Life is so good, it gets better every day

OpenSolaris – OS Defined

So it’s quite nice to see the new Desktop Community getting a lot of visibility and getting off the ground. Definitely very motivating where there’s that level of interest. There’s so much to do as well, and I’m suddenly finding myself in discussions left, right and center. Last night some of the team met with Stephen Harpster, my boss’ boss’ boss, or something like that. Very clued in guy, and was great to have a good conversation about how we’re approaching the OpenSolaris thing – I even wrote up a Desktop Community presentation for the occasion. It’s all pretty obvious, but there’s some interesting open questions that we don’t yet have answers for [some of specific only to Sun], that we’ll be working on over the next couple of weeks.

Reminds me – really need to work on the Desktop Community website. If you feel like helping out, get in touch and we can throw up some content. Otherwise I fear I’m going to be pulling a lot of content out of my ass over the next few days!

Ooh, I got a mention in ZDNet again. Also interesting to read Stephen’s reaction to the Linux 2.6 and Solaris 10 study.

Like the topic? – it’s my corny reply to Claire’s mail on the ‘Based on OpenSolaris’ wordmark.

Another One Pops Out!

Congratulations Larry! Awesome news – Eva.

Community Activity

When Alo forwarded on a mail to our local desktop team alias, it made my day. We’ve had some amazingly excellent people getting involved in various Open Source communities – XOrg, Mozilla, OpenSolaris, Perl, Apache and Mozilla to name but a few.

But it always amazes you when someone comes out of the blue, gets stuck in and starts contributing. And today, Artem Kachitchkine was that person. Alo forwarded on a mail of some threads he’s started on the HAL list. Looks like Artem is involved in the KISS group within Sun – Keep it Simple Solaris, and I’m really looking forward to the projects they’ll be taking on down the line. Welcome to the party Artem – you’ve made my day!

LCA Call for Papers – Dunedin 2006

Nice to see the LCA Call for papers – this year I’ll definitely have to submit something. I’m sure by then I’ll have some OpenSolaris/JDS experiences to tell about. For anyone who hasn’t been to an LCA before, it is by far the best technical conference I’ve been to – with a nice fun developer vibe to it. It’s also in New Zealand this year so a perfect opportunity to see the place I’m constantly raving about!

Light Yourself Up!

OpenSolaris dudes – where are you!? I can’t see you!

Light yourself up!.

Getting Access to OpenSolaris

So there was an interesting discussion on #opensolaris tonight about giving developers access to an OpenSolaris build so they could compile their projects – an OpenSolaris build farm. Diana Cionoiu who’s involved in the Yate project. Apparently there is such a facility on SourceForge, but their site seems down at the moment. While not a horrible proposal, it got me thinking into how useful it would be to open source developers – if indeed at all. Is it at all useful to compile an application, and run some simple regression tests without having access to other stuff? Some food for thought.

During the discussion though, Diano mentioned her 128K line – almost impossible to download a copy of Solaris when I suggested that to her. Another typical social problem that many have faced – and BitTorrent has helped hugely with this to some extents. Ubuntu has solved this in some degree by providing free CDs for people to distribute and I just wonder if OpenSolaris should be doing the same at some stage in the future.

Definitely some interesting problems to be solved and I hope that those interested contribute on opensolaris-discuss[at]opensolaris[dot]org.

Pushing The Blog Lines – Live and Uncut, Right?

Had a pretty excellent few days with Domhnall and Lynda. On Friday night we headed up to Maruia Springs – a Japanese thermal bathhouse about 3 hours from Christchurch. After a few days climbing out in Castle Hill and the local Britten Crag, it’s the perfect end to a week – not just because it’s the opportunity to bath in the buff, so to speak.

That night we sat out in the 24 hour rock pools with a bottle of wine – it was all pretty cruisey, and we were virtually on our own. While the rock pools had a strictly ‘keep your pants on’ mandate, the private segregated baths the next morning were ‘pants off’! Of course Patrick was caught with his pants down taking a picture of Domhnall and me by the cleaner – quite embarassing for the poor chap.

Using DTrace to Understand GNOME

Bryan Cantrill has an awesome blog entry about using DTrace to understand GNOME. I think most of the I/O activity is probably already known by a lot of core developers of the project, but having that information easily available is just incredible.

Once again, feel free to check out Solaris 10, and try DTrace out yourself! I’m pretty sure Bryan would happily field any questions you might have. Hop on to irc.freenode.net and join the #opensolaris channel.

Aside, we’re making some pretty good progress in getting JDS ported to 2.10 and out onto OpenSolaris.org – I’ve been slacking off the past week, but the Arvind, Bala, Brian, Damien, Laca and Matt combo have been doing an excellent job. Still tripping over the ‘What is OpenSolaris?’ questions within the team, and trying to figure out how everything will work down the line. I’m pretty confident we’re 100% on the right track though – continue watching this space!

You Fucking Idiots – What Do You Think You’re Playing At?

I’m right, you’re just wrong. No matter how many times I think that in my life, it’s hardly the need to resort to something more than words. What a deeply fucked up world we live in. As always, hoping that everyone’s friends and family are ok in London.

Domhnall and Lynda – Live and Uncut in NZ

Domhnall and Lynda arrived from Perth on Wednesday – it’s been nice to see them again, and we’ve just been hanging out. Took a trip out to Castle Hill yesterday, with some glorious weather compared to Christchurch. Today we’ll plan for a wander around town, a trip out to the local crag and a few pints in town later on.