For years, courtesy of a long time friend, I had a co-location box at an ISP’s datacenter. In general, it was really great: I had complete control over the hardware and software, and could do anything I needed to. It was my own server.

But I also had to deal with hardware failures located at a small datacenter across the country: power failures, hardware failures, and the occasional software glitch that broke the machine to the point of needing a physical reboot and in one case an OS reinstall. Over several years, I sent more than a few bottles of booze to my friend’s SysAdmins as thanks for fixing various broken bits, replacing drives, reboots, etc.

About 2 years ago my friend decided that the dialup ISP biz was dead in the area he was in (rural USA, so people actually used dialup…) and politely asked me to vacate.

In searching for a new home on the Internet, I decided to check out virtual hosting: I didn’t *really* need a physical machine in a datacenter, a virtual server (specifically xen, since we use it at work and I’m familiar with it) was just fine. It let me have all the perks of my own machine and none of the hassle.

My criteria were a decent price, complete private access (root), my choice of linux OS (I wanted to use CentOS because, again, its what I use at work), decent bandwidth (both transfer and speed), and company openness/flexibility (I don’t want them telling me what I can and can’t do or what services I can/can’t run, as long as I don’t break any laws).

I looked at pretty much all the VPS (Virtual Private Server) providers out there, and settled on Linode not the least of which because it was recommended by several people in the office, and because its clearly run by geeks.

Linode hits all the criteria on the head: its cheap ($20/mo for the small linode), complete control of the linux OS I install (and therefore I could install CentOS and had root), great bandwidth with multiple datacenters, and its run by geeks, so very flexible and no usage restrictions. Plus, a no obligation free trial. I was up and running within 10 minutes of signing up, and had the OS up, patched, and was installing software immediately. WOW! Add to this an awesome web-based DNS with unlimited access (they don’t restrict how many domains I can have) and its the best choice for a Xen/VPS system around.

2 years later, and I’m still recommending them all the time. They’ve added an API (I just used it to change the TTL on all 20+ of my domains in preparation for a datacenter move), increased both diskspace and memory for no charge (as things have gotten cheaper), and just introduced online backups. Linode’s 7th Anniversary was today, and they upgraded everyone’s memory 42% for free as a thank you to their loyal customers.

If your comfortable with linux and want/need a server, you can’t do better than linode.

Tags: centos, linode, virtual private server, vps, xen

For Windows based machines, I used to recommend AVG. Its free, does a decent job, and isn’t too horribly invasive like some software I could mention (*cough* McAfee and Norton *cough*).

…and then Microsoft came out with their own “Security Essentials” free anti-virus. I was dubious at first. If its Microsoft I expected it to be behind the times, bloated, and generally a “hanger on” in the Anti-virus game.

I was wrong. Security Essentials works, is lightweight, stays out of the way, has developed a good track record, and has the single best feature I’ve seen in any antivirus software in years: it automatically updates its definitions before it scans. Wow, brilliant, and nobody else does it.

So if you are using Windows, do yourself a favor and get Security Essentials (from here: www.microsoft.com/security_essentials) instead of any of the others.

Tags: anti-virus, antivirus, software, What I Use, windows

As most of you know, I’m a Linux/Unix System Administrator for a living. I’m not a Windows guy by any means, but I do run it at home, because mostly what I do is play games and use Word (and recently, Adobe InDesign). Yes, I realize there are free solutions (OpenOffice, others) but to be honest…they suck. When I need Word or InDesign, I don’t want to spend half my time fighting with buggy programs, etc.

For servers, I just don’t see any reason whatsoever to run Windows, an entirely GUI-based OS, on a system that almost by definition nobody will ever see (or access) the GUI on. Its a waste of resources and just makes bloat. Add to that that Windows services (IIS, Active Directory, MS-SQL) tend to be laughable compared to the industry standard open source versions (Apache, OpenLDAP/MIT Kerberos, and Postgresql/Mysql).

Desktops, however, are another matter entirely. I’ll be the first to admit that X Windows is a sad comparison to the OS X and Windows GUIs. Consumer grade OSes win here hands down.

Now, on to Vista: Ugh. I have to say, every time I’ve used it in the past I’ve hated it. Microsoft’s “User Account Control” (UAC) in Vista is just horrible. Its only a slight exaggeration that moving the mouse causes a dialogue asking if its ok that you did that. Now, its easy to turn off but why should I have to? (According to the great geek site Ars Technica, its designed to annoy you). The first Vista Service Pack fixes some of this, but its still not “good.”

So on to the scene comes Windows 7, referred to by some as “Vista Service Pack 7″…Gina Trapani, the creator of Lifehacker said at her new blog, “Its not as bad as you might think”

…And its not! I’ve been running the Release Candidate for a while now, which is available free to download and test (at least until tomorrow). Guess what? Its much better than Vista. Major upgrade, less memory usage, better tools, lots of GUI improvements (many “lifted” from OS X and linux desktops) like window previews (see what a program is doing via a nifty popup when you mouse over its icon in the dock).

Then, just as I was really pleased with Win7, I realized I’d accidentally installed the 32bit version instead of the 64bit version I wanted. I burned the 64bit (which Microsoft mistakenly calls “x64″ instead of “x86_64″ like everyone else does) and booted…and it doesn’t see my SATA controller. WTF? It looks like the issue is solved in the RTM (“Release to Manufacturing”) version, however, so once I can legally obtain a copy I’ll try it out.

(Why 64bit versus 32bit? 64bit bit allows more than 4gb of memory, which is becoming common. Its pretty much the only compelling reason to move to 64bit on Desktops, IMHO)

Tags: annoyances, vista, windows, Windows 7