can find out more details here.

Here’s a neat trick to use if you have to combine two or more text files together from the command line. I use this to put my website access logs together into one file for processing. I first put all the files into one directory called access. Then I run the command:

copy access\*.* access.log

This copies all the files in the access directory into the file “access.log”.

I love GNU/Linux. You can do everything on a GNU/Linux system that you can on a Microsoft Windows or a Apple Mac, but for the most part, any software costs are negligible – okay, to be honest, TCO of a GNU/Linux system will be shift costs from software to internet access and administration. But hey, that’s no problem if you know what you’re doing. Oh, wait, that could be a problem – except for that little internet thing.

Plenty of GNU/Linux resources from people all over the world on the internet. And that’s where this post comes in! IBM is dedicated to GNU/Linux, and not just by pouring millions into development and patenting! They have this huge database of how-tos, articles, download links and so forth available from their Linux developerWorks website. Like this nice little walk-through on how to use linux scripts to build your own wireless ISP. Now, you’d expect IBM to promote IBM Linux products (do they have those?), well, they don’t. This site’s instructions, recommendations and walk-throughs are all based around software that can be downloaded freely from other sources on the internet (checkout their downloads page if you don’t believe me!).

Links:
IBM developerWorks – Linux
IBM developerWorks – New to Linux
IBM developerWorks – Technical Library (be sure to checkout their LPI certification prep series!)