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Hey, I resemble that remark...

Hi devwild, point very well taken. I am not a newbie when it comes to Unix or Linux. Worked as a Unix admin when I was in college 20 years ago, developed a lot of software under Unix and Linux, and have been using Linux since its very early days. I was a Unix kernel and internals guy in my past jobs for 15+ years, and literally lived and breathed that stuff... Anyway, I do regularly update my machines with patches. I am also subscribed to the SuSE's security announcements list and monitor bugtraq regularly, so I am aware of what's out there. Even then, 90+% of the time, software updates do not require a reboot. It's only when the kernel itself is patched that a reboot becomes inevitable, but that's actually quite rare, and in most cases the vulnerabilities in the kernel were exploitable only by local, logged in users (which is a non-issue for my machine). As for Windows XP, I have it on my Toshiba laptop. I also have a Linux partition on the same laptop. Windows has hard frozen on me on many occasions but Linux never does, so it isn't likely to be a hardware problem. I also noticed that XP doesn't multitask very well... streaming music from the slimserver to my squeezebox sometimes glitches and hiccups when running under windows, but never on Linux. Kernel panic? I haven't seen one on any of my Linux machines in a few years...

My Linux server (1.7GHz P4 w/ 1GB ram and lots of SCSI disks, running SuSE Linux) has now been up continuously for over a year (373 days to be exact) and just keeps humming along. It's got UPS battery backup, and the last downtime was because I had to shut it down to install some hardware. This box isn't just idling either... it acts as my firewall, NAT and router, mail server, web server, ftp server, dhcp server, ssh server, DNS server, NIS server, file server (NFS and samba), print server, VNC server, time server, slimdevices squeezebox server, etc... A separate SuSE Linux machine acts as my desktop. It too just runs and runs. No blue screen of death here

While headwize is a great place for DIY (the projects library is excellent, and the various sticky'ed ongoing project threads are also cool), the posting traffic there is sparse at best. I don't know how many views each thread get (Chu's forum software doesn't provide that statistic) , but I think headwize could benefit from more participation at all levels, including non-DIYers. Afterall, we all share a common interest in audio and music. Take the head-fi Amplifications forum for example, despite the "noise" that get posted daily, there is undeniably an enthusiasm among audiophiles in general and the crossflow of discussions between the general audiophile populace, with participation from DIYers, designers/engineers and others of all levels of technical expertise can be very synergistic. When we made the move from head-fi to headwize, I had envisioned that we could revitalize headwize and make it the great general headphone-related community that it once was (headwize pre-dates head-fi and used to be the place to be). Our move did boost traffic and membership modestly, but it isn't where I hoped it would be. Maybe headwize needs more targetted subforums, I dunno. At any rate, now we have headcase, which seems to be making a good start. But it also makes matters a bit more complex. There is a problem of community fragmentation by having so many forum sites. I think we need to unite the community, not fragment it. I know that headcase isn't "public" yet and as such it isn't going to draw the big crowds, so perhaps now is a good time to consider the future. Pardon me if I make a hasty suggestion, but wouldn't it be great if somehow headcase and headwize could "merge" in some fashion and become one? I appreciate your thoughts.