We all know that Linux can read NTFS partitions. Right? Well maybe. Maybe not. But you can. NTFS-3G works great and it comes installed with Ubuntu. I hate to say it, but I still have to dual boot sometimes. So while I spend 95% of my time in Linux, I still game everyonce in a while with Windows. Its nice to be able to grab files from Windows while I'm in Ubuntu.

Its especially handy when I find out that I can run yet another game in Wine or Cedega. I can often just go and grab save files or configurations from the Windows partition when I set it up in Linux. I did this with both City of Heroes and with Wow. Both of which run faster in WINE under Linux than they did in Windows.

So what happens when I need to read a Linux EXT3 partition from Windows? Well its easier than you think! Firstly we can thank the EXT3 design for being backwards compatible with EXT2. Because there is a great EXT2 driver for windows called fs-driver (Often called IFS). There is no journaling support because it is using the partition in EXT2 mode. In fact, if for some reason you try to use an EXT3 partition that still has data in its journal, IFS won't mount it at all.

Even Gartner, who I have always thought as company that has over-hyped Microsoft, has come to realize that Vista was a horrible horrible mistake.

The entire Windows eco-system is collapsing because it is too big and not secure enough. So much of the corporate expense of Windows is not just the Microsoft licenses, but the huge cost of management and security software. This cost also includes massive hardware costs that are incured by every system that needs to run that software.

I think the tipping point is here. Look at the success of hardware like the Asus Eee laptop. Apple! Are you listening? Blot is out and you are next on the chopping block if you aren't careful! 

I was just messing around with my Zaurus PDA this week. I've been installing Android, the gPhone software. I also installed a full debian distro on it called Titchy Linux. Then I installed Angstrom, which is also a Linux distro based on the former OpenZaurus project.