Alivad.Com

iTWire: Even the most Microsoft-ardent developer will know web hosts favour Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP over Windows, IIS, ASP.NET and SQL Server. Thanks to virtualisation the days of dual booting are over. Here is how to set up a streamlined LAMP development environment on any Windows PC.

iTWire: In a move certain to surprise, shock and even anger many, the creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, today signed up as Chief Software Architect with Microsoft to work on the Redmond Giant’s next-generation operating system with Dave Cutler.

iTWire: To give your Microsoft Exchange users the most flexible access options you really need an independent verified SSL certificate. Here’s how to do it fast and efficiently with a minimum of fuss and confusion.

iTWire: Just three months after its general availability to the public, Microsoft’s latest Windows 7 operating system now accounts for 10% of all Internet browsing. Yet corporations are still unmoved.

iTWire: The problem with corporate networks is they not only stop the bad guys coming in but also your users who want to work remotely, whether at home, at a client site or on the road. Here is where a VPN product comes in, and the simplest to deploy on Windows is a Linux virtual appliance called OpenVPN.

It’s on, and I’m here. Microsoft Tech-Ed Australia is running from today until Friday 11th September on the sunny Gold Coast of Australia. An incredible 2000+ attendees are roaming about with HP Mini netbooks. Demonstrations have already begun of Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010.

My latest iTWire story is about a problem I faced on Monday. A Fujitsu laptop running Windows Vista Business just would not boot. Diagnostics showed a registry corruption but the recovery console was not installed, Windows auto-repair attempts failed, the Windows installer wouldn’t provide an ‘upgrade’ option when booted from DVD … but happily I could fix the problem using an Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD.

This story is doing brilliantly on Digg, hitting the front page last night.

iTWire: I kid you not, Microsoft has submitted GPL 2.0 source code which has already been accepted for the next kernel release.

iTWire: I wanted to know how well Windows 7 (release candidate) would perform on an Acer Aspire One. Here’s how it went.

(This article was SlashDotted! Yeah!)

Thanks to Andrew Coates, I’ve just registered to take Microsoft exam 70-642 on Windows Server 2008 networking, next week.

I’m also interested in doing 70-640 but for some reason the Prometric web site didn’t list English as a language choice … !