My Experiments with OpenSource Kumar Abhishek's Weblog

I got a secret to share When everyone around the globe was impatiently waiting for OpenSolaris 2008.05 to release, on April 13, 2008, we at GLOSS got lucky!! Thanks to Micheline and Charlie, I could obtain a copy of OpenSolaris Release Candidate 0!!! Yes! we were one of the first one's to see OpenSolaris 2008.05 (exactly the way you see a baby through the ultrasound ) and we got our hands on RC0 before any other group outside Sun And then how could we wait to find out how the new desto has come out!! We did and we did it with lots of passion and zeal. 200 students tried their hands on OpenSolaris RC0, and even though RC0 only had the skeleton, (like there were no images during installation, but only the ImagePlaceHolder label was there!) everyone was deeply impressed with the ease with which they could install the distro. We collected the feedbacks towards the end of the test drive and by running through the feedback forms I we knew what the everyday user of OpenSolaris 2008.05 would like and what more they would expect! Angad did a similar thing at his campus in a very innovative way! His blog about this virtual install fest of RC0 is a must-see.

As I told you, it was a matter of pride for us to see and test OpenSolaris RC0 and everyone was overjoyed after we were done. Here is one clip which one of us shot..

I guess it will give you an idea of how passionate we, at GLOSS, feel about OpenSolaris!

Technorati Profile

GLOSS has its newsletter out!!!!

The past academic year was very eventful at GLOSS and we decided to put the major events in form of a newsletter. So here we are, with the first issue of OpenView ! Get your copy here!

I deeply apperciate the efforts put in by  Harish,who was instrumental in designing the Newsletter. Efforts put in by Sanjeev, Abhilash and Vikas has also been very significant. Good work guys!

Do let us know how you found OpenView and things happening at SASTRA! Cheers!

Everyone was celebrating the release of OpenSolaris on May 5th, and at GLOSS, we have been busy planning the same for quite some time.. It was no doubt one of the most awaited event since Project Indiana was declared. So.. as I told everyone before.. we celebrated May 5th as Opensolaris Birthday... There was cake.. there was decorations.. there were people with celebration mood and there was the latest Technology!!!

 

Thanks to my folks at GLOSS who made this celebration possible, even though from next day on we were having our final exams! (Now I think you know why this post came so late ) Watch the video and enjoy the power of communities!

Opensolaris is a powerful Operating System and Intel Xeon is no doubt one of the most powerful x86 server platform! Now, in the poweful community of Opensolaris there are some serious work going on towards optimizing this powerful Operating System on powerful Xeon so that we can cut down on Power Consumption.. If too much of "Power" has left you confused then go ahead and watch this video in which (Intel) Dave talks about the on-going efforts of optimizing Opensolaris on Xeon.

He also explains some of the cool internals of relationship between power consumption and operating system. Thanks to Terri for bringing this video to me. Check this video out and find out more on whats happening at Opensolaris.org!

OpenSolaris is creating lots of buzz everywhere! With so many people egarly waiting to know whats new with OpenSolaris, a small talk from the "inside men" was very much needed! Thanks to Terri Wischmann, who spoke to Dr. Stephen Hahn and Tim Cramer about whats happening at the OpenSolaris camp and got us an exciting inside scoop on it.

Both Dr. Hahn and Tim Cramer are no less than a celebrity in OpenSolaris community and now that Terri gets to interview them one on one and enjoy the OpenSolaris Bash at the CommunityOne, don't you agree that I have enough reason to feel jealous of her!!

Anyways... if you find yourself exactly in my position where you are missing CommunityOne because you can not be there in San Francisco on May 5th, then do what I am doing to be a part of celebration... Read Terri's Blog, hook on to the CommunityOne site, grab a copy of OpenSolaris latest release candidate and pray to god that you get to be there for the next CommunityOne!!

May 5th is going to be such a happening date that you might get dazzled! First and foremost, of course, its because May 5th is Birthday of OpenSolaris!! But then OpenSolaris is coming out on the occasion of the CommunityOne which itself is one of the most important events in the OpenSource Calender! 

There is one place where you can catch up with everything which is going to happen on May 5th. Thanks to Terri Wischmann, who is soon going to write all about what is happening on May 5th and beyond... giving us the plug-point to all the buzz of May 5th. Visit her blog 'The Open Waters' where she will be updating (rather unleashing) everything about May 5th. So don't miss out on all the excitement and make sure you keep yourself updated on the most happening day of this year which would be... no points for guessing.. MAY 5th!

May 5th is the most sought after day in this calender year! And do I need to tell you why is that?? Its Birthday of Opensolaris!! On May 5th, the much awaited Project Indiana will mature and would come out in open as the brand new OPEN SOLARIS!!

Me along with my folks at GLOSS are going to celebrate this in a big way!! We have long plans for this day... Even though we will be having exams going on (needless to say, *exams* are the most dreaded *things* in a student's life ) we have planned to celebrate the Opensolaris B'day in style! The agenda for the day is:

• Put up 5 Laptops with placards which would read "Convert your CD
  into Souvenir"
• Cut a Birthday Cake in name of Opensolaris 
  
• Do a small presentation on new features of Opensolaris
• Have Lunch together
• Do a installation demo
  
• At the end, invite students to come up and give a talk on what they
  feel about future of Opensolaris
• Promise "Opensolaris" that we will work towards "Rearing it To
  become the Best Desktop OS"!
  

Everyone at GLOSS is excited about this! After all.. OpenSolaris is "OUR OWN" Operating System and we want to be nice "Uncle GLOSS" and we want to take good care of the new kid!!! Its all in the family you see

On 6th of March 2008, I addressed the largest crowd I had ever done before!! It was more than 2000 students who turned up for the Sun University Day at SRM University Chennai. K. Nageshwara Rao, who is Site Lead of India Engineering Center (IEC) Bangalore was the chief guest for the event. He was accompanied by Ganesh and senior professors from SRM. Those who don't know, Ganesh Hiregoudar manages the Sun CA program for the APAC region.

 A very informative keynote was given by KNR and I followed with my presentation on Education 3.0 and Immersive Education. Then Anil came up with his brilliant Robot, which he made on top of Sun SPOTs. "Babu Rao" as we call the robot is indeed an example of sheer power which Sun SPOTs can bring to the hands of developers! It was amazing!!

It was a lovely experience sharing my learnings at WWERC 08 with 2000 students! Knowledge has been growing exponentially and we are about to hit the threshold limit of learning posed due to physical restrictions... But then.. earlier in the history when we faced the limitation of "no printed books", Gutenburg did the trick.. in this age.. Immersive techniques like Project Wonderland is going to come for our rescue!!