Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Solaris - The Better Linux

I had set up a demo session at Sun China Engineering and Research Institute (ERI) in Beijing.  I may have not mentioned it before, but my job here at ERI is director of Solaris X86 Engineering.  Anyway, my manager, Andy Roach, was visiting here with his staff, and we prepared a two hour working lunch - demo session combination for him, his staff, and anyone who was interested here at Sun ERI Beijing.

The results were outstanding.  Not because it as well put together (it was), and not because the presenters were exceptionally professional (they were), and not because of the unusually delicious pizza (it was).  It was outstanding, at least in my mind, because I heard one of the visitors say: "Solaris is the better Linux".  And coming to think about it, it certainly is.

What Solaris is doing for the last few years, and will continue for the foreseeable future, is to emphasize its high-end features: performance, reliability, stability, debuggability, security, virtualization and many more enterprise type features, while collecting more and more desktop and developer type features.  We at ERI Beijing, are helping Solaris' capabilities in the desktop area: USB, network (wired and wireless), storage, audio and video, human interface devices etc.  We also help our IHVs and potential customers in verifying that their hardware platforms and components are compatible with Solaris, and directing them to the right places for the resources they need to make Solaris work flawlessly on their platform of choice and environment of operation.

The demo session had quite a few stations, in which the visitors could see for themselves the new Solaris capabilities in the desktop area.  This is what we have presented:

• Storage
• Remote array management capability running Adaptec's and IBM's) Storage Manager utilities
• Multi-pathing capabilities driving storage controllers
  
• USB devices
• USB phone connection to provide internet capability via cellphone
• USB Webcams and Web conferencing capabilities
• Tools for USB development environment including libs, java interfaces and debugging tools
• Support of ZFS on hot pluggable devices
• Fingerprint based login
  
• Virtual Console
• Video
• Good progress in supporting various vendors with presentation of 3D models
  
• NIC - Network Interface Cards
• Impressive performance increase numbers for all NIC card drivers
  
• WiFi
• WiFi devices based on Intel Centrino chipsets: (3945, 2200/2915, and 2100)
• WiFi security WPA/WiFi NWAM
• WiFi Cardbus driver
• For more information: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/wireless/
• HCTS - Hardware Certification Test Suite
  
• HCTSLive
• Report to Work tool (RTW)
  
• For more information: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/
  
• SDDT - Sun Device Detection Tool
• For more information: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.html
  
• Solaris x86 Installation CheckTool
• For more information: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/install_check.html

Against all odds: all demos worked, none crashed.  There were no power failures, network glitches, equipment breakage.  Business problems were presented, with the proposed solutions, from communication to security, from storage to USB, from network to hardware certification.  All worked, all clear.  I can't say in words how proud I was of my team for pulling it together.  They did a superb job.  So let me take this opportunity to thank our guests for their patience, to thank my staff for putting together a great plan and for meticulously executing it, for the developers for being so enthusiastic in showing their work.  One more person to thank: Thanks Mr. Murphy, for not attending.  We all appreciate that. (Murphy Laws)

Posted at 03:50PM May 21, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]