SE Thought

Ian Murdock to share at National University Singapore The Singapore User Groups is certainly excited to have Ian in Singapore, even it's only for less than a day.

 

One of his appointment to share with NUS students. We email 4000 computer science students, so hopefully a good number turned up.

Instead of talking Indiana, we decided to choose a topic that is more appropriate to the audience (most of them probably don't even know Solaris well).

Here is the content of the email invitation:

You are cordially invited to join Ian Murdock as he shares with us his journey from pursuing a Computer Science Degree in Purdue University, founding of the Debian project, and his becoming one of the most prominent and respected member of the open source community.
Ian will also share with us his insights into what lies ahead for Linux and OpenSolaris.

I think it's a great topic, and I hope it will appeal to the students (under-grad and post-grad).  

More details can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19685797200 

Sun Marketing has been a great help. Our partner Zara Technology will also be helping tomorrow. 

 

(2007-10-23 03:50:16.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Will Solaris run on my hardware? I found this simple tool that helps me test the compatibility of Solaris on Dell Inspiron 8500. It's quite interesting to see that the tool even tell which Solaris 10 (e.g. Update 2) is required!

I documented my experience (and an error I encountered, which was promptly addressed by our China team) at http://www.singanix.org/bb/viewtopic.php?p=96#96

============ copy from the tool home page ================
Sun Device Detection Tool can tell you in just a couple of minutes whether the Solaris OS supports the devices that are detected in your x86 system.
Sun Device Detection Tool produces a table that shows whether a Solaris driver is available for each device the tool detects. The table tells you whether the driver is built in to the Solaris OS or whether a third-party driver is available.
Source: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.html
(2006-10-30 06:36:52.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Notes: extending battery life in notebook This is more of a notes to myself.
I bought Samsung Q35 notebook. Looking at the manual and FAQ, Samsung said:

• If you charge/discharge the battery repeatedly for only a short time, the battery use time may be reduced by the difference between the actual battery charge and the remaining charge display. Ok, so I must try to fully discharge everytime...
  
• Some third party vendors offer solutions that fully discharge a battery prior to full charging and Samsung recommend such solutions where the battery usage pattern does not allow for a full discharge / charge cycle to carried out. But Samsung does not state which vendors or products it recommends, and I don't know any (I don't need it, as Samsung Q35 has the feature).
  
• After 12 months or 300 charge / discharge cycles, whichever is sooner, Samsung recommends you replace the battery. This is not good. So if you keep the notebook for 3 years, you are supposed to buy battery on month 13 and 25. 3 batteries for 3 years.
• You should not buy the spare the battery too soon. Samsung batteries are warranted for just 15 months from the date of manufacture. not date of purchase. This reminds me of printer catridge.
• The first battery has 1 year warranty. But the second onwards only carry 3 months. It does not explain the reason behind this logic. "Battery's replaced under warranty within the first 12 months will carry the balance of warranty on the original battery, or a period of 3 months, whichever is greater. " Example: Original Battery replaced in month 11 will be warranted until month 14. Battery replaced in month 9 will be warranted until month 12, not until month 21)
• Even if you have 3 year warranty, battery warranty is not included. They follow the above rules.
  
• The notebook provides a Battery Calibration function in the Boot menu. The battery is discharged forcibly. This operation requires 3~5 hours depending on the battery capacity and the remaining battery charge. Interesting. If it's going to take 5 hours to discharge, I might as well let the it run idle until it dies (e.g. stay in BIOS after battery reach very low, don't boot OS so no 'hard' shutdown effect on OS).
  
• Turn off unnecessary device. I know this. But then it lists 1394 as device to be turned off. I wonder why, especially if I don't have firewire device connected to this port.
• Decreasing the LCD brightness by one level extends the battery use time by 3~5% (10~20 minutes). This is interesting. Just 1 bar in the brightness settings give 3-5% of battery life. BTW, if 3% is 10 min this means 3.3 min for 1%, if 5% is 20 minutes this means 4 min for 1%. This means the delta (2%) is beteen 6.6 min and 8 min can't be 10 minutes. I hope Samsung doc writer would be more attentive next time. 3.3 min for 1% gives 330 minutes, or 5:30 hours, which is pretty good.
  
• Published battery life is measured using full power management features. After 3 months of normal operation the battery's performance will start to degrade slightly, but even after 300 charge and discharge cycles the battery should still perform to 60% of its original life expectancy.

The manuals and FAQ can be found here:
1. http://www.samsungpc.com/products/q35/q35_manuals.htm
2.http://www.samsungpc.com/top_faq/8_faqanswer_understandingbattery.htm
(2006-09-01 08:27:05.0) Permalink Comments [5]

Singanix A group of us have made a baby step to develop Singanix.

Below was a summary of the email that kinda summarised our first meeting 1+ month ago...

It's called Singanix as the idea was born in Singapore Solaris User Group. But it's of course open to all. After all, it's one global village indeed.

So do drop by at www.singanix.org. Most importantly, join us at http://www.singanix.org/bb/profile.php?mode=register

==========
Singanix is a lean but cool OS. It differs to Solaris or OpenSolaris in the following manner:
1. It has 1 CD, not 5.
2. It's for end users, not servers. It targets Sun Ray, notebooks, desktops. It has drivers, utilities, etc for end users.
3. It still has items that makes Solaris cool: zones, zfs, dtrace, smf...
4. It's based on lightweight UI (e.g. xfce), not gnome. My apology if I hurt some gnome/jds folks (my personal preference is enlightenment).
5. It's cool looking. People would ask "what OS is this?"
6. Instead of building on top of the kernel, we would dive inside and make it slim. This differentiates it from other OpenSolaris distros.
7. It has up to date softwares. For example, Firefox 1.5 instead of Mozilla 1.7

Objectives:
1. learn.
2. have fun.
3. make friends with like-minded people.
4. achieve something we all can be proud of.

Explaination on the objectives:
+ we would learn by diving into the kernel. Since the kernel is the OS, let's get to the bottom of it.
+ we would have fun making our OS cool, lean and sexy. I wanna have Miss World 2006 theme please...
+ a common project would encourage greater interaction, instead of 1-way interaction we've had so far... Each of us is interested in OpenSolaris, so might as well make friends and do something together. Folks, we are all adult here, so in this community, it's everyone's responsibility to think how to take our community to the next level.


(2006-08-19 07:09:23.0) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenSource: double standard? I seem to be missing the point here.... Appreciate enlightenment or correction.

In a recent c|net interview, an IBM Senior VP states that there is a risk of open sourcing Power. It could lead to forking or incompatibility.

"You don't want the architecture to not be compatible with itself moving forward," Handy said."

Hmmm.... then why IBM pressures Sun to opensource Java, when there is a risk of compabitility? BTW, the Java source code is actually available, so it's not the source code that IBM is after. So what exactly is IBM after? And why the same agenda can't be applied on Power?

Like I said above, I seem to be missing the fundamental. Correction (supported by facts) would be really appreciated.
(2006-08-17 01:01:02.0) Permalink Comments [0]

First child, second child My wife and I are blessed with 2 children, age 4.5 and 2-. Both are girls, beautiful, smart, cute, funny, healthy, tall and naturally naughty (in a funny way). We named both Mary, in 2 different languages. Until today, I still feel that they are fedex-ed directly by the Creator from Heaven. They are not just CRS, but CRS with a lot of extra stuff thrown in (except the manuals).
Before my second was born, I knew that she will equally good, but yet different. In my language as IT Architect, she will be same "great architecture, but different design, and equally beautiful solution". The Creator certainly is master in what He is doing.

First Child (Marie)	Second Child (Marielle)
Beautiful eyes. Calm and round	Beautiful eyes. Sharp and less round
I'm afraid she gets bully at school or playground	I'm afraid she bully other kids
Fussy eater, but can be persuaded or outwit-ed. Even at 4.5, I can still outwit her	Not fussy eater. But if she does not, no amount of trick will work :-)
At 15 months, said a few words, but most of them I could understand.	At 15 months, said lots of words, but most of them I don't understand. She just babble non stop
Daddy's girl	Mommy's girl
Took time to adjust to new environment	Took little time
Rarely cry (in her younger years, before 21 months)	Cry at least once a day, because she is not getting what she wants
Did not put things to her mouth	Eat things that look like food to her.
Round chin	Sharp chin
Straight hair	Curly hair
Fair (white) skin	Darker skin
Teeth grew slowly	Teeth grew very fast
Did not crawl. Walk straight	Crawl a lot first.

It's a privilege indeed to experience first hand that 2 little being can be similar yet so different.
(2006-08-14 05:34:23.0) Permalink Comments [1]

OpenSolaris and pre-sales As some of you know, I'm a pre-sales in Sun Singapore. To my customers, I represent Sun, and certainly I got my fair shares of Solaris questions. I've lost count how many times I've presented and discussed Solaris with customers. OpenSolaris, or specifically, the opening of Solaris to anyone out there and the building of the community, have helped me in many ways.

Here are just some:
1. More technical materials are available, be it from forum or blog. Instead of searching onestop and the various intranet sites, now I just go to blogs.sun.com and opensolaris.org. And of course, now I can do Google.

2. More updated materials are available. Before, we only have internal mailing list. Now blogs and opensolaris complement this.

3. More roadmap info is available. This is important for pre-sales, as customers like to know the future so they can plan properly. Nobody likes negative surprise in enterprise architecture.

4. More avenues to ask questions. Before, all we had was internal mailing list.

5. Direct access of information by customers. I've been encouraging my customers to subscribe direct (RSS) to the key engineers blogs, participate in the forum and be part of the community.

6. More documentation on source code. So far, taking parts of source codes to explain the 'under the hood' stuff has been appreciated by customers. The source code is as good as it gets.

7. More information about who actually write which parts of Solaris. With Solaris engineers blogging their work, we know exactly what they are working on. So we know with certainty who knows which part of Solaris very well. Before, they were just names-in-the-mailing-list to me.


The opening of the source code also helps me to push Solaris to customers who value openness and transparency. It also helps as assurance to customers that they have choice beyond Sun hardware. In fact, one major customer has run Solaris on HP servers and very happy with it. We are now talking to them on support contract. 2 years ago, I didn't even dream on this stuff.

The cycle continues. The more these customers learn and appreciate Solaris, the more they use it. Some have begun the process of making it the standard OS. The more they use it, the more information they want, the better they know Solaris, and eventually they would participate and contribute information. And I see that win-win.

With that, Happy Birthday OpenSolaris! Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris (2006-06-17 09:52:47.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Changes in Sun I'm amazed at how fast time flies. Since my first blog, it's been 1+ year. A lot of positive development (sure, there are negative ones. You'd expect a few in a 30000-strong company), which makes me feel more confident and happy about the company I'm with. Hopefully the stock will go up :-)

Now, this is just a view from an SE (System Engineer) or ITA (IT Architect). I've no reportee, so I'm just a node here, so this is a personal opinion from the ground.

Here are some changes that I'm happy about:

• No more "Sparc is slow". I've not got this message for a while now. With US IV+, my customers are pretty happy.
• No more "Sun not serious about X64 or Opteron". My customers begin to accept and mix Sparc and Opteron, so long both run Solaris. This makes it easier for me to architect a solution as I have more choices.
• No more "Solaris 10 is new". Now that my favourite OS been out for almost 1.5 years, my customers have stopped questioning me. In fact, some began telling me that they are comfortable with it, without me asking for it. Now, all my solutions are Solaris 10, unless customers need to run older softwares. No more Solaris 9.
• T2000. It's satisfying to share T2000 and Niagara with customers. I think it's been a long time since we have big lead over other chip.

Tags: Solaris
(2006-04-15 06:40:40.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Anyone blogging from Singapore? Wow... I didn't know it's been that long since my last (it was my first :-) ) blog.

From what I know, very few people are blogging from Sun Singapore. I only know Nathan (PTS).

If you are, drop me a comment. Perhaps we can rally so more people blog on this little red dot.

Tag: Singapore (2006-04-10 08:44:34.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Hello world This is my first posting. I've benefited by reading many good blogs, so I thought it's only fair to start learning about it and hopefully start contributing (just cannot find the bandwidth and it's not really a culture at this part of the world).

A bit about me. I'm an IT Architect supporting Sun partners (the System Providers). Based in this little island of Singapore.

My interest is Solaris & Linux. On the hardware side, I follow the various CPU (Opteron, SPARC, POWER, Itanium).

Ok, that's all for now for first posting. (2004-10-31 06:57:28.0) Permalink Comments [1]