Deirdre did a rocking job at recording the intros at the summit. I totally recommend anyone who couldn’t attend the summit to check them out and match faces with names. Thanks Deirdre!
As Stephen posted, we have OpenSolaris 2008.05 mirrors available, along with a torrent. If you’re experiencing problems trying to get the image from dlc.sun.com (and a number of people are – apologies, we’re trying to fix as soon as possible), try one of the other mirrors instead.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 is here, and with the focus on simplicity, this blog post really shouldn’t go much further than 3 simple words –
To those that contributed, thank you! You rock my world, and I’m incredibly thankful for having the opportunity of working with you.
OpenSolaris 2008.05 is the first official release in a new binary distribution based on the OpenSolaris operating system. The single Live CD install image allows you to boot up to a desktop environment in seconds, and enjoy it before needing installing it onto a system. The introduction of a new package management system, IPS, allows users to install additional packages from network-based software repositories. The benefits of ZFS as the default root file-sysem provide the best environment to snapshot and rollback your system at any stage, with a best-of-both-worlds inclusion of the GNU utilities like bash(1). In many ways, hell has frozen over, and we’ve fundamentally changed how software is delivered to our users. For the better.
As Stephen mentioned there’s many more ways to get the install image, with both the Live CD and package repository being freely re-distributable, allowing those in network restricted countries to mirror locally and share.
To top if off, we even pulled off a new website, for those consuming our technology rather than producing it. It seemed the right fit at the time, rather than trying to shoe horn a significant area of growth for us into a set of heavily technical discussions.
Free CDs are also available – normally we ship one per person, but if you intend on organizing an event and you want more, let us know. Share the bubble love. Hubba Bubba.
Well it seems that Telecom have finally ended the period of their own customers being able to access the Telecom Hotspots for free. I think it’s an extraordinarily bad move on their part, and removes the last benefit for wanting to go with Telecom for my broadband plan. I think it will also prove to be a dampener on all the cafes, bars and restaurants around town (apart from the other grumpy geeks around) – I’m certainly going to be less inclined to head down for a coffee, or go for a laptop lunch, and I suspect many others will too. When we move out of our place in Hay Street (this month?), I think it’s time to look at other service providers for better offerings.
After the fake Jono Bacon and Ubuntu appearing on the show last time, time for the very unfake Ian Murdock and OpenSolaris, where he talks about the upcoming OpenSolaris OS release.
(Someone told me it was distro wars week and Jono makes a good target)
The best bit about having a house right on the shores of Lake Dunstan is the ability to decide at 7pm to take the kayak out, grab a rod, and try fishing for an hour before the crew catering begins. The worst bit about being right besides the shores is the poor expectations you set yourself thinking it’s time to catch one of the buggers. After trying a variety of methods (spinning, trolling, fly) I’ve yet to see a rise. The kayak has worked out surprisingly well, though proves to have quite a fast drift – which is nice for covering a lot of ground, but an absolute pain having to paddle into the driving wind to start a new one. We’re here for another week and a bit – fingers crossed for better times ahead.
One of the hotly debated issues since we launched last week was around the addition of /usr/gnu/bin to the default path, along with the addition of bash as the default user shell. I’ve been a bash user for a pretty long time, and never really found that it got in the way much (especially compared to the older generation shells). I’ve never really had much of a reason to change.
This week I’ve decided to make ksh93 my default shell, downloaded and installed from Roland’s excellent snapshots. While I use the command-line pretty much every day, I certainly don’t use it extensively for scripting, and I probably mostly care about tab completion, and clearing my terminal window.
For tab completion, ksh93 lists the options by number and details the path, allowing you to choose one by a simple ‘N<tab>’ key combination –
gman@rampage:~$ z 1) /usr/bin/zipgrep 10) /usr/bin/zcat 2) /usr/bin/zsh-4.3.4 11) /usr/bin/zipcloak 3) /usr/bin/zipsplit 12) /usr/sbin/zlogin 4) /usr/bin/zipnote 13) /usr/sbin/zoneadm 5) /usr/bin/zip 14) /usr/sbin/zpool 6) /usr/bin/zsh 15) /usr/sbin/zdump 7) /usr/bin/zipinfo 16) /usr/sbin/zic 8) /usr/bin/zenity 17) /usr/sbin/zonecfg 9) /usr/bin/zonename 18) /usr/sbin/zfs
which feels pretty useful, though less useful when you type ‘gnome <tab>’ since the output is now a single column. With bash you get a similar single column output, but it is piped through more to avoid having to scroll up later. Tab completion also seems a little awkward with ksh93 if you get part of the path wrong, since it seems to add 4 spaces after you tab making it look as if the completion succeeded.
For clearing a screen, ksh93 at the moment seems a lot more irritating. The key combination is ‘<esc><ctrl>l’, whereas bash is just ‘<ctrl>l’. I’m sure the ksh93 one is doing something more, but well, gets in the way for my use.
I’ll continue for the rest of the week and see how it all works out. I do like the shnote, shtinyurl, and shtwitter scripts in /usr/demo/ksh/fun though!
Thanks to a whole heap of people (John x 2, Tim) we have a bunch of recordings of various summit sessions uploaded. I’d like to warn people that the quality of the audio is poor at times, and very little post processing has been done. Ken has also been doing a set of rocking writeups (Batteries Not Included), and Jim’s been doing an awesome job at compiling links.
Some people doubted the summit would be successful. I say ‘HAH!’ Let me welcome the new OpenSolaris mascot, Paxton the flying pig. Awesome!
Ian’s just finished his welcome to the OpenSolaris summit, and we’re just doing the round-room introductions – great to see so many people from different backgrounds and interests. Jesse has totally rocked pulling this together – the university has an amazing setting, and so far everything is going awesomely!
