72% of Tech Workers May Quit Their Jobs. Fixing Organizational Cultures Can Help Them Stay Put.

 We’ve known for a while now that there’s a tech talent shortage. Over a decade ago, more than half of CEOs expressed concern over the dearth of talent for digital roles. By 2019, 79% had concerns. The pandemic has severely exacerbated the issue and, to make matters worse, current tech workers are unhappy and fleeing their jobs. Seven in 10 tech workers say they’re considering quitting their jobs within the next year.

Employee expectations are high, and the performance gap is significant –just 1 in 4 knowledge workers strongly agree that their company exemplifies the factors they have identified as being important, such as well-being, employee experience, and values. The pandemic and the rise of remote work have changed the way we view our lives and the world. This has led to what organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz coined “The Great Resignation.”
The Great Resignation

In the U.S., the Labor Department revealed that 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September 2021 – the highest number on record. The phenomenon is often associated with the United States; however, rates of resignation are high globally. In the U.K., the number of open jobs surpassed 1 million for the first time ever in August.

Generally speaking, it’s not uncommon for employees to leave their jobs in search of new opportunities. However, the technology industry is currently experiencing an acute form of disengagement. Staff turnover among U.S. tech companies ranks at 13.2%, which is the highest attrition index among all industries, with resignation rates increasing 4.5% over the previous year.
Poor Culture Leads to Unhappy Employees

For some workers, the pandemic has triggered a monumental shift in priorities. Many are now seeing the shift as encouragement to pursue a dream job or career or transition to a different style of work. However, for many workers who were already teetering on the edge pre-pandemic, poor cultures, work overload, lack of work-life balance, burnout, and lack of opportunity have pushed them to their breaking point.
Feeling undervalued

According to TalentLMS and Workable, a large number of tech employees say they feel undervalued and unappreciated when they’re at work and are looking for opportunities where they feel their work and input is respected. This issue is particularly evident in larger businesses, where there is a greater risk that employees could feel like small fish in a big pond, and where their individual efforts and achievements are more likely to go unnoticed.
Lack of career progression

About four in 10 IT, software, and tech workers have stated that limited career progression made them consider leaving their jobs. It’s easy to feel frustrated in a job if there’s little opportunity for promotion and career advancement. In order to develop and progress within their career, employees may seek out a different, more senior position at another company.
Rigid work structure

Flex-time and remote working are becoming increasingly popular ways to work. According to Gallup, 91% of workers in the U.S. working at least some of their hours remotely are hoping their ability to work at home persists after the pandemic; 54% of employees who work remotely at least some of the time say they would ideally like to split their time between working at home and in the office. People may look elsewhere for employment if their current job is not willing to be at least a little flexible on working arrangements.
Poor collaboration

Collaboration is at the heart of many critical business processes, especially as organizations grow more virtual and geographically spread out. If the experience of collaboration is challenging or counter-productive, this can affect morale and team cohesion. People often get stressed out when their tools or lack of teamwork can’t help them get their jobs done or meet their personal career goals.
Burnout

According to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), 48% of U.S. workers feel mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the workday, while another 41% report feeling burned out from their work. Overall mental health continues to get worse, with rates of anxiety, depression, stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increasing dramatically. Citing heavier workloads, isolation, lack of work/life integration, longer working hours, and limited to no time off, tech employees are looking for new jobs and resigning from current ones in droves.
Toxic work environment

According to one study, working for a company that doesn’t value psychological well-being increases the risk of depression by 300%. Lack of recognition, favoritism, unhealthy communication, gossiping, and high turnover are a few issues that cause a toxic work culture. This can create conflict, low morale, excessive tension, negative results, illness, high turnover, and even abusive behavior amidst employees – contributing to employees quitting their jobs in search of a more positive environment.
Become a Culture of Choice

To attract and retain top tech talent in the era of the Great Resignation organizations will need to get creative – fast. What can you do to create a company culture that’s appealing to applicants but also keeps existing employees happy and engaged?

Here are a few key steps:
Be generous, and public, with your praise.

Oftentimes, employees only hear from leaders when something is wrong. This creates a distorted and negative perception of the value of their work and your leadership. Constructive criticism is important, but acknowledging a job well done is even more so as feeling undervalued is one of the top reasons for tech employees to quit, as noted above.

By publicly praising your teams, you’re creating a positive perception of their value to the organization and it establishes you as an empathetic and thoughtful leader. It will also encourage others to share praise rather than withhold it, creating a positive and collaborative work environment.
Become an ally and advocate for your team’s growth.

In a study by the University of Southern California, “Attracting and Retaining Talent: Improving the Impact of Workplace Mentorship” they identified several solutions to employee turnover, including career and professional development. With attrition rates above 13% in the tech sector, as a leader, it’s critical to develop a “mentorship” mentality, whether the objective is to develop emerging leaders, improve culture, or assist employees in meeting their career goals.

Be the person who collaborates with your team to eliminate obstacles and open doors. When they see you care about their continued growth and opportunity—even if that means they transition to a new department or assignment—they will feel valued and more likely to stay.
Be flexible.

1 in 3 tech workers say a lack of remote work options is a reason that would make them want to quit their job. Flexible leaders are able to change their plans to match the reality of the situation. As a result, they maintain productivity during transitions or periods of chaos. Being a flexible leader means recognizing that how and when your employees work best will vary depending on their individual circumstances. The important thing is that work gets done well – not that it gets done in a prescribed timeframe or environment.

In addition, being a flexible leader means surrounding yourself with a diversity of thought and people, as well as being open to embracing change and new ideas or concepts. Be flexible in your own leadership style to make everyone feel comfortable and able to contribute their best to the conversation or interaction. Have an open mind and focus on your core values. This will allow you to better understand the challenges of your teams, and propose solutions to meet changing needs.   
Create space for teamwork and collaboration.

One of the biggest challenges facing the tech industry is cultivating a collaborative culture. A collaborative culture is based on openness, complete transparency, and building trust. As a leader, you must communicate your vision clearly and consistently while also making sure that your team is onboard. Share information openly, whether it’s positive or negative, and set realistic expectations so that your team members are aware of their roles in the bigger picture. Establish norms around communication, interaction, equality, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and decision making.

Teams also need to have the right technology and tools. Without that, collaborating with colleagues on the other side of the planet would be next to impossible. The right tools enable your teams to be more effective in their daily tasks while setting up a more transparent communication channel. It also gives everyone more visibility into projects and creates opportunities for people to work on the same task. Collaboration tools can help teams manage change, communicate, and save time while remaining productive.     
Focus on employee well-being.

58% of tech workers have indicated that they’re suffering from burnout and those who suffer from burnout are twice as likely to quit their jobs than those who don’t. To help your team genuinely flourish, create conditions where two-way communication is frequent and candid. This means checking in with your team members early and often about their personal well-being, asking how they’re feeling about work and really listening to what they say.

It’s important to not just “talk the talk.” Actively model good behavior such as taking breaks, setting guardrails around emailing after working hours, and leaving the office or being offline. Remember to think, and talk, about well-being holistically, including financial security, career satisfaction, emotional health, and workplace relationships.
Eliminate toxicity.

39% of tech employees have cited toxic work environments as a reason for wanting to quit their jobs. Consistent bad behavior in a workplace isn’t just the result of a few “bad apples.” A toxic culture is inherently a management problem because it cannot co-exist in the presence of sound leadership. Failing to notice and act upon warning signs that something is wrong, or not fully appreciating how serious an offense may be leads to a harmful environment and high rates of attrition.

A people manager’s job is to lead a team in a way that creates sustainable business results. Creating or allowing a toxic workplace to form will do the opposite. As a leader, it’s important to become familiar with causes of tension or dysfunction in the workplace, take employees’ concerns seriously, and understand your role in helping to mitigate toxicity when it occurs and re-establish a sense of safety.
Leading with Empathy

The pandemic transformed the way we work and employees have more choices than ever before. Pay and benefits are no longer enough. 52% of workers say they would quit their job –and only 1 in 4 workers would accept one –if company values do not align with personal values, and that begins with culture. Although the competition is fierce for qualified tech talent, organizations must start laying the groundwork now to keep their candidate pipeline full. Leading with empathy means understanding your employees’ feelings, thoughts, and emotions.  

Being an empathetic leader allows you to connect with your team through vulnerability while assuring them that you are on top of the situation and capable of making good decisions that will benefit them and the business. Conveying a “we’re in this together” attitude, while being empathetic and vulnerable, allows your teams to model your behavior, helping to create a positive, open, and honest culture where teams feel engaged and valued.   

By building a culture built on empathy and compassion, you’re signaling that your organization understands the factors and motivations that drive an employee’s choice to stay or go.

Big problem – why half of tech workers are planning to quit their job due to toxic workplace culture

 

Since the start of 2022, more than 1,700 tech companies have laid off staff, leading to over 350,000 people losing their jobs. As well as the impact on the individuals being let go, this current trend is intensifying a climate of toxicity in technology companies.

That’s according to research from TalentLMS and Culture Amp, which found that 45% of employees working in tech firms with a toxic culture said the layoffs have resulted in a worse atmosphere at work. Of the 1,000 tech workers surveyed, 45% are planning to quit their job because of this toxicity.

According to Christina Gialleli, Director of People Operations at TalentLMS parent company Epignosis, as tech job losses increase, so does the pressure:

We’re going through difficult times here. I don’t think most companies have completed their layoffs. We’re still in turmoil, and we get to see the outcome of this in this pressure.

When it comes to who is responsible for creating a toxic culture at their workplace, 55% said leadership and managers, while 31% said colleagues. The top three contributing factors are expecting employees to work longer hours or weekends without additional pay; a lack of transparency and communication from management and leadership; and a lack of consideration and courtesy.

The combination of pressure from leadership and senior management, companies not wanting to hinder productivity, and people not speaking up because they’re afraid of the consequences are all leading to this worsening atmosphere at tech companies. Gialleli says:

If the employees are being pitted against each other, if the companies are promoting unhealthy competition, if toxicity is tolerated rather than sacrificing the high performer who’s toxic, that’s going to spread to the team. And a toxic team is going to be toxic to other teams and it will cascade down and escalate, and then your people end up leaving.

This latter point is borne out by the almost half of staff planning to quit their current job, a situation that could cause difficulties among tech companies being complacent about employee retention during a period of industry job losses.

Attitude problem

There’s a danger companies are taking the view that with so many tech workers available, it doesn’t matter how they treat staff because they can just be replaced if they leave. However, the tech sector is still in the midst of talent shortages, meaning companies need to take measures now to address the toxicity and retain their best people. Gialleli says:

The tech sector was struggling [with skills shortages] for so many years and now it’s seeing talent becoming available again, but this is going to be short term. You have to have a zero tolerance policy. You need to make your leadership team accountable for addressing it.

Workplace training in areas like DEI, empathy and discrimination can help in fostering a positive and healthy work environment. Firms need to ensure employees understand how to behave and work within their teams, and how to address issues when they arise, whether it’s regarding a colleague, their manager or manager’s manager. Gialleli adds:

You need to create a transparent environment where people are not afraid to speak up, know what to expect, how to behave, how to address situations, and know that the company is going to do something about it.

This isn’t the case presently. Half of employees don’t do or say anything when they experience toxic behaviours at work – 29% because they don’t believe it will make a difference and 20% because they’re too nervous about the consequences. Meanwhile, 45% of employees say that leadership at their organization lives in a bubble that company culture is healthy. 

According to Gialleli, buy-in from the CEO is vital to deal with these issues, although HR has a role to play too:

The HR teams are facilitators, they can roll out surveys to figure out and pinpoint the issues, and then they can address and create in collaboration with managers and the leadership team the appropriate training that will help rectify the problems. But this is all top down.

Almost half of workers currently believe their companies will remain toxic in the future, which brings risks for their employers:

People are affected by working at a toxic environment. It affects their productivity, it affects their mental health, and ultimately people that are unhappy are going to leave. The bottom line is retention and productivity and being able to have performing teams. That’s what you’re going to have if you address it and you have everything to lose if you don’t.

Good people are not going to stay in a toxic environment. Companies may be able to fill their hiring quota, but it costs to replace people, it costs to train them and to find good people. Maybe it’s easier than it was a year ago, but you still need to lay the foundations and make sure your people are happy and productive.”

My take
The findings of TalentLMS’ research seem at odds with the increasing focus on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) at so many tech companies. According to the 2022 KPMG DEI Progress Survey, 71% of firms reported having taken many DEI-related actions since 2020. Surely a core element of any DEI efforts would be creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all – the opposite of a toxic culture.

While the tech sector is clearly focused on surviving the current hard times – hence the huge raft of job losses and more pressured environment for staff – this short-termism will backfire when the economy picks up again. Those 55% of tech staff working in a toxic culture but not planning to quit their job are much less likely to hang around once stability returns and vacancies rise. 

Cheating Linux installs

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Installing Linux or PC-BSD without any drama of partitioning. 90 MB to save your ass (my audience). I never had this luxury in 2003. All you need to remember is giving it 5 GB of HDD space. Also installs Mac OS X on Windows 7!

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Why US Gov agencies needs openBSD or FreeBSD in 21st century

Sen. John McCain rarely ceases to boggle the mind. He did it again today, highlighting a provision that he inserted in the defense authorization bill requiring U.S. Cyber Command “to provide a strategy for the development and deployment of offensive cyber capabilities.”

“I am very concerned,” he stated, “that our strategy is too reliant on defensive measures in cyber space, and believe we need to develop the capability to go on the offense as well … I believe that cyber warfare will be the key battlefield of the 21st century, and I am concerned about our ability to fight and win in this new domain.”

Two strange things stick out in this statement—which, by the way, was not an off-the-cuff remark but a formal appendage to a report on the defense authorization bill by the Senate Armed Services Committee, where McCain is the top-ranking Republican.

First, where has McCain been for the last week or so? Newspapers and cable shows have been screaming with reports of President Obama’s cyber campaign to wreak havoc on Iran’s nuclear program. A new book, Confront and Conceal, by New York Times reporter David Sanger, reveals that the campaign is code-named “Olympic Games” and that it’s been going on for quite a while. That is to say, we have “offensive cybercapabilities” in spades. Since the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command, in 2009, the generals in charge have sought offensive capabilities explicitly.

Second, what does McCain mean by “our ability to fight and win in this new domain” of cyberwarfare? Does he have any idea what he’s talking about? Here, McCain is not alone in his vagueness; this is something that very few higher-ups seem as yet to have grasped.

McCain may be overstating matters in calling cyberspace “the key battlefield of the 21st century,” but it’s no exaggeration to view Obama’s cyber campaign against Iran—which has aimed to disrupt the country’s uranium-enrichment program through logic bombs, viruses, and other manipulations of its computer networks—as crossing a new threshold in modern warfare.

According to Sanger’s account, Obama was well aware he was treading new ground when he made his first breach, obtaining assurances from his commanders that the cyberassault on the centrifuges would have no effect on nearby hospitals or other civilian enterprises. This is good to know. It’s reminiscent of nuclear war games in the late 1950s and early ’60s, when the players tried to limit the attacks and retaliations so that the bombs and warheads landed only on military targets, not on population centers.

There are differences, of course. For one, nukes would have killed millions of people, no matter how “limited” the attack, whereas logic bombs at worst destroy enterprises (which, depending on the enterprise, can indirectly kill lots of people, but still, there’s a big difference). For another (and this is an astonishing thing), for the first decade of the nuclear age, the people in charge—from the White House to the Pentagon to the Strategic Air Command on down—had no interest in limiting the damage. As late as 1960, this was the official U.S. war plan: If the Soviets launched an attack on Western Europe or some other part of the Free World, even if they did so only with conventional armies, even if they didn’t fire a single atomic weapon, the United States was to unleash its entire arsenal of nuclear weapons against every target—civilian and military—in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. This amounted to 3,423 nuclear bombs and warheads, totaling 7,847 megatons (or 7.8 billion tons) of explosive power, against 654 targets (a mix of military bases and urban-industrial factories), killing an estimated 285 million people and injuring 40 million more in the Soviet Union alone. (These numbers come from official documents that I got declassified while researching my 1983 book, The Wizards of Armageddon.)

This was the deadly math of what President Dwight Eisenhower called “massive retaliation.” In the late ’50s, a group of defense analysts, many of them at the RAND Corp., thought about ways to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war—specifically, to make a nuclear attack less tempting for the enemy to contemplate—and to limit the damage of such a war if it erupted anyway. When President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, filled key positions with some of these RAND analysts—the “whiz kids,” as they came to be called—and translated their ideas into policy.

Some results: burying ICBMs in underground, blast-resistant silos, to make them less vulnerable to attack (thus making a nuclear first-strike less tempting in the minds of enemies); changing the war plan, to give the president a variety of options (for instance, enabling him to hit only the other side’s missiles and airbases, while avoiding its cities); and, later on in the decade, creating U.S.-Soviet forums where “confidence-building measures” and “rules-of-the-road” could be discussed (thus relaxing a broad spectrum of suspicions).

Cyberwar is very different from nuclear war: less destructive but also less tangible. Yet they’re similar in one important way: It is illusory to talk about “winning” either.

And this is where McCain’s vague talk of fighting and winning in the cyber domain gets a bit loopy. It’s not unlike the talk, common among Air Force generals in the 1950s and ’60s (and a few hyperactive civilian defense intellectuals in the Reagan era of the ’80s), of fighting and winning a nuclear war. (Think Gen. Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove: “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, but 10 to 20 million [dead] tops!”)



The problem with the two wars is the same: We don’t have a monopoly of the weapons. At least by the early 1960s, if the United States had attacked the Soviet Union with nukes, the Soviets would have had enough nukes left over to strike back, if not precisely “in kind,” then with a degree of damage that any sane person would deem unacceptable. This was the heart of nuclear deterrence: You kill me, I kill you; therefore, you won’t kill me.

Actually, the situation for us is worse with cyberwarfare. Because our social and economic structures are far more dependent on computer networks than those in any other country, a major cyberattack would do far more damage to us. Therefore, the situation in the cyber domain is more like this: We hurt you; you cripple us. That being the case, an offensive cyber strategy amounts to a suicidal trap.

Two years ago, Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief, wrote a book called Cyber War that dealt precisely with these dilemmas. At the time, I wrote that it “may be the most important book about national-security policy in the last several years,” and I’d say it again, more forcefully, today.

Clarke meant the book, explicitly, as an attempt to apply the classic principles of nuclear deterrence—as laid out in such works as Bernard Brodie’s The Absolute Weapon, Albert Wohlstetter’s famous Foreign Affairs article “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict, Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War, and William Kaufmann’s “Counterforce” briefings—to the impending cyber era.

His worry wasn’t (and isn’t) that the Chinese (or whoever) will one day, all of a sudden, set off the “logic bombs” that they’ve embedded throughout our computer-dependent power grids and financial networks—any more than the more sophisticated strategists of the 1950s and ’60s thought the Russians might, out of the blue, launch a nuclear first strike.

Rather, the issue is how foes might leverage their cyberwar assets to an advantage in a crisis—and what the United States needs to do, ahead of time, to nullify that advantage. For instance, let’s say China puts a move on Taiwan or the South China Sea—and threatens to trigger a power blackout in every American city if we interfere. In this sort of crisis, threatening to “retaliate in kind”—that is, to unleash John McCain’s “offensive capabilities”—would have little effect. What we need, Clarke wrote in his book, is “a credible defense,” which would cast doubt in the minds of potential attackers that their cyberattack would knock us out or paralyze the president with fear.

Clarke devised some modest proposals: for instance, requiring the largest Internet service providers to monitor traffic for logic bombs and tightening access to the power grid. Those seemed like no-brainers. Other, more ambitious ideas: negotiating a no-first-use agreement on cyberattacks; extending the Geneva Accords to ban attacks on purely civilian targets, such as power grids; establishing an international forum outlawing certain kinds of cyberattacks and requiring “obligations to assist” in finding and punishing those who had violated the code.

For the moment, none of this matters: Iran doesn’t have the cyberware to retaliate against “Olympic Games.” But it might someday, and meanwhile other nations do, as many as 20 of them according to Clarke, including potential foes that some future president might feel tempted to target with a cyber assault. Then these kinds of issues will matter, and it would be good to have thought them through and prepared.

According to Sanger’s book, Obama did think through some of these issues, attempted to limit the damage—not just for humanitarian reasons, but also to set a pattern, to send a signal, that if warfare is to start creeping across the other side of the cyber line, there should be limits. The targets should be strictly military and very precise, and here are some ways—he was showing everyone by his actions—to keep things limited.

There was no putting Einstein’s genie back in the bottle, and there’s no putting back the cyber genie, either. But the early nuclear strategists had ideas on controlling this genie, ideas that have relevance for the new one, too—except for one thing: nearly everything about the cyber genie is very highly classified. Everything was classified about the nuclear game, too, and the RAND strategists all had top-secret security clearances. But back in the late 1950s, if you were into nuclear strategy, there weren’t many job options that didn’t carry a security clearance. Now, though, the people who might have the most creative ideas on cybersecurity are making very big money in the commercial wings of the computer business. The best ideas aren’t going to come from large defense corporations; they’re going to come from a smattering of 25-year-old geeks fresh out of MIT or CalTech. The government has to draw their minds in, and the only way to do that is to ease up on the security regulations. Obviously, operational details have to be kept secret, but the ideas need to flow freely. Cyber Command needs to open up.

Here’s another area where John McCain is missing the point. He’s recently been pushing for hearings to investigate the leaking of Operation “Olympic Games” to David Sanger. It would be more useful—for McCain’s expressed goals—to hold hearings on how to lure the next Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg not just to expand the world of cyberspace but to help keep it secure.

New Linuxes including Fermi Linux 6.2 Yay!

Bought some Linuxes for Linux class (all x86-32) In North America, the Linux+ and all the classes at college are Fedora Linux. All of this bias is due to the CompTIA Linux+ certificate relationship with Red Hat. That's why I bought Red Hat distros. My first Linux class in 2002 was done in Red Hat Linux 7.3, 2nd WITC Linux course was using Debian based Knoppix 3.7, and my third Linux course was done on Fedora 10. The campus course is teaching this class with Fedora 17. I usually am on openSUSE Linux with Crossover Linux for KDE 4.7.4 or Ubuntu based Linux Mint. Ubuntu is easiest when you want to update the kernel and packages. If you plan to implement an high load, mostly static web server, you will probably want to go for the Ubuntu route. On the other hand, for a PostgreSQL database I would surely prefer a Red Hat system.




Knoppix 7.02 Live DVD
Debian-based
3.3.7 kernel
LibreOffice 3.5.3
Chromium 18.0.1025.168
KDE 4.7.4




Cent OS 6.2 install DVD and live-DVD
Based off Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 (with newer security patches and video codecs).
2.6.32-220.23.1 kernel.
Gnome 2.28.4
KDE 4.3.4
X-org server 1.10.4
Open Office 3.2.1
Firefox 3.6.24
MesaLib 7.11 (graphics driver)




Scientific Linux 6.2 install DVD with newer security patches, newer driver updates and video codecs. Based of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2
kernel 2.6.32-220.4.1.el6
xorg 1.10.2
icewm 1.2.37
Gnome 2.28.2
openoffice.org-base-3.2.1
KDE 4.3.4
Firefox 3.6.26
Thunderbird 3.1.18
MesaLib 7.11 (graphics driver)



Fedora 17 DVD and Live DVD
3.3.2-8 kernel
Gnome 3.4
KDE 4.8
LibreOffice 3.5.4
Firefox 12.0
Gimp 2.8.0rc1
DHCP 4.2.4rc1
X-org 1.12.0
nautilus 3.4.2
Samba 3.6.5
MesaLib 8.02 (graphics driver)



SimplyMepis 11.0
KDE 4.5.3
Kernel 2.6.36.6
LibreOffice 3.3.2

2.6.36 KERNEL
KDE 4.5.3


Then My favorite distro from the bunch ~ Fermi Linux 6.2



Fermi Linux LTS (Long Term Support) is a site distribution based on Scientific Linux, which is in essence Red Hat Enterprise Linux, recompiled. It is Scientific Linux with Fermilab's security hardening and customised configurations to allow an administrator to install Fermi Linux and have the machine meet Fermilab's security requirements with little or no extra configuration. Since Fermi Linux LTS is based on Scientific Linux, it shares it's goal that if a program runs and is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, then it will run on the corresponding Fermi Linux LTS release.

Download

kernel 2.6.32-220.4.1.el6
xorg 1.10.2
icewm 1.2.37
Gnome 2.28.2
openoffice.org-base-3.2.1
KDE 4.3.4
Firefox 3.6.26
Thunderbird 3.1.18
MesaLib 7.11 (graphics driver)


Update July 1, 2012





OpenIndiana (Solaris 11)

kernel 151a
Gnome 2.30.2
OpenOffice 3.2.1
Firefox 8.0
Adobe Flash

OpenSolaris has been closed source.

Made a new partition with Gparted and installed Solaris 11 UNIX Express which has gnome 2.30.2 on it. Compiled a opensolaris Openoffice 3.2.1 on it. One of the new features is it boots up faster and the ZFS file system has encrypting file system.

OpenSolaris 2009.06 was using 111b kernel/Gnome 2.26. Solaris 11 Express is using the 151a kernel. Uses 446 MB with one tab in Firefox open.



Theoretically more stable than Linux

Why Solaris went open source: to not get compensated over by cheaper RedHat's ALC_FLR.3 !

Researching OpenSolaris 2010, a free System V UNIX, I come across a website that explains that in order to compete against Red Hat Linux in Government security requirements, they had to make the price point equal Red Hat's with only the customer service charges. So Red Hat was the first and one of three Linuxs to get EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 including RedHat Linux, Oracle Linux, Suse Linux which is why the US Government is the largest buyer of Red Hat Linux. It only took OpenSolaris a year to be created after Red Hat accomplished this. The question is which one would you pick if customer service and patches were comparable with the latest Red Hat Enterprise Desktop? OpenSolaris has ZFS. I'm using OpenSuse BTW! Northrop Grumman likes Suse Linux too.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/132978/red_hat_linux_gets_top_government_security_rating.html
http://www.novell.com/linux/government.html

Update OS Day V-2: OpenSolaris 2009.06 impressions:

I installed OpenSolaris on an Athlon 64 X2 with 3 GB of RAM and it took an 40 minutes to install CD. After it booted up, I had Gnome 2.26 of course. It feels a lot like Linux, yet is smoother when I move around windows. I believe this has something to do with the 850 MB the kernel uses while OpenSuse 11.2 Gnome uses like 490 MB with nothing open. OpenSolaris 2009.06 is the only OS I can find on Ebay. The new release comes out in June. Solaris 2009 06 recognized my Dlink 108 Mbit Wifi connection and my NTFS slave drives, my Windows 7 partition and thumb drive. I asked the forum if developers could make a KDE and Gnome combo DVD like OpenSuse would.

There is no OpenOffice 3.1 so I was looking for a Wine emulator on Rapidshare, Megaupload, and others. That's what Linux has advantage with presently.
ZFS is a lot better file system than EXT4 and even BTRFS. ZFS is even more advanced than Microsoft's NTFS or Disturbed File System . It has more features than NTFS for Windows 7 on it.

My rating of OpenSolaris 2009 06 is an 7.5 out of 10. I knew I should take off 20 points for no office suite and no Wine. Stability is perfect however. It also doesn't come with any problems at all, just the bare bones! -5 points right there. It would make an awesome server with the stability. I don't think infiltrated Ubuntu's base, because Open Solaris came out in mid-2008 and wasn't great until 2009.06 release due to the improvements to ZFS features and ZFS tools integration into the Gnome GUI.

The GNU is complaining that it's inferior is compatible with OpenSolaris, but the OpenSolaris code isn't backwards compatible with their license. Having the ZFS file system in Linux is all the rage, but they can't due to GPL 3.0 incompatibility. That and Linux is still less stable even though you can't tell with Ubuntu and Fedora! UNIX is up 365 days. Linux is up 362 days a year. OpenSolaris could seriously overtake Linux in the future, because OpenSolaris has the best of both worlds. Linux only has one world and thus inferior. This answers the question that Linux passed UNIX solely do to the GNU and free was behind it. Even a professor would tell you that Linux was implemented as early as 1999 to cut costs and wiped UNIX off the map until Opensolaris was publically available.
Bad thing about OpenSolaris is you must have two boot loaders. You must always parition first, install Windows first, OpenSoarlis second and OpenSuse third; otherwise the GRUB menu only shows OpenSolaris and Windows and no OpenSuse. Even then I had to load into OpenSuse and select SDA3 on my yast boot loader and name SDA3 "OpenSolaris". I have to do this every time now. Fortunely, it doesn't create bad karma of OpenSolaris 2009 06 with me.

Solaris ZFS offers a dramatic advance in data management with an innovative approach to data integrity, tremendous performance improvements, and a welcome integration of file system and volume management capabilities. The centerpiece of this new architecture is the concept of the virtual storage pool which de-couples the file system from physical storage in the same way that virtual memory abstracts the address space from physical memory; allowing for much more efficient use of the storage devices. In ZFS, space is shared dynamically between multiple file systems from a single storage pool, and is parceled out from the pool as file systems request it. So, physical storage can be added to or removed from storage pools dynamically, without interrupting services. This provides new levels of flexibility, availability, and performance. And in terms of scalability, Solaris ZFS is a 128-bit file system. Its theoretical limits are truly mind-boggling—2128 bytes of storage and 264 for everything else, such as file systems, snapshots, directory entries, and devices.

7.5 out of 10. (8.0 if I could find WINE)

Update OS Day V: Odyssey 2

Loaded up with Crossover Linux 8 with VLC.exe and office 2k7 installed.

tech specs
ext4, BTRFS
2.6.34-9 kernel
KDE 4.4.3
gnome 2.28.1
openoffice 3.2
firefox 3.6.5



i hear that opensolaris 2009.06 is much improved stability wise (solaris unix kernel with gnome 2.26), but i'm staying with linux until 2010.04 reviews. I saw Solaris 8 in 12th grade in 2003. I talked around and everybody who does uses linux didn't try OpenSolaris and they're all like "I installed yellowdog on PS3" deal.



Guys, we're moving to a near-ZFS (UNIX-only) file system, BTRFS. With zlib compression enabled, this filesystem writes and reads 50% faster than EXT4 would. Has extents like EXT4.




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