Alfred Peng's Weblog: The life with OpenSolaris and Mozilla

The Firefox 3.0.1 builds are now available for download here. You can also join desktop dash discuss at opensolaris dot org to get the release notice.The printing should work for the builds.

Thanks all for the feedback. The updated version of Firefox 3.0 contributed builds for Solaris 10 have been uploaded to the Mozilla ftp server: pkgadd tarball.

There are some changes to these builds to compare with the previous:
1. Add "--enable-official-branding" to the build option. Now it's Firefox, not Minefield.
2. Update the font to make Firefox 3.0 consistent with Firefox 2.0 on Solaris 10.
3. Enable jemalloc on Solaris ported by Ginn. It'll decrease the memory footprint for Firefox 3.0.
4. Add "--with-system-jpeg" which should fix the crash issue related to jpeg images.
5. Update the startup script to store the configure files in $HOME/.mozilla/firefox. Now the tarball builds can run on a read-only directory.

Please note that all the glib/atk/cairo/pango/dbus/dbus-glib libraries stay the same in the new builds:
glib 2.14.4
atk 1.20.0
cairo 1.4.12
pango 1.18.3
gtk 2.12.3
dbus 1.1.20
dbus-glib 0.74
The pkgadd users can keep the old ones and just reinstall the Firefox package.

BTW, Ginn's performance patches have been applied:[1] [2]. The performance improvement on SPARC is obvious to me. And the latest Flash Player release 9.0.125.0 has fixed the gmail crash issue.

Any problem, please feel free to raise it up.

Got some questions about the Firefox 3.0 builds for Solaris 10. I think it's good to start a new post to explain it a little bit.
Would like to give some updates for the builds first. The tar ball builds were uploaded, totally four builds are available now(pkgadd: x86/SPARC, tarball: x86/SPARC). All of them were made on Solaris 10 initial release(FCS). So they are supposed to work on all the Solaris 10 and update releases.

Q: What's the different between these four builds and the first binary?
A: The first binary was made on Solaris 10U5 box. I got a suggestion that the builds should be made on the initial release to embrace more Solaris 10 users. So I rebuilt them and uploaded.

Q: I've installed Firefox 2.0 contributed package. Will 3.0 conflict with it?
A: No. The package will install to /opt/sfw/lib/firefox3 and won't conflict with 2.0, which is in /opt/sfw/lib/firefox. And /opt/sfw/bin/firefox is just a symbol link to /opt/sfw/lib/firefox3/firefox. You can always make one yourself.

Q: Some extensions don't work.
A: This is an known issues for Firefox 3.0 across all the platform. I think the extension developers will update their package soon.

Q: Why does the installation directory needs to be writeable for the tar ball release?
A: Please refer to the thread here.

Q: I feel that Firefox 3.0 runs slower on my SPARC box than 2.0.
A: There is an known issue for Firefox 3.0 on SPARC box without Xrender. Ginn has provided a patch to improve this(thanks a lot). My own experience is that the performance has been improved a lot. There might be still posibility to improve.

Q: Is there any FF3.0 feature that could not be made available to the current rel for solaris10?
A: From my experience, all the features should be available for these builds. Please refer to the feature list.

Q: Will this bundle work on OpenSolaris 2008.05?
A: No. All these builds can only work on Solaris 10. We've provided the builds for OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada here.

Q: TJHSST provided another contributed builds. Are both packages basically the same?
A: It's obvious that all the glib/atk... version are different between this contributed builds and the one provided by Sun. So I assume that there are some difference. To know about the detail, we need to get in touch with TJHSST first. But I don't find any contact information. So anyone know about this, please feel free to let me know.

Q: Is Minefield a post-Firefox 3 beta release? Is it based on the beta nightly builds, and thus not fully tested?
A: Actually, the builds Minefield were made from Firefox 3.0 source directly, with only several branding patches(performance improvement for SPARC for example). The reason for switching off the option "--enable-official-branding" is because of the quality concern. I posted the builds before Sun's internal testing and hope for some community feedback. With some users' replies and my own user experience, and also some internal testing(not full functional testing yet), I think the quality is good. Kudos to the Mozilla community.

Q: Is the new Firefox 3 Solaris 10 build(TJHSST) the REAL FX 3 release, fully tested and stable?
A: TJHSST should the right source to get the answer for this.

Q: Has anyone compared these two packages with each other on Solaris 10?
Any opinions on relative stability/functionality? Which do you recommend?
A: No, we don't have a plan to compare these two. You might have a basic idea about the builds provide by Sun. Please raise the questions to desktop dash discuss at opensolaris dot org if you decide to choose it. We'll move the contributed builds to Sun's directory soon.

The Firefox 3.0 contributed builds are finally available for Solaris 10 now(x86 and SPARC), about one week after its official release. Also what's new and a nice flash for the new features introduction.

Due to the dependency on some libraries not included in Solaris 10(legacy GNOME 2.6), the contributed builds have been missing for some time. The contributed builds contain the following list of libraries each besides Firefox 3.0 package:

glib 2.14.4
atk 1.20.0
cairo 1.4.12
pango 1.18.3
gtk 2.12.3
dbus 1.1.20
dbus-glib 0.74

The list above should be the minimal set of libraries that's needed for Firefox 3.0 on Solaris 10. Both of the builds were made on "Solaris 10 3/05 s10_74L2a" with SunStudio 12, CBE 1.6 and gnome 2.20 spec files(with some tweaking). They are supposed to work on all Solaris 10 and update releases.

To follow the contributed Firefox package convention, all the packages will be installed to /opt/sfw directory. Any interests, please download it to a local place, bunzip and pkgadd it. Run "/opt/sfw/bin/firefox" should be fine(or add /opt/sfw/bin to your PATH). I've tried the builds on my "Solaris 10 5/08 s10x_u5wos_10" x86/SPARC boxes here with several extensions, they work fine. Well, it's better to wait for a newer flash plugin release to avoid known crash.

I'm not sure how the qulity exactly is. So any problem, please raise it up. It'll be good to talk about this in desktop dash discuss at opensolaris dot org.

With the help from Songbird guys(preed specifically to make the Songbird 0.6 tag), Songbird 0.6 release builds are available for OpenSolaris.

Among all the new features, I like SHOUTcase the best. Thanks for stevel to work this out! Even two Chinese channels are included in the list. That's pretty cool. The plan is to "allow custom genres, and possibly custom
stations" for future versions. I really love this. Besides the new features, to install the pkg format build will add an entry in the "Sound & Video" category of the start menu. So you can just choose it to launch Songbird. No need to go to command line any more.

If you're interested, don't hesitate to have a try. The x86 builds are made on Solaris Nevada x86 b87 with SunStudio 11. It also sings on my OpenSolaris 2008.05 laptop:-) And the SPARC builds are Solaris Nevada SPARC b76 with SunStudio 11.

Any problem, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks a lot for Minskey Guo's audiohd driver for OpenSolaris. My laptop finally starts to sing with Songbird on OpenSolaris 2008.05. Yeah!!

I live without sound for a long time as I have a desktop box that audio part works and no media player can meet my requirement. But when Songbird is available on OpenSolaris, I started to hate my DELL laptop(Sigmatel) for the missing audio driver. OSS is where I tried to find help first. Well, it works ... partly. It seems that OSS conflicted with some other part of the system, and sometimes hang the laptop. For some other case, the system will just reboot automatically several second after I login to the desktop. That's really horrible. It's sad that I can only remove OSS from my laptop to make it a workable system.

Just like the rainbow after the storm, the availability of the audio driver makes me feel that the whole world becomes even better.

Then what's the next? Power management? Network configuration? printer configuration? Or better media playback? We'll see:-)

Firefox 3.0 release is about to come in the near future. If you like what Firefox brings to the open web, please join the download day and be part of the world record :-)

Firefox 3.0 has lots of improvement, better usability, better performance, better security... Here is a video on some of the new features. Just like I can't live without tab any more. The new bookmark/history management has gradually became the indispensable feature for the future browsers.

Firefox rocks!

For those who has to stick with Windoz for some specific applications, VirtualBox provides a nice solution:

The snapshot above was token on my laptop. And the VM runs in the seamless mode(under VM menu "Machine->Seamless Mode"). OpenSolaris and winxp are integrated together in a wonderful shape. Just notice that you need to install some extra stuff to optimize the VM's screen resolution: VM menu "Devices->Install Guest Additions...".

Guys, enjoy it!

Update: OpenSolaris 2008.05 is the host os, winxp is the guest os inside of VirtualBox 1.6:-)

I've rotated to SE(System Engineering) team for about a week now(So might response slowly these days). It's pretty impressive that the engineers here have the direct high pressure from the customers and how to make revenue. To compare with that, software engineers, focus more on software development and how to get involved into open source community.

The rotation program between ERI(Engineering and Research Institute) and SE team is a special program provided by Sun China. Engineers from these two divisions can rotate to the other side. The benefit for software engineers I think is to build up a better idea on how the customers feel about our products, how the company(Sun) operates, collaborates among 4-S(Software, System, Storage and Service) groups and makes money. That gives us a big picture for the company as a whole.

No matter which group you are, communication is still the most important thing for a big bunch of people to share the ideas. The courage to communicate can reveal the problem hidden inside somewhere and fix it. It can definitely help run the team in an efficient way. I believe that's also true for the open source community.

2:28pm May 19th, exactly one week after the Sichuan earthquake, the whole country stands in silent tribute for three minutes, car horns and sirens everywhere.

May those who left us rest in peace.

May those who are still struggling with death safe.

Sichuan, fighting! China, fighting!!

Jonathan, thanks for the post.

Sun China OpenSolaris desktop team cooperated with Mozilla Online to hold a Firefox 3.0RC1 testday in Sun China office on May 18th, from 10:00am to 6:00pm.

Testday is a traditional community event for Mozilla QA. 28 students from Beijing Capital Normal
University joined this event. The team here prepare the Solaris Vermillion b90 environment with Firefox 3.0RC1, including SunRay, x86 and SPARC. It's all black box testing by logging in Litmus and all the students experience what Firefox 3.0 brings to the end users. Finally, they passed 1400 testcases, about 70 testcases failed and the top studnet ran 200 testcases.

At the end of the event, we selected 5 top students from the crew, awarded them some prize and certificates. One student said she has never thought that to contribute to open source is this simple.

Some pictures can be found here.

Four OpenSolaris Songbirds had a nice get together in the OpenSolaris developer Summit May 2008. Steve also invited us to the Songbird office(Ken, sorry that we didn't find you in C1 :( ). It's a wonderful place, full of openness, flexibility and creation.

The Songbird talk went smoothly and great. I love this kind of teamwork talk and people focus on different parts of the talk. Steve led the talk in an easy and interactive way. Albert, Ken and I talked about the porting efforts, the extensions and feathers.

As the release of OpenSolaris 2008.05, it's a better approach to make Songbird into IPS repository first.

After some trivial changes to the source code, Songbird 0.5 has been built on Solaris SPARC b76 with Sun Studio 11 successfully by using the Songbird SFE spec. I've tried the tarball and pkgadd binaries on my SPARC b80 box. It works fine:) Thanks a lot to the Songbird guys(especially stevel and preed) on hosting the x86 builds and SPARC builds(tarball/pkgadd) for Songbird 0.5.

Is Songbird ready to be delivered into Solaris Nevada?

- The license issue has been sorted out. We won't link XULRunner with flash plugin by default. FYI, this is just a walk around for Songbird+XULRunner+flash plugin. We'd still hope that Songbird could re-license for this combination.

- Rhythmbox has just been re-licensed. That's to say, Solaris can ship it with mp3 decoder now. But we're still waiting for the status of sound-juicer and gnome-sound-recorder who also use gstreamer+mp3 decoder. Only when all of these are resolved, we can put mp3 decoder back into Solaris Nevada.

- Does it matter to put two media player applications to Solaris? How will users choose from them? Steve has given an introduction of Songbird. It's also mentioned that Songbird has plan to provide CD playback/ripping feature in the near future. That's great news! But I'm not sure there is interests to add sound recorder funtionality to it. The video part for Songbird works just fine after I built some extra codecses and installed into the system. Well, still need to have some improvement to it to compare with mplayer.

Indiana might be a good vehicle to host Songbird somewhere.

Just some updates, the Songbird 0.5 package for OpenSolaris is available here. The spec file to make this build is checked into the SFE repository. Please note that Songbird will be installed in /usr/bin and /usr/lib. And the support comes from the Songbird community(which I should be considered one of them).

As I've noted in the last post, Songbird could play some video formats. So to have some codes that easy to install could be a big help for Solaris users. Glynn filed a bug in OpenSolaris bugzilla to track this. I guess that we should build up a pkg repository somewhere and start to contribute the codes binaries.

Songbird 0.5 build for Solaris Nevada x86 is now available for download here. It's built on Solaris Nevada b80 x86 box with Sun Studio 11. The release notes is here. Please file bug in Songbird bugzilla or get people on the Songbird IRC if you find any problem for it.

I also tried to compile the ffmpeg gstreamer plugin on the same Solaris box. It works well with Songbird for mp4/mov/mpeg/vob... Well, is there any plan for Songbird on the video part?:-)