I am a strong believer that Competition is Good for Customers, and this week's CES Show was another reminder; some examples from there:

• Palm Pre - This seems one of the best of the iPhone challengers - looks like a good OS, multi-tasking/touch, physics, nice design and a keyboard. See homepage, wikipedia, Gizmodo and PCWorld. • Sony Vaio P - This one looks like a nice netbook, with a wide screen, build around a good sized keyboard. The use of a trackpoint means the whole thing can be sized just for the keyboard - would love to try it out. Competition for the "lesser" netbooks and the always rumored iPod tablet? See Gizmodo, Engadget. • Dell Adiamo - This one (if the promise matches the buzz) would compete with MacBook Air; if it keeps with Dell's pricepoints, it would help with the pricing. See Gizmodo and Engdget. • Windows 7 - This one, I hope will help keep Apple focused in doing a good job with MacOS. Ubuntu and, I'd hope soon, OpenSolaris, can help with the pressure, but I've felt that the quality of the desktop offerings from Apple has decreased since the iPod/iPhone started generating so much money, and they can use a strong competidor. See homepage and Gizmodo.

Now, back to our usual topics, helping you by providing our own competition :-)

The top #5 blogs at Blogs.Sun.Com are almost always the same, but every now and then there is an uncommon top name. It often seems quite random and most likely SPAM, but sometimes it is actually interesting...

Check these pictures from Jeff Bonwick's blog. For reference, the guy at the right is Jeff (of ZFS fame), and the one on the left is Linus (of Linux fame). No, I don't know what the photos mean; I don't work in the Solaris team and although I've known Jeff (Jackson) for many years his office is in the Menlo Park campus and mine is in the Santa Clara campus... :-)

And, if I knew, I couldn't tell you :-)

The Ubuntu repositories (MultiVerse) today have GlassFish v1 (@feisty, @gutsy) so a simple apt-get on(for example) Gusty Gibon will get GFv1, but... Installing GFv2 is quite easy - check the notes from Rob (Plain Install) and Jasper (Extra Administration Details). And, yes, we are working on updating the repositories.

Virtualization is really hot now. We recently mentioned about Using LDOMs to partition a T2-based system. This week's annoncement of Solaris 10 8/07 includes New Zones Features including BrandZ Zones. The first BrandZ (lX) allows Running Linux Apps on Solaris (see earlier news). A new announcement is Project Etude which enables Solaris 8 Apps running as guests on a Solaris 10 host; see Marc's Business Overview and Dan's Technical Overview. Also see these reviews at Dr. Dobb's, The Register and EnterpriseLinux.

Added: Also see the announcement about Windows and Solaris virtualization.

A quick follow-up to our Previous Report: Canonical has announced that it will bundle GlassFish in its distributions. Check this CNet News piece. This is very good news; we hope to see additional bundling opportunities in the future...

Harpreet is an Ubuntu Fan, and Rick Also Likes Ubuntu. Since next week is Ubuntu Developer's Summit, Harpreet decided to do a more careful check on the status on GlassFish on Ubuntu. The result is that it already passes almost all tests - Check his Blog.

I know that Harpreet and a few other members of the GF community are going to the Summit, so we will report any new developments from there.