SmugMug is a personal story! Back in August 2006, SmugMug posted a very detailed unflattering review of T1000 running Ubuntu Linux. We assembled a team of experts to get to the bottom of their issues. Several fire-drills, phone calls and meetings later, we found that the Sun Fire X2200 server is a better fit for their target application. SmugMug wanted to standardize on a server platform. After a set of server reviews from various vendors, they selected Sun as their infrastructure supplier. Subsequently, Smugmug CEO Don MacAskill posted a detailed blog reviewing the benefits they are seeing from X2200.

I was thrilled to see that they have recently done a video telling the world why they chose Sun. Nice one, check it out.

With the OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta release last week, the reviews are starting to appear. Here I'm highlighting InformationWeek and ZDNet reviews, more to follow soon.

InformationWeek review

Serdar Yegulalp of InformationWeek is pleased with the OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta release, although he is careful to state this is a beta version and that his attention was focused on the more visible changes to the product. Serdar identifies that this release adds support for VBA macros and read/write support for Office 2007 / OOXML documents, and noted, "a couple of major additions seem designed to lure in existing Microsoft Office users."

Serdar also talks about the lack of major change in OO.o's interface -- a good thing considering the grief Microsoft has taken over Office 2007 ribbon interface. He states, "a new interface would have created the kind of divisiveness over the program that Office itself experienced, which is not what OO.o needs."


ZDNet review

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes decided to test the viability of abandoning Microsoft office in support of the OpenOffice.org suite. In this review, he shared positive findings on download size, installation time as well as a key area of concern: backward compatibility with Microsoft Office. From a replacement standpoint, the author believed that he could replace Microsoft Word with Write, but had some concerns regarding Calc and Impress.

Overall the author stated, "the installation of the suite was easy and fast and that the applications were as responsive as their Office 2007 counterparts." Further, Adrian says, "it's early days for OO.o 3.0 Beta and things could get a lot better between now and release."

Several reviews have popped up since we announced OpenSolaris 2008.5 last week. Here are two quick ones from ZDNet and Phoronix.

ZDnet review
Jason Perlow of ZDNet posted a very positive review of the OpenSolaris 2008.05 release. He categorized the operating system as Ubuntu for grown-ups; further stating, "[OpenSolaris] shows great promise and enormous potential as an enterprise-class UNIX desktop and server with Ubuntu-like flavor."

Jason goes on to share a historical perspective, then turns his attention to the product directly stating, "I'm very impressed with the OpenSolaris 2008.05 release" and "end-users for the most part should feel right at home with OpenSolaris." In particular, Jason enjoyed the ease of installation, refreshing configuration applets and included applications. Beneath the UI and end-user tools, Jason praised the enterprise-proven high-performance found in the Solaris 10 kernel.


Phoronix review
Michael Larabel posted a review of OpenSolaris 2008.5 stating he is pleased with the evolution of OpenSolaris from beta to 2008.05. "Our initial experience with this new OpenSolaris release is vastly better than what we had encountered less than three months ago when last looking at Project Indiana." At the top of his list is the addition of the graphical package manager for IPS.

Michael is also happy with the work done on the underpinnings of the OS, "this test release of OpenSolaris 2008.05 has also offered the best hardware support from our testing and corrects some issues we previously encountered with Solaris/OpenSolaris. Overall, OpenSolaris 2008.05 provides a new user experience and gives a new face to Solaris."


Great reviews, more to come soon.

Today we are launching a new Student Reviews Program. Here students worldwide can get hands-on experience on Sun offerings, post their reviews of Sun products, discuss the cutting-edge technologies, give feedback to Sun, get connected with technical experts, participate in contests, and win cool prizes! The companion Student Views and Reviews site is also up and running with the inaugural blog post.

The first student reviews contest has also been announced. Students can review OpenSolaris OS and/or NetBeans IDE 6.1, and get upto $250 in debit cards.

1. MySQL Clustering - configuration and testing -- IndianGNU.org, 4/22 Arun Bagul posted an extensive overivew of MySQL clustering, highlighting that it is easy to setup and a reliable solution. Arun explained that there are three types of cluster nodes in MySQL Cluster configuration and to successfully configure MySQL clustering, one of each type is required.

2. MySQL Replication Series (tip #1): what should be replicated and what should not be replicated? -- Crazytoon, 4/21
Sunny Walia posted a tip on replicating data in MySQL, demonstrating what to do when developers only want to replicate certain data to a slave. He states that the most general way is to follow the configuration directive and included a step by step guide on how to do so.

3. docx in openoffice revisited -- Blah blah blah, 4/20
The blogger expanded on his prior blog about how OpenOffice.org can open and save in "the notorious docx (and xlsx and pptx) format" introducted by the new Microsoft Office 2007. The blogger added that OpenOffice.org 3.0 will make opening Microsoft Office 2007's docx, xlsx, and files much easier as it will have the ability to save files to those formats natively.

1. Upgrading Bean to Solaris 10 5/08 U4 -- Stormsail, 4/21 While trying to upgrade a V100 loft server from Solaris 10 8/07 to Solaris 10 5/08, the blogger encountered a bug (the error message read: "liveupgrade failed from s10u4 to s10u5_05, package install failed, because 7za cannot be found"). The blogger overcame this bug by adding SUNWbzip from Solaris 10 5/08 U5 to the Solaris 10 8/07 U4 installation.

2. Recovering OpenSolaris/Solairs/Linux after Windows Installation -- Salman Jamali, 4/20
Salman was running a dual boot configuration with Windows XP and Solaris XDE 01/08. After upgrading his system's memory, Salman didn't notice an increase in system performance, so he decided to reinstall Windows XP -- which wiped out his master boot record. In this post, Salman detailed how to recover the Solaris/OpenSolaris boot option by recovering the GRUB bootloader.

3. Setting up a Solaris zone for Blastwave software -- The Grey Blog, 4/20
The blogger wrote that installing Blastwave on Solaris 10 in a global zone caused Blastwave packages to be replicated in every Solaris zone. The blogger explained that this problem propagated changes to every non-global zone by default and created errors regarding package dependencies. The blogger decided to create a non-global zone to install Blastwave's software and loopback mount /opt/csw in the other zones and said that Blastwave's packages are now properly isolated in its individual zone.

4. ZFS Rocks -- Chi Hung Chan, 4/18
A self confessed fan of ZFS, Chi Hung Chan wrote about his experience using ZFS on a Sun Fire X4500 storage server appliance, stating a benefits such as the fact that he can virtualize all storage disks while protecting against data loss from silent data corruption. Chi provided the details of his Sun Fire X4500 configuration, and stated that with ZFS and OpenSolaris, Sun is "trying to make Solaris as the platform for storage."

1. Sun "innotek" VirtualBox -- darpan.et.work, 4/21 Darpan Dinker posted about his experience using VirtualBox running Solaris Express Developer Edition. Darpan liked the fact that VirtualBox came with an Ubuntu download option and a common user manual. However he found that the dynamic sizing option did not suit his needs and felt that the default 4MB for video memory was too small.

2. VirtualBox: the ultimate desktop WM? -- If it ain't broken don't fix it, 4/21
Uberto Barbini posted a positive review of VirtualBox, stating, "I am not easily impressed by software products, but when I tried VirtualBox I was." He highlighted the software's responsiveness and the user-friendly interface, noting that competitors such as VMware and Quemu were not easy to setup and tune.

3. Virtualization using VirtualBox - Simultaneously running 5 operating systems -- Venkat's TechLog, 4/20
The blogger wrote that his experience with VirtualBox has been good, but advises users to stay away from VirtualBox OSE as it has many bugs. He states that VirtualBox performs well and was able to run 5 operating systems simultaneously and did not encounter any lag in performance.

4. Run IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac -- The MozMonkey Blog, 4/20
Jeremy Gillick wrote about running different versions of IE on his Mac by using VMware and VirtualBox software. He found that it was easiest to use VMware Fusion, but liked the fact that VirtualBox was free and available for most operating systems.

5. Sun xVM Ops Center -- ZDNet, 4/18
Dan Kusnetzky discusses Sun's xVM Ops Center, and his overall impression is that this is a powerful tool that will be a good foundation for users of Sun's Solaris, Red Hat's REL and SUSE's SLES operating environments. He comments that as one would expect for a version 1 product, it has its rough edges but strong promise for the future.

1. Netbeans - Stairway To Maven -- Adam Bien's Weblog, 4/18 Adam Bien found that his experience giving Maven support in Eclipse a try was not so bad, but he preferred NetBeans by far. He found that the native support for Maven in NetBeans gives it a huge edge over Eclipse, as NetBeans just uses Maven to build the artifact instead of the internal build system.

2. Experimenting With JavaScript Support in NetBeans 6.1 -- Pro NetBeans, 4/18
Adam Myatt tested some of the new features of NetBeans, saying that all in all he had an "excellent experience" with the JavaScript support and recommends it to users. Adam provided a step-by-step analysis along with the relevant codes. However, he encountered a potential bug with the NetBeans code completion function -- one of his declared variables appears twice in the system generated list.

3. Netbeans: Why It Matters -- Programming, 4/18
The blogger wrote that the fact that NetBeans is a full fledged IDE and runs on multiple platforms is reason enough for users to adopt it. The blogger also noted: "The fact that it has support for every language you could ever want (or need) to write code in is nearly unprecedented."

4. NetBeans Mobility 6.1 - my NetBeans RoadShow story -- Jacek Wojciechowski's Forum Nokia Blog, 4/17
Jacek Wojciechowski concluded that the future of Java ME and NetBeans Mobility looks bright. He wrote that NetBeans 6.1 RC has a quicker startup and smarter code completion. He also was pleased that future versions of NetBeans Mobility will support MIDP 3.0, JavaFX Mobile, more device platforms, more components and visual data binding.

5. Facing Software Configuration Management on NetBeans IDE -- Vando B, 4/17
Vando Batista wrote that he had to use the tkSVN (tkCVS) tool due to the limitations of the NetBeans SVN client. Vando explained that using the NetBeans 6.1 Beta, it is not possible to put a UML (model) project into Subversion. The solution is to use an auxiliary SVN GUI client (tkSVN in his case) to maintain all the UML diagrams files synchronously related to the code project.

6. Flex and OpenLaszlo in NetBeans 6.1 Beta -- Dustin's Software Development Cogitations and Speculations, 4/17
Dustin Marx noted that the NetBeans 6.1 beta IDE has added tremendous support for JavaScript and the Spring Framework, but would like to see support added for Flex and OpenLaszlo. Dustin also demonstrates how to associate OpenLaszlo's LZX files and Flex's MXML files with XML in the NetBeans 6.1 beta.

7. Ajax Autocomplete not yet supported in NetBeans Visual Web -- David Heffelfinger's Notes, 4/16
David Heffelfinger ran into problems installing Ajax autocomplete, even though the version of Woodstock included with NetBeans 6.1 RC1 supported autocomplete. He discovered that NetBeans does not have the required versions of some libraries to support autocomplete. He expressed hope that this will be resolved in the final release of NetBeans 6.1.

Sun is named one of InfoWorld's top "Green 15" companies in the publication's first annual competition. The article praises Sun for its dedication to innovation with respect to power capacity and energy efficiency.  According to the article, "Thanks to a massive datacenter consolidation, hardware refresh, and creative, energy-efficient facility design, Sun has reduced power capacity demand by 75 percent at its Santa Clara, Calif., datacenter alone, saving $1.1 million per year in energy costs, while increasing its datacenter processing power more than four times.  Overall, Sun estimates that its consolidation efforts will save 4,100 tons of CO2 per year and cut 1 percent from its total carbon footprint."

1. MySQL backups using ZFS snapshot -- O'Reilly Databases, 4/11 Paddy Sreenivasan posted on how to install, configure, backup and restore MySQL databases using Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL on Open Solaris. He used ZFS snapshots to do full backups.

2. Setting Queue Depth for Sun StorEdge 9900 Series Storage -- Storage World @ Cyberjaya, 4/11
Amzi Yahaya blogged about setting queue depth for the Sun StorEdge 9900 series storage arrays. While the array can accommodate up to 1024 queued commands per fiber port, and up to 32 queued commands per Logical Unit Number (LUN), Amzi pointed out that the default settings for Solaris permit the queue depths to be exceeded, which may result in poor performance. He then went on to detail ways in which to configure the system to prevent queue overruns.

3. Found a new OpenSource VM software - VirtualBox -- SolidMode, 4/15
Kevin Wei wrote a post itemizing the various features of VirtualBox including its modular design, the guest addition for Windows and Linux and the Virtual USB Controller, among others.

4. Vista sp1 installed in Virtualbox on Ubuntu -- Works, ha ha, 4/14
Cross Zheng explained how to resolve the issue that Windows Vista does not have the network driver required by VirtualBox.

5. VMWare vs VirtualPC vs VirtualBox -- John Mee, 4/14
John Mee blogged that he tried VirtualBox when he heard that it can handle arbitrary screen sizes. He then listed the pros and cons of VMWare Player, Virtual PC 6.0 and VirtualBox, noting that although VirtualBox has an attractive GUI, is portable and has a useful snapshot feature, it has poor community support.

1. How To Make OpenOffice Load Faster -- Windows Linux Mac, 4/15 Eric said that OpenOffice.org is a great alternative to MS Office and detailed how users can improve OO.o's load speed with a series of memory tweaks.

2. And so, i changed -- Nuno Silva, 4/14
After experiencing numerous recurring problems with MS Office 2007, Nuno Silva switched to OpenOffice.org. He conceded that "Office 2007 is more visually attractive than OO.o," but "at least OO.o works."

3. OpenSource Alternatives -- Dive in to OpenSource, 4/14
Jayyy placed OpenOffice.org at the top of a list of alternatives to proprietary software. He described OO.o as "a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open source project" that is compatible with all major office suites and is free to download, use and distribute.

4. OpenOffice.org 2.4 Release... the best office suite for free -- Tourhag, 4/13
The blogger wrote that OpenOffice.org 2.4 is one of the best alternatives to MS Office, noting improvements made in compatibility, security, stability, functionality and graphics.

1. BeleniX 0.7 OpenSolaris Desktop -- Phoronix, 4/16 Michael Larabel finds that BeleniX 0.7 has many of the Project Indiana features, but its LiveCD uses Xfce and KDE as the two desktop environments of choice compared to Indiana's GNOME. BeleniX is also continuing to use SVR4 packaging instead of IPS. In conclusion, Michael says that having tried out BeleniX 0.7 for a bit now, he is pleased with the continued innovation the BeleniX developers are doing on top of the OpenSolaris stack.

2. ZFS boot support for SPARC/x86 -- Blog O'Matty, 4/13
The blogger reported that flag day for ZFS boot support was just announced, allowing for root file systems to be bootable from both SPARC and x86 platforms. He pointed out that "a lot of people have been waiting to play with this on SPARC platforms," and encouraged people to find out more about the ZFS-Boot project through the OpenSolaris website.

3. Nexenta, BeleniX, Solaris 10: Fun with UNIX -- JamesTheBard, 4/12
The blogger installed Solaris, BeliniX and Nexenta on his desktop using VMWare to take a closer look at Solaris, its derivatives and some of its features such as DTrace and ZFS. He gave Solaris 10 a score of 6/10 saying that it was easy to install but that updating was complicated. He thought the other distributions did not perform as well, concluding: "There aren't really that many options out there if you want to try out something Solar-ish other than Solaris."

4. Why ZFS rocks -- Bits on Bytes, 4/11
Christopher Gibbs wrote that "ZFS rocks" because the file system in Solaris prevented any data loss when his server's hard drive failed and his spare hard drive wasn't configured properly: "ZFS let me add my spare and replace my failed drive with it -- all while my data stayed up. You can even see it scrubbing data over to the spare!"

1. 10 Things NetBeans must do to survive -- NetBeans IDE 6.1, 4/16 Tushar Joshi reflects on a post by Matt Stephens who reviewed NetBeans version 3.0 on October 27, 2003. Intrigued, Tushar decided to compare each point to the current NetBeans IDE 6.1 version to check whether or not Stephens list was still accurate. He concluded that all points mentioned by Stephens are now covered by NetBeans IDE 6.1 and feels that if Stephens was to write about NetBeans current version then he would offer nothing but praise.

2. NetBeans IDE 6.1 - AJAX Programing -- NetBeans Blog, 4/15
This blogger writes about the new features and enhancements in NetBeans IDE 6.1 beta. He specifically calls out AJAX programming, mobile application programming and customizable code generation. The blogger explains that AJAX programming has become much simpler with JavaScript editor and jMaki support that provides a lightweight model when creating JavaScript centric Ajax-enabled web applications.

3. Tracing using NetBeans debugger. -- SkadLog, 4/15
This Java developer writes about a great feature in NetBeans that saved him from having to case trace in runtime with System.out.printIn. He shares that breakpoints can be customized to act just like a trace in NetBeans preventing programs from stopping in the middle of a project.

4. Netbeans 6.1 Beta - Subtle Issues -- The JJ Blogger, 4/14
In this blog, Josh Juneau shares the process of migrating Seam applications from 1.x to 2.0.1. In doing so, Josh himself ran into a few issues when he attempted to deploy an application to his test environment running on Glassfish V2. He explained that if repackaging and changing libraries for existing applications within NetBeans you must Right click on the project, and choose properties. He noted that this was not a huge issue, but one he was not aware of when he started migrating.

5. Working with Java Free-Form Projects in NetBeans IDE -- NetBeans Zone, 4/14
Amit Saha gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the "Java Free-Form Project" feature in NetBeans 6.1 beta to take care of project build as project sizes increase. Amit uses a small scale Java project using Ant for building purposes as an example for when to use this helpful feature.

6. NetBeans 6.1rc1 - nice, indirect support for Eclipse / NetBeans RCP DataBinding (for the model layer) -- Adam Bien's Weblog, 4/14
Adam Bien discovered that NetBeans 6.1rc1 automatically generates the Java Code, including the properties and accessors necessary to bind the Java Persistence API (JPA) layer to the user interface objects.

7. New Platform Application development support in 6.1 RC1 -- NetBeans - Thru a novice perspective, 4/13
    Embedded development Support in NetBeans? -- NetBeans - Thru a novice perspective, 4/9
Jay Mahadeokar blogged about stumbling upon the module support for NetBeans Platform Application development, what he considered "the most striking feature" of the NetBeans 6.1 RC1 pack. He also suggested support for embedded development in NetBeans.

8. NetBeans 6.1beta and dev-src -- Xykon's Weblog, 4/11
The blogger wrote that after downloading the 6.1 beta, he started building NetBeans for the first time, and was "positively amazed" at many of the changes. As a developer under both Windows and Linux, he said he can't live without the "superb" shared library functionality and was eager to explore the many new modules. He was so optimistic about NetBeans' future that he removed Eclipse from his computers.

9. NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate 1 Now Available -- Jinath Sanjitha's Blog, 4/11
Jinath Sanjitha hailed NetBeans 6.1 as "the best Java IDE," citing faster startup speed, improved code completion, the Spring Framework 2.5 library and the JSF CRUD Generator. After providing some links to NetBeans 6.1 tutorials, he stated, "at last I have to say is that it's the best Java IDE I've ever used and it rocks now."

10. Create reverse Ajax Web-Applications with DWR and NetBeans -- Another Random Developer Blog, 4/9
In this blog, Siegfried Bolz details how to create a reverse Ajax Web-Application using NetBeans 6.1 beta while running on GlassFish V2. Siegfried included screen shots throughout the tutorial and mentioned that he encountered one minor problem with Internet Explorer -- the "Get Stocks" button does not work. He noted that it works correctly in Firefox, Opera and Konqueror and believes Internet Explorer must be experiencing a JavaScript error somewhere.

11. Java IDEs - NetBeans vs Eclipse vs JDeveloper -- Indic Threads, 4/7
Harshad Oak, a veteran NetBeans and JDeveloper user, compares Eclipse to NetBeans 6.1 beta and JDeveloper. He was very impressed with NetBeans 6.1 beta and decided to make a list of comparisons between all three IDEs.

With help from Sun Professional Services, leading Korean manufacturer LG Micron successfully deployed a six-node high-availability cluster of servers using high-performance Sun UltraSPARC IV+ processors. The Sun Cluster solution provides 24x7 business continuity for the Oracle database and ERP applications. Sun delivered the solution using LG Micron's existing IT assets and helped it maximize operational productivity. The solution is the first six-node cluster implementation in Asia and the first deployment in South Korea to use Solaris Volume Manager to mirror data to a remote site to enhance disaster recovery. Heechang Park, CFO/CIO of LG Micron, commented: "We tried to provide non-stop IT service by leveraging old systems in order to minimize IT investment and established a cluster system in order to minimize any possible risks. Moreover, LG Micron established business continuity from a server/storage HA project. Previously, we assume that we wasted 1 million a year at the production line due to system failures and service stops. However, our IT system now provides non-stop service through standby-system configuration, and we secured our ROI for this project." Check out the details here.

(Image courtesy: LG Micron)

1. OpenOffice magic -- Stream of bytes, 4/8 Zbigniew Braniecki blogged about using OpenOffice.org for a slide presentation. He liked many of the new features in 2.4, and 3.0, especially the set of OpenGL based transitions. He concluded that OpenOffice.org is "growing to meet the expectations."

2. StarOffice 8 -- Novelthinking.net, 4/5
This blogger found the best alternative for MS Office is StarOffice. The post said that StarOffice has all the same capabilities and tools as MS Office, but adds interesting tools like the Navigator which lists all elements contained in a document with easy access to any of them, the Data Sources tool that enables information to be picked up from sources such as spreadsheets, and the keyboard shortcut that strips all formatting from text before pasting it into a document. The blogger also mentioned that StarOffice is ODF compliant and can export documents into the PDF format.

3.