Thermal Noise

BeleniX 0.7 has been released just a few seconds ago.

http://www.belenix.org/

This is the most kick-ass version of BeleniX ever. Among the most important features is the ability to install it to the hard disk and use it as a regular desktop OS. Release Notes details the other changes:

http://www.genunix.org/distributions/belenix_site/?q=ReleaseNotes_0.7

I am just waiting for one more feature - An IPS repository of BeleniX packages and then I will make BeleniX my primary Desktop Operating System

For the past month or so, I’ve been trying to understand what appears to be a black art mostly because of lacking documentation - Python bytecode generation and peephole optimization. Some notes from the study for the benefit of IRC-mate ‘jstatm’ and anyone else living on similar planes of insanity.
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Here is an example of how incredibly powerful DTrace can be. I had to solve a problem where a nice high-level overview of the code flow in a single threaded userland application would save me some pain the backside. Lo and Behold, Dtrace - The Universal Hammer for every nail.

Here is a simple visual call graph generator using 5 lines of DTrace combined with the outstanding Graphviz graphics library.

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I am not the biggest Java fan inside or outside of my company. But I detest being on the receiving end of a conversation that involves Sun (I am madly passionate about Sun). So when I met up with a few friends of my friends and heard the standard “Java is dog slow” complaint, I had to invent a (truthful) counterexample.

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The Bureau of Indian Standards has given the finger to OOXML. Despite the BRIC votes being regarded as influential, I doubt if the voting process makes any difference because ESR has expressed concerns that Microsoft has resorted to corruption and bribery inside the ISO.

M$, where do you want to go today ? Judge Thomas Jackson’s Courtroom ? Man, I get vague memories of Enron for some reason ….

Further Reading:

• Why is OOXML defective by design ?
• Say No to OOXML

Update: The WashingtonPost reports on Microsoft’s dirty tactics.

I had my DTrace article published in this month’s edition of Linux for You. It is a gentle introduction to the curious Unix programmer. I can’t reprint the article on the blog. But if you aren’t convinced about looking into DTrace yet, read on….

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I do some senseless stuff from time to time. But this is really wierd. Why would anyone want to run Internet Explorer on Windows let alone Solaris.

But then the Government of India doesn’t seem to think so. Some of their Income Tax Department pages are thoroughly broken on Firefox. Anyway I got wine running inside Solaris and ies4linux worked like a charm. Click on the link for a high-res picture of microsoft.com on IE on wine on Solaris on AMD64

While the rest of the world drooled over the iPhone, I got to play around with a SunSPOT today. W00t !

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I had a chance to listen to and meet Eben Moglen, legendary professor of law and legal history at the Sun Office today. Eben had long been on the board of the FSF and is one of the key authors of the GPLv3, which happened to be one of the primary focal points of his talk today. (more…)

I’d interviewed a few folks on Python lately as a favor for a friend. Without laboring into details, there is one question that seems to baffle most candidates consistently. The first time I had to ask this question was because I couldn’t think of anything else “sane” at that point in time - and since the reaction by the (otherwise smart) candidate gave rise to a vicious notion of a entertainment, I kept repeating the question to every single person I interviewed subsequently !

Question: If the expression (0.99 - 0.90 - 0.09) were to be evaluated by the cpython interpreter, what would be the result ?

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UPDATE: To get compiz fusion for Solaris go here http://blogs.sun.com/erwann/

How is this for a kickass cool desktop ? Presenting to you my Solaris Express Desktop running Compiz …

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I recently came across an interesting hack in the linux kernel called “kexec”. exec() loads a userland program by overwriting the address space of the process calling the syscall. kexec is supposed to do the same with the kernel. Replace the running copy of a kernel with a newly specificed kernel.

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The Founder of Debian, Ian Murdock has joined Sun as the Chief Operating Platform Strategist. Here is the scoop from “The Register”. Apparently the name Debian is a conjunction of “Deb” and “Ian”. Deb being Ian’s girlfriend

Welcome aboard captain !

Are you good at Dtrace ? You might have a job in hand ! Here is something that appeared in the Times of India supplement yesterday.

Its a pleasant surprise that DTrace is now a hot job skill in the Indian Market too ! Of course it helps to know the similar family of tools like CodeAnalyst, VTune, oprofile, valgrind, SystemTap, Perftools ….

Ubuntu took the “free” operating system principle to an altogether different level by shipping CDs free to anyone who requested it. Now OpenSolaris is doing the same to reach out to developers who cannot download gigabytes of ones and zeros.

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Moinak announced the BeleniX Live DVD last night.

Now BeleniX has it all - It can run off a CD, DVD, USB and Hard Disk [ Floppy Disks won't be supported and Blu-Ray needs some time ]

The news generated nearly 12000 page-hits yesterday - our biggest since the birth of BeleniX !

I’ve been putting this off for a long time. But I didn’t want this to end up as one of my new year resolutions. I did a complete revamp of www.belenix.org. Its now powered by Drupal. Take a look at the new site. Feedback much appreciated

Every conversation with geeks not working in Sun this week has been about ZFS and ZFS making it to Mac OS X - Leopard. I get thoroughly drilled on Sun’s financial strategy and how we plan to make money rather than being asked about instantaneous snapshots and self-healing capabilities of ZFS. Thats one of the disadvantages of working for a “Non-Profit Organization” (of which we are very proud, anyway)

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I attended Barcamp Bangalore today. Was there to rant (as usual) on OpenSolaris. Barcamp is supposed to be a Web 2.0 ish place and you find a lot of doods who talk about RoR, Agile, Xtreme Programming, Springs, JUnit and such. It is a world far far far removed from my own domain of Operating Systems where I am still confused about a few AMD instructions and libc bindings. Nevertheless, Web 2.0 is one of the areas where OpenSolaris can have a really strong presence. Companies like Joyent have proved just that. So that was my excuse to spend the weekend at BarCamp.

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Here is a list of posts I wrote on my official weblog about FOSS.IN/2006.
Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

FOSS.IN/2006 has arrived in town. It is the place to be if you are an open source enthusiast in India. I will be at the Sun Microsystems stall on all three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) giving demos and helping Kishore with a presentation on Branded Zones. Catch ya there !

http://foss.in/

It might well go down in history as the month that changed the World. Or atleast the part of the world that me and my fellow humans who get paid for creating strings of ones and zeroes are primarily concerned with.

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The Best Operating System ever rolled out from India is one year old today. Happy Birthday BeleniX. Congratulations to Moinak, Sriram, Kishore and Pradhap who have put in a year of Nightouts, Weekends and Holidays and not to forget their great brains and creative energies into creating the most popular OpenSolaris LiveCD. BeleniX is talked about at the same level as Nexenta or GNU/Solaris, which is being devloped by a company, Nexenta Systems Inc. I have this gut feeling that the day when BeleniX is going to explode on the LiveCD scene big time is not too far away. Moinak already has been working vigorously towards adding some great new features (Somehow, he never runs out of ideas !). If you want to be a part of the action when that happens, visit the Project Page and find out how YOU can contribute to BeleniX. Thats not all. If you have other ideas, mail us and you might end up getting a cool BeleniX T-Shirt

BeleniX can now boot from a USB drive. We had a first hand demo and a talk on how it was done by Anil Gulecha, an engineering student in Bangalore in the Bangalore OpenSolaris User Group (BOSUG) meeting last night.
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This is by far the best news I’ve heard since June 14, 2005. The most popular technological company on earth is considering the most advanced operating system on the planet for its operations !

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