Bringing Solaris to Virginia Tech
On November 27th, 2007, we held the third and final Sun Tech Talk at Virginia Tech. The topic of this highly anticipated talk was Solaris. Dr. Harry Foxwell came down to Virginia Tech and delivered a talk to nearly 60 students (most of whom were heavy Linux users) and changed the way a lot of them viewed Solaris. He also dove into the new and exciting world of openSolaris, which turned a few heads.
On the outset of the speech, I noticed a lot of skeptical students in the audience. Some still believed in the antiquated view of Solaris - "slow, bulky, and not for me". I thought that this might be hostile territory for a Solaris tech talk - but Dr. Foxwell proved me wrong. He started out, wisely I believe, by giving a brief overview of the software industry today and its future as it pertained to students today. He focused on open source software, it's applications, and what the students should learn to excel. He also pointed to current trends such as virtualization and parallel programming and stressed their importance in academia and in business.
With the audience's full attention, Dr. Foxwell went on to talk about Solaris and openSolaris. He highlighted their growing popularity and the solid foundations on which they were built. Students were generally impressed by the similarities in openSolaris and a lot of the Linux distros they were used to. Then Dr. Foxwell decided to show off some of the more advanced features available, leaving students to wonder why other OS's did not support these features also.
He talked about ZFS the new File System and Volume Manager that I believe is the proverbial "wave of the future". He pointed out that even Mac OS X Leopard had adopted ZFS. As if that were not enough, he went on to do a demo of DTrace which allows users to debug their system to an unbelievable level. The students in attendance were smart enough to realize the potential of these systems and technologically savvy enough to implement them.
The talk went better than I could have expected. Dr. Foxwell brought down free openSolaris DVDs to hand out, and we raffled away some t-shirts as well. As is the developing trend at Sun Tech Talks here, students remained for over an hour after the talk. They were interested in everything Solaris. Dr. Foxwell provided insight not only into Solaris and openSolaris, but also into the computer industry itself. He did a great job interacting with the students and there has been a lot of positive feedback from the talk.
Link to Dr. Foxwell's presentation
On the outset of the speech, I noticed a lot of skeptical students in the audience. Some still believed in the antiquated view of Solaris - "slow, bulky, and not for me". I thought that this might be hostile territory for a Solaris tech talk - but Dr. Foxwell proved me wrong. He started out, wisely I believe, by giving a brief overview of the software industry today and its future as it pertained to students today. He focused on open source software, it's applications, and what the students should learn to excel. He also pointed to current trends such as virtualization and parallel programming and stressed their importance in academia and in business.
With the audience's full attention, Dr. Foxwell went on to talk about Solaris and openSolaris. He highlighted their growing popularity and the solid foundations on which they were built. Students were generally impressed by the similarities in openSolaris and a lot of the Linux distros they were used to. Then Dr. Foxwell decided to show off some of the more advanced features available, leaving students to wonder why other OS's did not support these features also.
He talked about ZFS the new File System and Volume Manager that I believe is the proverbial "wave of the future". He pointed out that even Mac OS X Leopard had adopted ZFS. As if that were not enough, he went on to do a demo of DTrace which allows users to debug their system to an unbelievable level. The students in attendance were smart enough to realize the potential of these systems and technologically savvy enough to implement them.
The talk went better than I could have expected. Dr. Foxwell brought down free openSolaris DVDs to hand out, and we raffled away some t-shirts as well. As is the developing trend at Sun Tech Talks here, students remained for over an hour after the talk. They were interested in everything Solaris. Dr. Foxwell provided insight not only into Solaris and openSolaris, but also into the computer industry itself. He did a great job interacting with the students and there has been a lot of positive feedback from the talk.
Link to Dr. Foxwell's presentation
