What is your everyday OS/Platform ?

[commodorejohn]

I've been using Windows XP for daily use since 2004, but lately I've been weaning myself off it because I'm damned if they're going to make me upgrade to 7 or 8. Instead, I've been acclimating myself to Linux (Salix x86) so that I can be free once and for all when this netbook finally gives up the ghost.

[commodorejohn]

Eh...being a smart user will definitely go a long ways towards keeping your computer safe, but Windows has had its share of real problems (moreso in the 95 family than in XP,) and some of the security holes in bundled Microsoft applications *cough*Outlook Express*cough* have been just stunning in their stupidity (allow automatic execution of power-user scripting in emails from any old source on the entire Internet? Sure, why not?)

[commodorejohn]

Personally, I keep leaving my phone at home. I think its an act of defiance my subconscious keeps performing. At some level I loath being constantly available to anyone with my number (but I hate people who screen calls).

My wife makes fun of me because as big a nerd as I am, I refuse to have a smart phone. Phones are for voice calls dammit. Your email message is really not that important to me while I'm out. And no, I won't return your fucking text messages either.

Amen. I don't want people to expect me to be available to them 24/7 - they can call me when I want to be called, dammit. And if I want computing power on the go - I already have it. It's called a "netbook," and it has a real hard drive, a real keyboard, and an OS that you don't have to crack to run whatever software you want on. Smartphones can go to hell.

[commodorejohn]

So I may be one of only a few people here who's first experience with ARM is likely to be at home.

My first experience with ARM was the Gameboy Advance Though I do have an Efika MX I got from a co-worker...need to fiddle around with that sometime...

[commodorejohn]

Fascinating, did you buy it or acquire it some other way?

Got it from my co-worker. He got it as a development unit to work on porting something to it, but he had some kind of falling-out and wasn't very interested in it anymore. Sounds like the only difference is that it has a 2GB internal SDHC instead of 4GB, but it works just fine.

I've been toying with the idea of developing something for it...I've been wanting to play around with Amiga-inspired microkernel OS development for a while, but of course I need to understand a good bit more about the i.MX515 SoC to even have a chance of getting anywhere...

[commodorejohn]

Ah, yeah. I was wondering if AROS would run, but I couldn't find much conclusive. I'll have to give that a shot. It looks like the archive is a binary distribution? What exactly do I have to do to get it to boot?

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, definitely worth a try. At the moment the ARM port of AROS is Linux-hosted only, so to get it to run you'd need Linux installed on the Efika MX first. This allows AROS to use all of the hardware that ARM Linux supports. What operating system have you got on the Efika MX at the moment?

Ah. It's got the distro that came with it when I got it from my coworker (Ubuntu 10, I think?) Which is woefully in need of updating, but should work just fine for hosting AROS.

Wonder how long it'll be before it can run native...?

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, I got it up and running this afternoon, but I didn't get a chance to do much with it. (Plus, I need to get some actual software on the Ubuntu install - apparently they didn't figure you'd need little niceties like a file manager or a wireless-network manager :/ Oh well, I've used worse installs.)