Computers
Computers are my work, and my hobby as well. I work at NetMatch, an internationally operating software company located in Tilburg as well. I’m a systems administrator, I administer systems.. Mostly servers, and some local desktops. Me and a colleague manage servers across three or four data centers.
In 2003 I got my MSCE on Windows 2000 certification, so I’m certified to design and implement Windows 2000 networks and systems. I work with Microsoft software all day (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Office, etc), and am actually quite happy with it. I’ve been playing with Windows Vista Ultimate RC, and with Office 2007 Beta. I think MS did a great job on these projects! I’m looking forward for the final versions..
The last few years, my interest for open source software has grown stronger and stronger. I feel the force in me is growing, driving me away from the dark side.
I’ve been playing around with linux for quite some time now, and I’ve become more and more comfortable with it. After playing with Red Hat 6, I eventually choose Debian as my favorite distro. Actually, I asked the only real linux user I knew at the time, Questor, what his preference was.. Well, I just chose to go with it. Though I might get some help, if something were to go wrong. I never needed his support though, google helped a lot. I never had any regrets, and I still love Debian..
Somewhere along the line I met FreeBSD, and somehow, it was love at first sight. Don’t know if it was Beastie or something else, but still. However, I found it to be a little more difficult at first. I still wanted to get to know FreeBSD better, and got the O’Reilly book The Complete FreeBSD, 4th edition on it. After a while, I got the hang of it, and started to like FreeBSD even more.. The seperation between the base system and the rest, the ports, cvsup, the superiour UFS2 file system, etc. I especially like the fact that there is ONE FreeBSD. This is so much easier, because every tutorial and guide on the internet just works, as opposed to the distro-hell on the linux side. The only downside I have found is that if I want to update the base system, I’m looking at a terminals compile for the rest of the day.. But besides that, FreeBSD r0ckz!
And since recently, I have another addition to the bunch. I tried Mac OS X x86 (developer preview hack) on a simple whitebox P4 system, and I loved it so much, I sold my Asus laptop, and I bought a brand new 2.0GHz MacBook Pro. The design of the laptop is just astonishing, and everything about it is great. The MagSafe magnet power connector, the slot-in DVD writer, DVI connector, gigabit ethernet, etc. Even the battery design makes you drewl. And I haven’t even talked about Mac OS X.
I love Mac OS X. It’s basicly a Unix system (Darwin, OpenBSD clone), with a fantastic GUI. Of course, you still have the terminal to do all your unix console tasks. The system runs smooth, applications install easily (just drag them to the applications folder), all applications included look great, and work great! I love iPhoto to manage all my digital pictures, I use Mail.App for my mail. Only downside is that PowerPC applications are dead slow. Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office 2004, the are so slow because they are run through an emulator, Rosetta, until these manufacturers release native Intel products (Universal Binaries).
As you can see, I’m using quite some operating systems, and I think they all have their strengths. I use my Mac to do almost everything, surf the Internet, read my mail, etc. I have a Vista desktop in the study I use to watch TV, use Office 2007, etc. I have Windows servers with Active Directory, Exchange Server, SQL Server 2005, Visual SourceSafe, Linux servers running Postfix, ClamAV and SpamAssassin, and FreeBSD machines running as fileserver, Asterisk PBX, ipv6router, etc.
Hmm.. I think computers are my hobby..
