OpenSolaris distro - AuroraUX makes Frontpage of Reddit !

Reddit Article.

I know I have not updated my blog in a year or so now, Simply not had the time due to working on AuroraUX^[1] and LLVM/Clang and Compiler-RT (Our toolchain) upstream as well so that everyone will benefit.

I think there maybe is a bit of misconception that we are trying to reinvent the wheel totally.

This of course is not practical to make a *usable* OS today.

We simply just would like to bring together some partially good technologies such as LLVM and rewrite some things in Unix that have long needed a revisit for usage on the desktop in 2009 and onwards.

A good quality window manager that is not over convoluted, stable and no memory leaks however still easy to use and very *fast*/desktop interactiveness is key.

We would like to revisit Xorg, However we need more developer traction and needs to be talked about in a lot of depth. However a rewrite of the Unix windowing system is far more needed then yet another kernel. Something portable that everyone can benefit from, not just AuroraUX.

Please do drop around #auroraux on irc.freenode.net and say good day.

Cheers,
Edward.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuroraUX

Thinking out loud.

I saw this NetBook today,
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150183

So I thought to myself; Would it not be more:

* Cost effective.
* Environmentally friendly.
* Safer (data safety).
* Accessible.

To consolidate a students, business worker or home user for that matter compute needs onto a home server.

Your home server will consolidate all your data saftly on ZFS which is setup to snap shot your VM's at the end of each week (Friday evening say..) so that if your VM of XP gets a virus or whatever, your protected. If your laptop gets lost, stolen or the HDD fails or you need to upgrade it. There is no need to move your data around.

Also, you could be in a airport or internet cafe or even at a friends house and you need access to *your* computer, then its just a matter of calling up FireFox and logging into your home server.

A example config would be something like as follows;

* At least 3 SATA disks to keep your data safe in a zfs mirror with a hot spare.
* One of them nice new AMD quad cores that are so cheap these days.
* A low end Tyan MB with a few SATA ports and a nforce chipset such as a Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E).
* At least 4GB of Kingston value RAM, its dead cheap so why not !

You can grab most of the above hardware from ebuyer.co.uk and scan.co.uk or newegg.com in the US.

In regards to software configuration;

* Fresh install of Sun xVM server. - http://xvmserver.org
* A VM of Windows XP SP3 as you prob use that.
* A VM of SXCE setup with SSGD/VDI. - http://www.opensolaris.org

You can grab VDI from; http://www.sun.com/software/vdi/
SSGD from; http://www.sun.com/software/products/sgd

All of the above software is free.

I will follow this blog up with another that outlines the compleate setup of the above.

~
Edward.

VirtualBox 2.0.2 is out !!!

I highly recommend people upgrade to this release, in particular Solaris hosts.
As this rev. seems to have solved a kernel panic I had from vbox :/

Downloads here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
and
Release Notes here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

~
Edward.

Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100/5300 Driver in ON 99.

yay for the integration of the Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100/5300 Driver in ON/Net 99.
Looking forward to snv_99 updated LiveCD ISO.

Regards,
Edward.

VirtualBox 1.6.6 is out !!

VirtualBox 1.6.6 (released 2008-08-26)
A *must* for any snv_95+ user due to the fix for strange linker issue that was seen.
yay!
Change Logs here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
and
Download here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Regards,
Edward.

Broadcom 5722 NIC support under Solaris.

<6726056>
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6726056
http://cia.vc/stats/project/opensolaris/.message/33f940

snv_97>.

OpenSolaris2008.11 PreInstalled on Dell hardware.

I got the idea to get the ball rolling now its your turn as the community to make your vote count here;
OpenSolaris2008.11_PreInstalled.

~

Boycott Foxconn ! ~ A worth while read ~

This is one of the great reason why people buy hardware not just from Sun but from Tyan and others..

A very worth while read indeed; here.
You can Digg it, here.
~

A great reply to a Broadcom chipset user.

This was a fantastic reply to a Broadcom chipset user complaining about kernel panics on his old laptop!

"Hi,

Can't you just buy a better mini pci wifi card that is properly supported ?
Avoid using ndiswrapper, it will course kernel panic such as what your getting..

Regards,
Edward."

The user then goes on to complain about not wanting to spend any money on the laptop.

Which James came out with a perfect reply which I will probley have to reuse in the future;

"Apparently you fail to understand that Broadcom cards are not supported
by Broadcom due to internal policy and frivolous control restraints they
feel they need to put on everyone. It's not any system's fault for not
supporting Broadcom, they will not provide documentation for developers
to write anything decent, so is it any coincidence that it causes
systems to crash? Employing an interpreter for Windows drivers due to
Broadcom's deaf ears is a stop-gap measure but hardly qualifies as the
way to ensure yourself a good experience with a system as you've said
have not used until now. Such a small investment will save your hours of
problems with the OS, plus the bonus that you save time from not fixing
Windows problems, like the mundane and time consuming defragmentation
due to bad file system design or cleanup of redundant files, registry
garbage or update backups.

Do yourself a favor it's $10-15 (Nothing considering the devalued US
dollar), get an Atheros or Intel wireless card off eBay, there's quite a
few supported by OpenSolaris. There's a list under the laptop community
for wireless cards and their respective chip set, as Atheros and Intel,
like NVIDIA are merely the ones that write the specification, not the
fabricators. (At least not to consumers typically) They work with
Windows (Obviously) but as an added bonus if OpenSolaris doesn't work
out for you, you have a card that'll work well with the other
alternatives too! (FreeBSD and Linux) "

The moral of this story is, Don't wast your time/days over something that cost 15$ and is usually better hardware in any case.

~

Become part of the official Guinness World Record

.:: Today you'll make history with Fire Fox 3 ::.

Are you ready to make history?
Are you ready to set a World Record?
Today is Download Day.

To become part of the official Guinness World Record you must download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008, or roughly 24 hours from now.

Download Fire Fox 3

Don't forget to pass the message on to your friends and family.

SXCE A decent media play experience..

Songbird, is a media player built on top of Firefox.
Now you maybe wondering why build a media player out of a web browser. Well here is the short answer:

Music is social and so is the internet. It can also be noted that the internet is very big but we have a excellent modern day tool, you guest it, a web browser to navigate this landscape.
However, your media library is not far off the kind of landscape that this internet is, in one word, cluttered. In other words you end up not knowing what you got and what you don't have..
To add to this, much of your media content is now becoming more and more part of your online experience such as internet radio and music/artist blogs. So why not fuse all this together with the web browser ?

Welcome to the Songbird media player (main site) :
http://www.songbirdnest.com/
(Solaris port) :
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nightingale/

Install Howto for "Songbird 0.5 release for Solaris x86" :

$/usr/sfw/bin/wget http://releases.mozilla.com/sun/Songbird-Solaris/Songbird_0.5_solaris-i386.tar.bz2
$bunzip2 -cd Songbird_0.5_solaris-i386.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
$su
_root-password_
#mv Songbird_0.5 /opt/
#exit
$/opt/Songbird_0.5/songbird &

And that's all.. :~)

Regards,
Edward.