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.
Stephen and Tim talk about what’s coming in the OpenSolaris May 5th release – check it out!.
The year is flying. Really flying. Not only has NZ changed clocks screwing up my Google calendar settings once again, but I’m just over a week out to flying over to the OpenSolaris Developer Summit, starting a full month of travel. Jesse is continuing to rock in organizing the summit, and by the line up of rock stars attending, the event should be a real treat. If you haven’t made your arrangements and are in the area, do please attend – we’d love you to be there! I’m really looking forward to hanging out with all the people I met last year, and the few new faces that will be there too.
We’re also co-ordinating the summit with the first meeting of the OpenSolaris Governing Board. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with jbeck, alanc, jimgris, webmink and plocher, and Michelle is keep us all in line as the OGB Secretary this year. We’ve had some incredibly productive calls so far, and will be nice to catch up over dinner on Friday night right before the summit. We’ll also be hosting an OGB Townhall at 15:45-17:00 on Saturday – if you have anything you’d like to bring up, email ogb-discuss@opensolaris.org, or log a bug against the OGB category.
No sooner is the developer summit over, then Jesse is going to wrap us all in a bus and take us up to San Francisco to attend CommunityOne – it’s free to attend, and has a pretty cool line up of talks. I’ll be taking part in a “Operating System Community Panel” with Bacon, Brockmeier and Wade from Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora moderated by the charming Barton George. The event is free to attend, so you too can come along and throw tomatoes at us. I’ve heard rumours there’ll be an OpenSolaris party that evening too – bonus!
One day later, it’ll be into the JavaOne week and I’ve signed up to be a booth baby at the OpenSolaris stand, dropping into SecondLife, and hopefully getting to attend some of the keynote sessions. College students can attend free this year. Come by the stand and say hi.
Then it’s most definitely vacation with Jayne around SF, Spain and Italy. Woo!
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.
As opensolaris.com starts to focus more on the ‘download, install and run’ experience, catering towards the consumer rather than the producer, a few people in Sun have been working on a design separate to that of the current opensolaris.org, here – though much of the content is still being worked out.
opensolaris.org will continue to be the live hub for most of the day-to-day activity we currently see across the projects and community groups – nothing changes there, though hopefully the benefit is that it will relieve some of the burden from opensolaris.org on trying to cater for 2 pretty distinct audiences than it was originally intended for.
Of course I can’t take any credit in this, but personally I think the design is pretty fabulous! Have a play with the mockup, tell me what you think!
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)
I’ve just posted another round of logos, this time including a baseball cap, and the designs on different colours. There’s a been a little confusion from people, assuming that I’ve been the one creating them – I assure you I’m not, I have zero design experience.
If I had a preference, I think I’d go with the Bubbles – it at least signifies effervescence, and good health. It also actually looks pretty darn good on a t-shirt or bag, and something that I’d happily wear walking down the street. Does it pass the ‘wearing geek t-shirts in a pub’ test? Hell yes!
Every day I come across examples of why the OpenSolaris governance is really proving to be an obstacle with zero value return.
Consider this, James Carlson’s proposal for networking documentation sent late February. Since James is looking for a source code repository to do his work, it needs to be a Project within the scope of opensolaris.org (since that is what the website infrastructure can handle). According to the guidelines laid out in the project instantiation policy, Community Group’s are supposed to sponsor project requests, with their own discretion on how projects are discussed and approved. Once the Community Group approves the project, it gets sent to project-setup@opensolaris.org so the website team can create the project page. James is in this case using the Consensus voting system, requiring three +1’s and no -1’s from the Core Contributors of that Community Group.
17 days later, James is still looking for the required votes to start what, in my opinion, seems to be a great project. You can’t help but think how many people would have given up by now.
There’s no substitute to JFDI – or improving our governance model so that it doesn’t get in the way of suitably motivated people who want to contribute.
For anyone following the thread discussing a new breed of OpenSolaris logos, there’s some more designs, here and here. You’ll notice the skittles didn’t make it past the first round, and we’ve now introduced a few variations on colours and fonts. Feedback welcome!
