Wednesday February 22, 2006
Wednesday February 22, 2006
I'd written to some colleagues at Sun about this, and Alan suggested I write a blog entry. What a good idea, since I've been so delinquent about blogging.
So, here I am flying over Greenland and writing a blog. Not storing it away for submission after I land, but actually on the live website and posting it immediately, thanks to Lufthansa and Boeing (and I suppose I have to put in a plug for Airbus as well, since they built the plane - talk about strange bedfellows!).
Many other people have written about this, including Jonathan and some folks at Apple. The service has been running on some routes for a while. What makes my experience different, though, is that I'm using IPsec to tunnel into Sun's network, and writing this using Solaris. There probably aren't too many other people who've done that.
Evidence of that would be the fact that Lufthansa's on-line survey not only doesn't list Solaris as one of the possible operating system choices, it doesn't even have an "other" category. Not being willing to claim Solaris was either Linux or MacOS (there wasn't a generic UNIX category, either), I had to answer "I don't know" and put in a comment later on.
So, Lufthansa and Boeing: I know you're Sun customers. How about fixing this?
And speaking of fixing things, the Solaris IPsec technology I'm using is called "punchin." Unfortunately it's not available to the general public yet, but we're using it inside Sun for VPN connections on Solaris since our friends at Cisco haven't been willing to support their VPN solution on Solaris for x64. So, Cisco, how about you? 2.6 million Solaris on x86/x64 systems can't be wrong.
So, here I am flying over Greenland and writing a blog. Not storing it away for submission after I land, but actually on the live website and posting it immediately, thanks to Lufthansa and Boeing (and I suppose I have to put in a plug for Airbus as well, since they built the plane - talk about strange bedfellows!).
Many other people have written about this, including Jonathan and some folks at Apple. The service has been running on some routes for a while. What makes my experience different, though, is that I'm using IPsec to tunnel into Sun's network, and writing this using Solaris. There probably aren't too many other people who've done that.
Evidence of that would be the fact that Lufthansa's on-line survey not only doesn't list Solaris as one of the possible operating system choices, it doesn't even have an "other" category. Not being willing to claim Solaris was either Linux or MacOS (there wasn't a generic UNIX category, either), I had to answer "I don't know" and put in a comment later on.
So, Lufthansa and Boeing: I know you're Sun customers. How about fixing this?
And speaking of fixing things, the Solaris IPsec technology I'm using is called "punchin." Unfortunately it's not available to the general public yet, but we're using it inside Sun for VPN connections on Solaris since our friends at Cisco haven't been willing to support their VPN solution on Solaris for x64. So, Cisco, how about you? 2.6 million Solaris on x86/x64 systems can't be wrong.
Tuesday August 16, 2005 Wow...another year gone by. It sure doesn't seem like a year
since I wrote my first birthday blog, but there it is. I'm sure
this has been written millions of times before, but I never claimed to
have an original thought: did you ever notice how the older you get the
shorter time seems? For my two teenagers the twelve days we just
spent in Beijing must have seemed like an eternity. To my wife
and me they passed in a blur.
My staff did it again, this time while we were in Beijing, throwing me not one but two birthday parties a few days early. Yes, even in Beijing you can get a nice chocolate cake and a decent bottle of champagne. Thanks once again to my fantastic team for making my job so much fun!
As for time flying, let alone me, this week will go by even faster, as I try futilely to recover from my jet lag only to turn around and fly back to Tokyo next week. Haven't abused my body this much in a while, if ever.
Happy birthday, indeed.
My staff did it again, this time while we were in Beijing, throwing me not one but two birthday parties a few days early. Yes, even in Beijing you can get a nice chocolate cake and a decent bottle of champagne. Thanks once again to my fantastic team for making my job so much fun!
As for time flying, let alone me, this week will go by even faster, as I try futilely to recover from my jet lag only to turn around and fly back to Tokyo next week. Haven't abused my body this much in a while, if ever.
Happy birthday, indeed.
Sunday August 14, 2005 Well,
here I am on the plane back to San Francisco after a long and very
successful – I hope – trip to Beijing. We toured, we ate, we
drank, and most importantly we met: with each other, with members of
the team, with sales, with customers.
What will I remember most about this trip? Certainly there was great sightseeing. Our luck held beyond belief: almost every sightseeing day was dry (or at least as dry as it gets in Beijing this time of year). The rainy days corresponded almost exactly to business days. That said, it was hot, humid and smoggy even on the nicest days. Our climb of the Great Wall of China was grueling. We probably all lost 10 pounds of water weight that day. But it was worth it. Overall, most of us toured the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Lama Temple, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and a traditional “hutong” residence. We saw “Beijing Opera” – more like Vaudeville or Vegas than what Westerners would think of opera – and Chinese acrobatics. We had more Chinese banquets than we could count.
Oh, and we shopped. And shopped. And shopped. And still spent a lot less than we probably would have in a single day in London or Paris. We found a great tailor. We bought pearls and bracelets. A few knockoffs, but mostly local products from local artisans.
For me and my staff, though, this was first and foremost a business trip, and we did a lot of business. We met the local staff, had two all-hands meetings, worked to integrate the Java Desktop System group into my team, and did all the usual things you do at an offsite meeting: project reviews, financial reviews, strategy sessions. We learned about culture, about language, about the challenges of being remote from headquarters, about how to work better together. On Friday Sin-Yaw Wang, the new vice president of our R&D center in Beijing and I met the local press. We had lunch with a prominent member of the Chinese computer science community and a great customer visit to discuss OpenSolaris (no, sorry, I won't tell you who they were). Some members of my staff will be staying on in Beijing for a few more days to meet with additional customers. Unfortunately my family and I had to return home as my son Ben starts football practice on Monday.
And speaking of family, that's what I will remember most about this trip. Spending time with my family. Both my personal family and my extended family at work. I know this sounds corny, but bear with me. One of the things I observed to my team early in our meetings last week was how closely they work as a team, how well they get along, how little “sibling rivalry” there is – in short, how great a team they are. I noted that this was observed not just by me, but by every human resources business partner we've had over the past year or so.
What I'd always thought I'd heard was how much of a team my staff is, and I thought that was pretty good. But on Friday night it really crystallized for me. We were all at the home of Mike and Linda Hayden. Mike has just started a two year expat assignment in Beijing. Our new local human resources partner joined us, along with all of my staff, Sin-Yaw, and all of the family members who had come along with us or live in Beijing. What she said totally changed my thinking. She, too, had observed just in the couple of days she had seen us how well we worked together, how much of a team we were. But it went beyond just that, she said. We weren't just a team, we were a family. I'd never thought of it that way. I never consciously set out to make it that way. But she was right. We are a family. Solaris is our baby. We're justifiably proud of it. And just like a baby, it's growing in ways we couldn't possibly have imagined. That's the true power of family. And we learned about it by traveling six thousand miles or more so we could be together with our extended family in Beijing.
What will I remember most about this trip? Certainly there was great sightseeing. Our luck held beyond belief: almost every sightseeing day was dry (or at least as dry as it gets in Beijing this time of year). The rainy days corresponded almost exactly to business days. That said, it was hot, humid and smoggy even on the nicest days. Our climb of the Great Wall of China was grueling. We probably all lost 10 pounds of water weight that day. But it was worth it. Overall, most of us toured the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Lama Temple, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and a traditional “hutong” residence. We saw “Beijing Opera” – more like Vaudeville or Vegas than what Westerners would think of opera – and Chinese acrobatics. We had more Chinese banquets than we could count.
Oh, and we shopped. And shopped. And shopped. And still spent a lot less than we probably would have in a single day in London or Paris. We found a great tailor. We bought pearls and bracelets. A few knockoffs, but mostly local products from local artisans.
For me and my staff, though, this was first and foremost a business trip, and we did a lot of business. We met the local staff, had two all-hands meetings, worked to integrate the Java Desktop System group into my team, and did all the usual things you do at an offsite meeting: project reviews, financial reviews, strategy sessions. We learned about culture, about language, about the challenges of being remote from headquarters, about how to work better together. On Friday Sin-Yaw Wang, the new vice president of our R&D center in Beijing and I met the local press. We had lunch with a prominent member of the Chinese computer science community and a great customer visit to discuss OpenSolaris (no, sorry, I won't tell you who they were). Some members of my staff will be staying on in Beijing for a few more days to meet with additional customers. Unfortunately my family and I had to return home as my son Ben starts football practice on Monday.
And speaking of family, that's what I will remember most about this trip. Spending time with my family. Both my personal family and my extended family at work. I know this sounds corny, but bear with me. One of the things I observed to my team early in our meetings last week was how closely they work as a team, how well they get along, how little “sibling rivalry” there is – in short, how great a team they are. I noted that this was observed not just by me, but by every human resources business partner we've had over the past year or so.
What I'd always thought I'd heard was how much of a team my staff is, and I thought that was pretty good. But on Friday night it really crystallized for me. We were all at the home of Mike and Linda Hayden. Mike has just started a two year expat assignment in Beijing. Our new local human resources partner joined us, along with all of my staff, Sin-Yaw, and all of the family members who had come along with us or live in Beijing. What she said totally changed my thinking. She, too, had observed just in the couple of days she had seen us how well we worked together, how much of a team we were. But it went beyond just that, she said. We weren't just a team, we were a family. I'd never thought of it that way. I never consciously set out to make it that way. But she was right. We are a family. Solaris is our baby. We're justifiably proud of it. And just like a baby, it's growing in ways we couldn't possibly have imagined. That's the true power of family. And we learned about it by traveling six thousand miles or more so we could be together with our extended family in Beijing.
Tuesday August 02, 2005 Today I'm off to Beijing, where Sun has a large and growing
engineering
center. My team there now includes more than 150 people, and this
will be my third trip to Beijing this year. What's different
about this trip is that I'm bringing my entire staff
with me. Why? Because to develop and grow a site six
thousand miles and sixteen time zones away from headquarters requires
significant investment and dedication to success. Giving my staff
the chance to meet the engineers and managers at the site, and vice
versa, is an important step in bringing Beijing virtually closer to
Menlo Park. We're very excited about the opportunities in
China. Our Beijing Engineering and Research Institute will play a
large part in helping us develop those opportunities
Stay tuned. I suspect you'll see some blogs from Beijing.
Stay tuned. I suspect you'll see some blogs from Beijing.
Tuesday June 14, 2005 Well, after all, you never know on a day like this how things are going to go. So far, so good, though. OpenSolaris is still up and running and open for business! Go there to get this
and other cool OpenSolaris stuff.
Even the nice folks on slashdot are saying mostly good things about us.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
It's Alive
Today's release of the OpenSolaris source code culminates years of effort. Everyone always asks why it took so long. It's simple, really: Solaris is big, and has been in development for more than 20 years. Going back and finding the provenance of every line of code in Solaris was, to put it mildly, hard. Whenever we found code that belonged to someone else we either had to get their approval to release it as open source (assuming they still existed and we could find them), find an alternative, rewrite it, or decide to release it as binary only. When you see the size of the OpenSolaris source you'll understand how massive an effort this was. I hope you'll be as grateful to the Solaris engineers as I am for doing this tedious but very necessary work.
Once we had the code figured out, we had to provide a way to build it. This meant putting tools, documentation, websites, and so forth together. It wasn't just a matter of using the same toolset we use internally to bulid Solaris, because OpenSolaris will require a combination of source and binary files to build. So the build tools must allow people to do that. And there was the question of compilers. There was a big internal debate between gcc and the Sun Studio tools. In the end we decided to support both, hoping to accomodate as many developers as possible.
Let's not forget the licensing question, either. Although we resolved this some months ago with the release of the CDDL, it took us a long time to get to that point. Lots of people were involved, from engineers to lawyers to executives. As you might imagine, with something this big and this important, we had to get approval from Sun's board of directors. All of this took time to work through, but the dedication and commitment of the CDDL team made it happen in the end.
In some ways it's hard to believe that we're finally here. I certainly wasn't an original proponent of open sourcing Solaris. I was constantly asking, "What's the business case? What are we trying to accomplish?" Over time the answer became clear: extend the reach of Solaris. Build a broad, strong community. Make it easy for people to get access to an enterprise-class open source operating system. And, yes, lead people to Sun's portfolio of systems, software and services. We're not going to be bashful about the fact that Sun is in business to make a profit. We hope and expect that OpenSolaris will generate opportunity for all members of the OpenSolaris community.
I'm incredibly proud of the OpenSolaris team for delivering on something many people thought impossible. If you're one of those, all I have to say is, take a look at the code. See for yourself if you think we delivered on our commitment. Either way, please let us know. We'll do everything we can to respond to your comments and concerns.
That's all I have to say today, because I want you to spend your time communing with the engineers - the real stars of the show. Still, if there's something you think I can help you with, as always feel free to drop me a line.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Thursday June 02, 2005 We continue to make great progress in providing wider device support for Solaris on x86/x64. The latest example is the availability of accelerated 3D NVIDIA graphics drivers.
You can find them on the NVIDIA website. We'll get them rolled into a Solaris 10 update as soon as we can. Obviously these drivers work only with NVIDIA graphics chips, which are the ones used in Sun's workstations. These drivers are officially supported on the Quadro series of devices, although we've heard that many people have had success using them with GeForce chipsets as well.
If like me you'd like to see accelerated drivers on other chipsets (such as the ATI chips used in my Acer Ferrari laptop), please drop the vendors a line.
In the meantime, a big thanks to the team at Sun and NVIDIA who made this happen!
Technorati Tag: Solaris
You can find them on the NVIDIA website. We'll get them rolled into a Solaris 10 update as soon as we can. Obviously these drivers work only with NVIDIA graphics chips, which are the ones used in Sun's workstations. These drivers are officially supported on the Quadro series of devices, although we've heard that many people have had success using them with GeForce chipsets as well.
If like me you'd like to see accelerated drivers on other chipsets (such as the ATI chips used in my Acer Ferrari laptop), please drop the vendors a line.
In the meantime, a big thanks to the team at Sun and NVIDIA who made this happen!
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Tuesday May 31, 2005 With all this car talk on my blog, you might think I was a car nut. I don't think of myself that way, although as I've said before my son Ben is. So when my wife and daughter went away for the weekend, when I asked Ben what he wanted to do of course the answer was, "Dad, let's look at cars!"
We'd been talking about getting a cute little weekend car, you know, one of those just-for-fun things, for a while. Still, when Ben and I started looking around I wasn't expecting to actually buy one.
The first car we drove was a Honda S2000. Really cute, great value, phenomenal shifter. Okay, I started to think seriously that I might buy something.
Next was the new Mustang GT convertible. Returning the pony car to its roots. Fun to drive, but being so brand new and in demand, the dealers weren't dealing. So let's keep looking. Tomorrow we'll check out the Porsche Boxster and the Lotus Elise. Not that I expected to buy one of those, but what the heck. Costs nothing to try it. And Ben was really hot for the Elise.
Call the Lotus dealer across the bay. He's in a meeting. Leave him a message telling him we want to test drive an Elise. Oddly, he doesn't call us back, but we trek over there anyway. They have two on the floor. This looks promising. But a test drive?
"Oh, no, we couldn't possibly do that. This car is on allocation, and the buyers want the odometer to read as close to zero as possible."
Bring down the $10K dealer markup?
"With the demand for these cars? Oh, no, sir, no way. But let me show you the Krypton Green one in the garage."
You mean you have not two, but three of them?
No, actually they have four. More promising all the time. Take a look at the green one.
"Would you like to see it in the light?"
Sure, why not. Costs nothing to look. Out from the garage it comes. It's really bright.
"Go ahead, sit in it."
"I still need to drive it to buy it."
"Oh, no, we couldn't do that." Nevertheless, it's time to drag out the hoary old car dealer's line. You know: "What can I do to get you to buy this car today?"
Well, we can start by getting rid of that dealer markup.
"Okay, I'll bring it down by $2,000."
"Ummm..."
"$5,000."
"Ummm..."
"Okay, you seem like a sincere guy. You can have it for sticker if you buy it today."
"I still need to see if I can actually drive it. It is a bit extreme, you know."
"How about to the end of the block and back?"
So I did drive it to the end of the block and back, and now I drive it to work and back. At least, when it's not raining. No, I didn't go with that crazy green. It's a nice subdued metallic black. If you can call anything about this car subdued.
Never did get around to test driving the Porsche. It may not be a Ferrari, but it sure is fun. Oh, yeah, and my wife likes it too :-)
We'd been talking about getting a cute little weekend car, you know, one of those just-for-fun things, for a while. Still, when Ben and I started looking around I wasn't expecting to actually buy one.
The first car we drove was a Honda S2000. Really cute, great value, phenomenal shifter. Okay, I started to think seriously that I might buy something.
Next was the new Mustang GT convertible. Returning the pony car to its roots. Fun to drive, but being so brand new and in demand, the dealers weren't dealing. So let's keep looking. Tomorrow we'll check out the Porsche Boxster and the Lotus Elise. Not that I expected to buy one of those, but what the heck. Costs nothing to try it. And Ben was really hot for the Elise.
Call the Lotus dealer across the bay. He's in a meeting. Leave him a message telling him we want to test drive an Elise. Oddly, he doesn't call us back, but we trek over there anyway. They have two on the floor. This looks promising. But a test drive?
"Oh, no, we couldn't possibly do that. This car is on allocation, and the buyers want the odometer to read as close to zero as possible."
Bring down the $10K dealer markup?
"With the demand for these cars? Oh, no, sir, no way. But let me show you the Krypton Green one in the garage."
You mean you have not two, but three of them?
No, actually they have four. More promising all the time. Take a look at the green one.
"Would you like to see it in the light?"
Sure, why not. Costs nothing to look. Out from the garage it comes. It's really bright.
"Go ahead, sit in it."
"I still need to drive it to buy it."
"Oh, no, we couldn't do that." Nevertheless, it's time to drag out the hoary old car dealer's line. You know: "What can I do to get you to buy this car today?"
Well, we can start by getting rid of that dealer markup.
"Okay, I'll bring it down by $2,000."
"Ummm..."
"$5,000."
"Ummm..."
"Okay, you seem like a sincere guy. You can have it for sticker if you buy it today."
"I still need to see if I can actually drive it. It is a bit extreme, you know."
"How about to the end of the block and back?"
So I did drive it to the end of the block and back, and now I drive it to work and back. At least, when it's not raining. No, I didn't go with that crazy green. It's a nice subdued metallic black. If you can call anything about this car subdued.
Never did get around to test driving the Porsche. It may not be a Ferrari, but it sure is fun. Oh, yeah, and my wife likes it too :-)
Saturday April 02, 2005 Last week, I was asked by Forsythe, a Sun iForce partner, to present on Solaris 10 for some mutual customers. Sounds like a normal, boring business trip, right? And since I was supposed to be on vacation this week, I wasn't inclined to go. Until I found out that the presentation would be done at the inaugural Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (Florida)! My son Ben the car nut and I packed up and flew to Florida on Thursday. Unfortunately he's on spring break and has to be back at school on Monday, so we couldn't stay for the actual race on Sunday. But we did get to see practice and qualifying on Friday. Forsythe is a sponsor of two of the cars on the Andretti-Green racing team: Bryan Herta (#7) and Dario Franchitti (#27). Forsythe had a great suite right above the finish line where we could get a fantastic view not only of the main straightaway but of large portions of the track. Thursday night before the meeting we got to meet Bryan and Dario, had our pictures taken with them and got autographs. Today, Bryan won the pole! How cool is it that Ben has an autographed picture of the pole-sitter? The only cooler thing would be if Bryan or Dario won the race. Well, except for getting pit passes and having our pictures taken with both Michael and Mario Andretti.
Ben and me with Michael Andretti.
Ben and me with Mario Andretti.
I guess we must be good luck: Michael's son Marco won the pole for the Menards Infiniti Pro Series Grand Prix that's being held along with the IRL race and an SCCA race.
[Update: Marco won the race! Dario and Bryan finished third and fourth, part of an Andretti-Green racing team sweep of the top four spots.]
So what does this have to do with Solaris 10, you ask? How about having Forsythe banners all around the track, including near the finish line and on a bridge over the track? You know, like the Firestone or Michelin banners you normally see at races? And guess what they're advertising? That's right: Solaris 10. All over the track. At a car race.
Bryan Herta's car is in front of the banner. Dario Franchitti's car is on the monitor. How's that for timing?
Operating systems don't matter? Solaris doesn't have a community (we're past a million Solaris 10 licenses, you know)? We're quickly obliterating so many of the preconceived notions about Solaris. Watch us run. Just like the Indy cars this week, we're fast, we're precise, and we're making a lot of noise!
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Ben and me with Michael Andretti.
Ben and me with Mario Andretti.
I guess we must be good luck: Michael's son Marco won the pole for the Menards Infiniti Pro Series Grand Prix that's being held along with the IRL race and an SCCA race.
[Update: Marco won the race! Dario and Bryan finished third and fourth, part of an Andretti-Green racing team sweep of the top four spots.]
So what does this have to do with Solaris 10, you ask? How about having Forsythe banners all around the track, including near the finish line and on a bridge over the track? You know, like the Firestone or Michelin banners you normally see at races? And guess what they're advertising? That's right: Solaris 10. All over the track. At a car race.
Bryan Herta's car is in front of the banner. Dario Franchitti's car is on the monitor. How's that for timing?
Operating systems don't matter? Solaris doesn't have a community (we're past a million Solaris 10 licenses, you know)? We're quickly obliterating so many of the preconceived notions about Solaris. Watch us run. Just like the Indy cars this week, we're fast, we're precise, and we're making a lot of noise!
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Wednesday January 26, 2005 By now you probably know we've officially launched OpenSolaris. Maybe you've looked at our website, opensolaris.org. Maybe you've downloaded the DTrace code we released yesterday. Or perhaps you've come to my blog from the website. If so, welcome to the OpenSolaris community! We've tried really hard to make OpenSolaris as open as we possibly can. We're incredibly enthusiastic about the OSI-approved CDDL license, what it enables members of the community to do, and the intellectual property protection it provides to community members large and small. My team is working feverishly to get the Solaris source ready for general release as buildable source in the second quarter of this year. The minute it's ready we'll make it available, and when we do, look out! There's no telling where this may lead.
So, stay tuned, take a look at the website and follow the blogs, and join the community behind the most advanced operating system on the planet!
So, stay tuned, take a look at the website and follow the blogs, and join the community behind the most advanced operating system on the planet!
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Friday October 08, 2004
Yes, I'm now the proud owner of a bright red Ferrari. And what they say is true - it turns heads wherever I go. When I walk into the room with it, everyone gathers round to gawk, marvel over the paint job, ask how I like it - and how much it cost.
What's that? You're confused about me walking with my Ferrari into a room? Oh, you thought I was talking about a car. No, sorry - it's a laptop. An Acer Ferrari 3200 laptop, to be precise. It really is Ferrari red. I love it. It costs about two orders of magnitude less than the car.
Okay, big deal. Aside from the color and the logo, what's so cool about that? It's running Solaris 10, 64-bit, that's what!
Coming soon to a Solaris Express release near you.
I love my job :-)
Update to Ferrari support status, 22 December 2004
64-bit support is available in the 11/04 release of Solaris Express.
The Ethernet driver was integrated into Solaris 10 subsequent to that and will be included in the 01/05 release of Solaris Express. Of course the driver will be available in Solaris 10 when it is formally released as well.
I'm not sure about the audio driver. I'll have to check on that. If it isn't integrated yet it will be formally available in the first update of Solaris 10, and we'll try to make it available in a patch as soon as possible.
Things that definitely aren't there yet, unfortunately, are wireless support (call Broadcom and tell them to give us the specs!) and Bluetooth support (the warning messages you see during boot are related to Bluetooth). Official power management support won't be available until the second update of Solaris 10. We do have some internal hacks, though, and I'll see if we can't make those available to the community on an as-is basis. Same goes for scrolling and button support for the touchpad.
Full accelerated frame buffer support will have to wait until ATI joins NVIDIA in providing Solaris drivers. (We recently received the first Alpha drop from NVIDIA and it looks pretty darn cool! Accelerated NVIDIA drivers will be available for download in the Solaris 10 GA timeframe.) In the meantime the Xorg drivers work fine, albeit not with all the bells and whistles.
Finally, you'll probably start to see some nifty toys for Ferraris appear soon, as we've outfitted all 55 of Sun's "OS Ambassadors" with Ferrari 3400s, and they love to tinker!
If you have additional questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line.
What's that? You're confused about me walking with my Ferrari into a room? Oh, you thought I was talking about a car. No, sorry - it's a laptop. An Acer Ferrari 3200 laptop, to be precise. It really is Ferrari red. I love it. It costs about two orders of magnitude less than the car.
Okay, big deal. Aside from the color and the logo, what's so cool about that? It's running Solaris 10, 64-bit, that's what!
Coming soon to a Solaris Express release near you.
I love my job :-)
Update to Ferrari support status, 22 December 2004
64-bit support is available in the 11/04 release of Solaris Express.
The Ethernet driver was integrated into Solaris 10 subsequent to that and will be included in the 01/05 release of Solaris Express. Of course the driver will be available in Solaris 10 when it is formally released as well.
I'm not sure about the audio driver. I'll have to check on that. If it isn't integrated yet it will be formally available in the first update of Solaris 10, and we'll try to make it available in a patch as soon as possible.
Things that definitely aren't there yet, unfortunately, are wireless support (call Broadcom and tell them to give us the specs!) and Bluetooth support (the warning messages you see during boot are related to Bluetooth). Official power management support won't be available until the second update of Solaris 10. We do have some internal hacks, though, and I'll see if we can't make those available to the community on an as-is basis. Same goes for scrolling and button support for the touchpad.
Full accelerated frame buffer support will have to wait until ATI joins NVIDIA in providing Solaris drivers. (We recently received the first Alpha drop from NVIDIA and it looks pretty darn cool! Accelerated NVIDIA drivers will be available for download in the Solaris 10 GA timeframe.) In the meantime the Xorg drivers work fine, albeit not with all the bells and whistles.
Finally, you'll probably start to see some nifty toys for Ferraris appear soon, as we've outfitted all 55 of Sun's "OS Ambassadors" with Ferrari 3400s, and they love to tinker!
If you have additional questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line.
Tuesday September 14, 2004 Today is the Sun Open Source Summit. Over 200 Sun engineers (including a whole bunch of Solaris developers) getting together with each other and a host of outside community members to talk about open source software. Despite this, and everything else we've done both recently and over the years, there are not just unbelievers but apparently genuine cynics out there. People who don't believe that we could possibly "really" open source Solaris, and that if we do there will be some catch, some incredibly evil ulterior motive we must be hiding. It just blows me away that people think this. They obviously don't understand Sun or how Sun works. Worse for me, they clearly have no idea of who the people at Sun are. I couldn't hold my engineers back even if I wanted to, and I certainly don't want to.
Bottom line: we are going to open source Solaris. Really. My engineering team believes in this. Really. We are about to start our pilot program. Really. (Sorry, it's full.) Are we done? Not yet. Can we tell you more? Not yet. But it will happen.
You can believe it, or not.
Bottom line: we are going to open source Solaris. Really. My engineering team believes in this. Really. We are about to start our pilot program. Really. (Sorry, it's full.) Are we done? Not yet. Can we tell you more? Not yet. But it will happen.
You can believe it, or not.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag: Solaris
Monday August 16, 2004
Hey, today's my birthday, and my wonderful staff threw me a surprise party. So this is just a simple thank you to them.
I know you're all waiting with baited breath for more information on Open Source Solaris, as well as what's coming in Solaris 10 (not that my folks aren't giving you all that good stuff already in their blogs). As much as I'd like to give you more, it won't be here today. There's just too much to do, and today it revolves around family: tonight I go with my son to high school football orientation. Wow - son, high school, and football - there are three words I never thought about seeing together!
Oh, heck, I'll throw out one more thing: we're working feverishly to get that Solaris Power demo ready for Jonathan ;-) Stay tuned - there's definitely more to come.
I know you're all waiting with baited breath for more information on Open Source Solaris, as well as what's coming in Solaris 10 (not that my folks aren't giving you all that good stuff already in their blogs). As much as I'd like to give you more, it won't be here today. There's just too much to do, and today it revolves around family: tonight I go with my son to high school football orientation. Wow - son, high school, and football - there are three words I never thought about seeing together!
Oh, heck, I'll throw out one more thing: we're working feverishly to get that Solaris Power demo ready for Jonathan ;-) Stay tuned - there's definitely more to come.
Friday July 30, 2004
So here I am, a newly minted Vice President, trying to figure out what to do with this crazy thing called a blog. I mean, I've been developing and using software for 30 years now, but I'm by no means of the generation where blogs come naturally. So maybe you can tell me - what would you like to know about what we're doing at Sun, particularly in the operating systems space that I'm responsible for?
Perhaps starting out with a few words about me and my organization would help. I've been with Sun for 15 years, mostly in software engineering management and most of that in Sun's hardware division. I did a three year stint in marketing before joining the Solaris organization in November, 2001. Just this past June I was named Vice President of the Operating Platforms Group, responsible for operating systems at Sun - both Solaris and Linux. My team - and you know a lot of them - built all the cool stuff coming in Solaris 10. We're also the folks figuring out how to deliver open source Solaris, and I'm sure lots of you will want to know more about that. So, let me know what you think, and what you want to know. Don't be shy - drop me a line. And help me figure out this crazy thing.
Perhaps starting out with a few words about me and my organization would help. I've been with Sun for 15 years, mostly in software engineering management and most of that in Sun's hardware division. I did a three year stint in marketing before joining the Solaris organization in November, 2001. Just this past June I was named Vice President of the Operating Platforms Group, responsible for operating systems at Sun - both Solaris and Linux. My team - and you know a lot of them - built all the cool stuff coming in Solaris 10. We're also the folks figuring out how to deliver open source Solaris, and I'm sure lots of you will want to know more about that. So, let me know what you think, and what you want to know. Don't be shy - drop me a line. And help me figure out this crazy thing.