Martijn @ opensource

For years I've been struggling with the decision to run only Linux or only Windows on my main pc. I've been a fan of Linux since Suse 9.0. I love the idea about open concepts and a community supporting eachother and together working on software.

On the other hand, Microsoft is the market leader with their operating systems so if I want to work with certain commercial products, I have to buy and install Windows. I have nothing personal against Windows or Microsoft, just with some of their policies and monopolistic behaviour in the software industry.

Don't get me wrong, I actually think some Microsoft products are good products. I'm MCSE 2003 certified, it's hard to get the motivation to get that certification if you hold a grudge against their products... So I do have a little place in my heart for Microsoft... I admit...

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Haven't written a blog lately, mainly because time has been short on my agenda... Then you finally want to write something, you'll have to find a subject... My eye, actually my browser, caught the news that Adobe released Flash Web Player 10 for Linux!

I cheered...! Until I read that there's no x64 edition... I admit, they're doing a better job with this version than with version 9, it only took them six months to get that one to my favortie opensource desktop... So I actually shouldn't nag about this should I?

Well, I do feel like bitchin' because Adobe is still one of those companies that will not release their software for 64-bit platforms....!!!! Why you ask? I have no clue. Maybe they're not able to... the source code is specifically built for 32-bit? That would be plain stupid considering 64-bit is more and more common these days.

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For over a year I've been working for a large IT company in the Netherlands, the name is not relevant... some might recognize this situation though.

We are a Microsoft partner and ofcourse, all laptops and desktops (and mobiles) run on Windows Xp/Vista/Mobile. I work in the ECM field with products like IBM FileNet and Kofax Capture, and on my department we run a lot of different software packages and tools to be able to do our work.

Unfortunately the company wants us to run their customized and limited images, this for workplace management and support reasons. From an administration point of view, I totally agree with this. If an employee calls the support desk and complains that his laptop is having problems, you want to be able to have a managable and familiair image on that laptop. This is most likely a normal policy for most IT companies with more than a 100 employees. So no argument there...

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