“Microsoft provided enterprise-grade services and support whereas other vendors did not. Data security and privacy were of paramount importance to us, and we felt that Office 365 offered the compliance features that we required. We were impressed by Microsoft’s extensive experience in higher education and ability to deploy a system across geographically distributed locations without adding significantly to IT management costs,” he added.

I am sure they are impressed by Microsoft’s presentations. But it would have taken only slightly more effort to get less ignorant. Other vendors do not provide enterprise-grade services? You can find many who even support open standards and open source technologies so that educational institutions are not locked in. And I think AICTE should definitely explain how this would happen without adding significantly to IT management costs.

It would have been great if they had published their findings in more detail. The current statements spell only ignorance! Sad!

His guess was marketing. I cannot deny that today the open source adjective gets you some visibility. That cannot be the primary motive though. This visibility brings a lot of pokes, bugs, requests, pulls and forks along with it. They are a very good source of headache if you are not expecting them. My guess is that the open source world is a dream come true for authors who are looking for criticism, suggestions, or comparison with the competition. It lowers the barrier for adoption to the lowest possible level and encourages users to throw bouquets and brickbats at the author. If managed properly, this is an effective way of evolving a tool quickly, faster, or at least at the same pace, as its competitors.

What do you think?

Systemd is not new to other distributions, And it seems more capable than the SysV-style inits. However, like GRUB2, it seems to have more moving parts. I cannot contest that these tools are not designed better. I am sure they are, and that is why we are switching to them. However, I haven’t seen those benefits yet, or it is more probable that I don’t need those benefits. My systemd seems to boot my laptop a tiny bit faster. But it now requires me to understand a whole new system of specifying boot parameters and managing services. Or that systemd has some overlapping functionality with acpid for power, sleep and lid actions. This difference in operations, without much difference in the output seems unwanted.

I know I am ranting, but I sincerely hope that one day I will benefit from these switches.

Every customization you make will come with edge cases and its own quirks. If you understand a tool and then customize it, you will be able to find out in cases it behaves weirdly. Without understanding the tool, these customizations can betray you, sometimes at urgent and important times. Also, if you think about it, why learn a new tool which you will customize and disguise as your existing tool? These customizations are cool to demonstrate its flexibility, but they will get in your way if you are trying to learn it. If you are thinking that this new tool will help you be more efficient, it can do that only by being different from your current tool, not by being its clone.

Replace vim with Linux or Emacs or a new programming language or your new chainsaw!

It is a definite improvement over its predecessor with features like better scripting support, graphical boot menus, boot live CD ISOs directly, themes, and so on. It has helped Linux distributions to enhance experience of the first screen that a user sees with pretty splash screens. I believe some users are really happy with the new multiboot features.

It is just that I don’t need any of those today. I don’t use the themes or graphical boot features, or fiddle around a lot with GRUB. I find text-file editing interface of the older GRUB friendlier than the new way. However, it has to go. Especially when your supported version is being qualified as Legacy! Even then, the good people of Arch Linux made sure that you can continue to use the older version, the upgrades won’t mess with it.

But as a principle, it is better to use supported versions. So, GRUB Legacy leaves my Arch Linux machines, the last of them, to make way for GRUB2. It was inevitable.