I've always loved the idea of putting together many smaller computers to make a 'personal grid' or cluster, partly out of sheer interest but also because I do some grid work and having a small grid of individual machines in a relatively small case would be an easy way to test things out.
I always liked the BriQ, although it was expensive. Now there's a cheaper Xscale CPU based unit from Team ASA in the form of the catchily titled NPWR SCE.
We don't often get conferences in London for some reason. Instead they end up in Amsterdam or Paris. The LinuxWorld Expo this week was a rare event, which is why I decided to attend.
At the end of November MySQL are running the first 1st Annual MySQL Northern Europe Customer Conference. It's only one day (but a full one, with evening dinner reception) with a lot of detail crammed in, including a good look at MySQL 5.
Now I have to decide if I can make it - it conflicts something else, but as such a rare event, it seems churlish not to go.
Novell were once a major competitor to Windows as a network operating system with their Netware system. In fact, for many years, and especially before NT became widespread, Netware was the network operating system used for Windows machines.
Recently (comparatively), Novell purchased Ximian and SUSE, both Linux solutions, one for the desktop and one an operating system.
Now, Novell have decided to use SUSE and Ximian for their own internal network and you can read all about the migration process at Linux Planet.
A recurring theme at LinuxWorld Expo was the idea of the community spirit of open source.
Let's explain what I mean by that. A lot of people mis-undersand the the term 'free software' and take it that it means the software does not need to be paid for. While in most cases that applies, the term free software generally means 'free to use and modify', that's why it's often used with 'open source'. Because we have access to the source we can check it out, modify it, improve it. For a more in depth discussion, read this post.
For some, the open source model appeals very much because of this ability to make changes and improve or customize the software to their own ends. From the developers perspective, opening the source also means that other people can look at the code, improve it and hopefully provide those improvements and enhancements back into the main code base.
At the Dell stand at LinuxWorld Expo I asked about Dell's opinion and approach to Linux. According to the guy on the stand, about 20% of the machines that Dell sell include Linux, and most of those are pre-installed.
That's an interesting statistic, but it is tempered somewhat by the fact that the figure is limited to servers, it doesn't cover all machines. As it happens, Dell don't sell a desktop (to my knowledge, at least) with Linux on it, pre-installed or otherwise. Workstations - i.e. more powerful desktops that cost more - yes, desktops, no.
However, they do supply PCs with FreeDOS in the box, and nothing installed on the hard drive. I haven't experienced the same problem mentioned by The Register. In fact, clicking on the link in the article I could quite happily find FreeDOS machines. Not the 510n, but a 515n. Given the speed with which machines are replaced today a minor digit change doesn't surprise me.
If you don’t associate Randal Schwartz with Perl then you obviously don’t know how much of an influence Randal has been in spreading the Perl gospel. Randal has been talking about Perl for years, writing articles and contributing to books like the ‘Camel’ (Programming Perl, from O’Reilly). He’s also contributed to the built-in documentation and has worked with the internals of Perl and built various modules and examples. In short, when it comes to Perl, there’s little that Randal either isn’t aware of, or hasn’t already written about.
Hia book, Perls of Wisdom, is a collection of the articles that he’s written over the years that look at specific problems or issues that users have asked him to solve with Perl. Mostly, these are reprints of the original article, but sometimes they have been updated. In all cases you get more than just the scrip that solves the problem, you also get the theory behind it, detailed information on the problem and issues being addressed, and some potential ways to extend it.
For more details, read the full review of the book at Free Software Magazine.
I'm going to save a longer post on my own feelings about the announcements yesterday for a later time, but there is a very good overview of how Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun.
Jonathan's Blog post looks at what the cooperation will mean for the two companies, why they are partnering with Google, and why, longer term, he believes the association will be a good one.
Definitely worth reading to see inside the decision, and to see it from the perspective (and straight from the keybo
Regular readers will know I’ve been a long term fan and user of Solaris, but things in the Solaris space have changed recently. I haven’t used Solaris as a desktop operating system for about 7 years, but for a long time, despite working at an agency where Macs were the desktop operating system, I used to spend most of my time programming and managing a Sun server network using an Axil SPARC sworkstation running Solaris, and before that, Solaris 2 had been my desktop operating system more or less since leaving college while I managed a Sun based database system.
Now I’m going back to those roots and installing Solaris 10, and in the future OpenSolaris, onto my Sony Vaio Z1 and use it as my main desktop operating system. Just to make it interesting, that’s also a laptop. Hence Laptop Solaris is born.
For more information on what I’m going to be covering on the site, read the Intro post.