Musings of an OpenSolaris Technical Writing Intern Mark Settle's Mighty Pen

Ubuntu Linux is the most popular “Linux OS” out there, according to at least one unscientific measurement. (Curiously, Solaris makes the 'Linux cut,' placing 54th). In fact, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes argues that Ubuntu is becoming the generic Linux distro. And now, according to Information Week's Serdar Yegulalp, Sun and Ubuntu are cozying up:

Sun's getting ready to provide support for the server flavor of Ubuntu on their small-to-mid-sized server hardware, in conjunction with Canonical. Their existing Linux lineups include Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE, two well-established server players, with Ubuntu Server as the newest addition.

Ubuntu 8.04 is being released in three weeks, and so I checked out the Beta page to find out what's new. Near the bottom of the page, I found details on a new installation interface:

There is a new installation option for Windows users. Wubi allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation. Wubi works with a physical CD or in stand-alone mode, by downloading an appropriate ISO to install from. It can be found on the root of the CD as Wubi.exe. A full installation within a dedicated partition is still recommended, but Wubi is a great way to try Ubuntu for a few days and weeks before committing dedicated disk resources.

My first thought was that improvements to the Ubuntu installation interface merit top-of-page placement, but then again, I'm partial to that kind of thing. My second thought was that being able to install Ubuntu as a standalone program is pretty rad. All of you developers out there, is this doable for OpenSolaris?

I just joined Sun's Facebook network. For those of you who are not part of Facebook, I thought I'd pass along some notes from the social networking underground.

• As of this writing, there are 5,687 members.
• Someone in the Czech Republic is selling a 14-inch television.
• Hugo, Cat of 1000 Faces, Episode 3, Star Wars, is the most recently posted item.
• Sun employees on Facebook list their most popular bands as The Killers, Led Zeppelin, and Depeche Mode.

There's also (believe it or not!) plenty of material that is relevant to Sun. Event invitations have been posted and blogs promoted. A slate of Sun-specific groups are available, including one for IPG. I am its tenth, proud member.

There are myriad types and topics of OpenSolaris documentation. This approach is predicated on the idea that if Sun gives users and developers the power to help steer the documentation ship, we’ll have a better idea of where to go. This makes sense, but it works only if users know where to find a given piece of information.

The OpenSolaris Documentation page is the starting point for many users, and its awfully confusing. Having visited it many times over the last month, I think we can do a better job of helping people drill down to the information they need.

1. The page's layout suggests no obvious path for one’s eye.
2. Visual cues like headlines are too sparse.
3. Some lists are divided by subject, others by audience, and others still by pedagogical tool.

I plan to put some time into thinking about how the site can be adjusted for usability, and will post again once I get the chance to organize my ideas.

UPDATE: it's unfashionable to write about usability without mentioning Steve Jobs. So there you have it. Steve Jobs.

OpenSolaris has one of Sun Microsystem’s most developed user communities. This was evident last night at the monthly Front Range OpenSolaris User’s Group, which drew a few dozen people in Broomfield, Colorado, and many more on the event’s live stream. Video was taken of the event, and should be up soon.

Finally, my last observation about the Get It page:

The site does a good job of describing how to use the commands in Solaris to burn a CD, but many people don't have a Solaris-attached CD burner on hand. I went on the prowl for some Vista-based freeware, but could only find shareware. Some of these utilities won't handle files larger than 300MB, while others don't work after a seven day trial period. Here's the rundown:

• DropToCD
• Magic ISO
• Nero
• PowerISO

Further complicating things, the different ISO programs use slightly different lingo to describe the same processes. Phrases like mapping, writing, imaging and burning seem to be used interchangeably at times, but not at others. I imagine that most users don't have an issue with this step. If possible, we should highlight a preferred utility for burning a LiveCD in XP/Vista/Leopard/Linux and provide further instruction.

Again from the Get It page, comment three:

For users who want to install OpenSolaris in as few steps as possible, the instructions are a bit confusing. If you jump past the “Download the Live CD” and “Try out the LiveCD” headlines, here's what you see:

Install OpenSolaris Developer Preview

Should you like your experience with the OpenSolaris Developer Preview, you may like to install it to your system. You can execute the OpenSolaris installer by clicking on the Install OpenSolaris icon on your desktop. For detailed installation instructions, see OpenSolaris Installation Documentation.

I'd assumed that installation files and Live CD files would be available in separate downloads. It wasn't, so I read the installation section a few times before figuring out that I had to back up and create a Live CD. Perhaps the paragraph could instead read:

Install OpenSolaris Developer Preview

Start by downloading the OpenSolaris Developer Preview Live CD, which contains all necessary installation files. Boot your computer from the Live CD and tinker around a bit. Like what you see? Begin installing OpenSolaris by double-clicking on the Install OpenSolaris icon on your desktop. For more detailed instructions, see OpenSolaris
Installation Documentation.

Here's item number two, from the Get It page:

The BitTorrent download link pulls up gobbledygook in Vista/IE7. But it works in both Firefox and Opera.

I found installing Indiana to be a very straightforward process. In fact, it was much easier than I'd expected it to be. Here is the first of a few observations worth passing on:

The System Requirements page needs a bit more explanation, and the Disk Space row is probably the best example of this.

System Requirements

Disk Space: Recommended size is at least 10 GB.

Is 10GB the minimum amount of space that one needs to comfortably run the Slim Install, or the eventual full package? Is this the amount of space that the OS will physically occupy, or the amount of space it will need to run with some level of ease, accounting for caches and so forth? Let's clarify this a bit further.

A laptop is sitting on my desk, and it's all business.

I'm charged with loading OpenSolaris: Indiana Developer Preview 2 onto the computer's hard drive. I'm following our existing documentation, and if necessary, a pair of dice. Let's dive in!

I'm a part of the install documentation team for Solaris. As a technical writing intern, my job is far less, well, technical, than many of those here. The nuts and bolts and bits and bytes are a bit intimidating, but I'm excited for the challenge.

Clay, my neighbor two doors down, says that I'm in an ideal position to learn this stuff from the floor up. He's right. I just have to climb a lot of stairs. I'm taking a course on UNIX tomorrow, and it won't be my last. The structure of the online components should keep it fun.

I think that it makes sense to develop more and more of these materials. Jonathon Schwartz, please take note!