Windows 8.1 in WMWare Workstation 10 under Ubuntu Linux

Reformed Musings

First and to be perfectly clear, I am not even remotely considering going back to Windows. Good, we got that out of the way up front.

I have been running WinXP under VMWare Workstation in Linux for years for three reasons: Logos Bible Software, Turbo Tax, and Garmin GPS updates. That’s it, but all three are important to me and have no Linux alternatives. Logos 5 now only works in Win7 and higher, presenting a dilemma. I actually decided to abandon Logos and did so for a few months, but then found a Window 8.1 CD at Discount Mountain Software for just under $100 and I found it painful to abandon several thousand dollars of resources under Logos. DMS shipped promptly and I had the CD in just 3 days.

My reasoning in picking Win8.1 over Win7 was simple – I didn’t want to have to buy a new OS…

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Inside Microsoft’s New Platform And Services Strategy

Comparing Amazon EC2 to Joyent SmartOS

Matt Connolly's Blog

Recently, I’ve been using Amazon web services (EC2, especially) quite a bit more at work. At home, I still use OpenIndiana, so I’ve been really interested in comparing Joyent’s offerings against Amazons first hand. In particular, my tasks I have in Amazon’s cloud always feel CPU bound, so I’ve decided to do a comparison of just CPU performance, giving some context to Amazon’s jargon ECU (Elastic Compute Unit) by comparing it with a Joyent SmartOS instance, as well as my MacBook Pro, iMac and OpenIndiana server.

So I spun up a Joyent Micro SmartOS instance and an Amazon EC2 linux Micro and small instances.

Joyent startup is impressive. The workflow is simple and easy to understand. I chose the smartosplus64 machine just because it was near the top of the list.

Amazon startup is about what I’ve learned to expect. Many more pages of settings later we’re up and running.

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