Operating Systems - Unix, Linux, MacOS X, Windows,Operating Systems - Unix, Linux, MacOS X, Windows,A blog on Operating systems like Unix and Linux and Programming.
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Virtualization is where the action is !
2006-12-19 19:32:00 Virtualization is the buzzword in the world of Operating Systems these days. Recently KVM - Kernel based Virtual Machine capability was introduced into Linux. When completed, it would make it possible to run Windows ( maybe other OS too) as a guest OS on top of Linux in the newer Intel and AMD processors that have support for virtualization.KVM is virtualization specific to Linux. Other virtualization technologies also exist some of which like VMware are very advanced and allow many more OS's as hosts and guests.Another virtualization technology under development is Xen which will be a real competitor of VMware as it will have support for many OS's just like VMware and can be used with older processors as well. Xen is an open source project unlike VMware which is proprietary.Then there's hardware virtualization which allows one set of hardware to run many OS's. UltraSparc T1 aka Niagara is supposed to get Logical Domain ( LDom ) support in the near future which will allow one Ni... More About: Action , Computer , Virtualization , Virt , Where
Sun to release iPod like player !
2006-12-18 22:19:00 Heard a rumour that Sun has finished working on a killer mp3 player. It'll be on offer for a free 60 day trial once the tussle between engineers and marketing is resolved. Engineers are opposing marketing people's move to name it Sun Java Secure Media Pocket Player , but they're willing to accept if the name is shortened to SJSMPP as long as no one knows what it stands for after its release.Well, that was a joke by my insider-friend. Wondering if such a player if ever released would be able to run on minimized version of Solaris. More About: Ipod , Release , Lease , Like
GNU/Solaris ?
2006-12-17 16:04:00 Sometimes back, The Register had an article titled "Is 'GNU/Solaris ' emerging from Microsoft-Novell deal?"But GNU/Solaris is already there, even with Open Solaris under CDDL which is not GPL but another open source license. Maybe the reporter didn't do the homework right! Or perhaps he meant something else when he said GNU/Solaris.
ZFS in Mac OS X ?
2006-12-17 12:03:00 Seems it wasn't just a rumour. ZFS is going to be in the upcoming MacOS X! Very cool to know ZFS is being ported to other OSs. It is already being ported to FreeBSD, along with DTrace. Porting ZFS to other OS is good for them as well as Solaris and Operating systems in general. It gives more visibility to such great technologies and innovation that they rightly deserve. It also gets other OS users to experience and use such powerful stuff. That would definitely attract more users to Solaris also, mainly those who still have to know how different Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris are to prior releases, and their capabilities.The story and screenshot of ZFS in OS X was first broken here:http://mac4ever.com/news/27485/zetta byte_sur_leopard/Some blogs discussing it are at:http://loop.worldofapple.com/archives/ 2006/12/17/zfs-file-system-makes-it-to-ma c-os-x-leopard/http://rom.feria.name/blog /2006/12/17/zfs-on-mac-os-x-105/http://co lindw.blogspot.com/2006/12/w00t-zfs-on-le opard.htmlhttp://www.c... More About: Mac os , MAC OS X
Linus Torvalds on GPL kernel modules
2006-12-14 10:13:00 It's no news that Linus is a very good software programmer. There are other aspects of his character that are admirable. On the Linux mailing list today he stressed on why it is not good on the part of developers or open source zealots to force people to use software only the way developers want.Responding to a suggestion that a time limit be set ( 12 months was suggested) after which kernel won't be allowed to load non- GPL tagged module, he said users should be allowed to use software the way they want. He tries to make the difference between use and distribution clear.Software developers can only force people to distribute software the way developers want. How they use it should be left to the individuals.Linus says, "There's a big difference between "copy" and "use". It's exatcly the same issue whether it's music or code. You can't re-distribute other peoples music (becuase it's _their_ copyright), but they shouldn't put limits on how you personally _use_ it (because it... More About: Kernel , Module
Live Upgrade
2006-12-13 21:14:00 Solaris OS has a pretty cool technology if we want to upgrade our computer to some later release of the OS. It is called Live Upgrade. It basically works like this:When you first install Solaris on your computer, you leave some disk space free for the future. It is not a problem since disks are cheap now. Only thing is to remember to set aside some space during first installation. When at some later time a new release of the operating system comes up and you want to install it without having to shut down your system, you can use Live Upgrade. It basically is really Live Upgrade. No downtime while upgrading. Now how many OSs have such cool stuff!Ok so you are ready to upgrade. You just make a copy of your existing operating system boot image. It's just a command away and the empty disk space has the copy of existing Solaris. Another command and the copy gets upgraded to whatever newer release you have. Once the upgrade is over, simply set the newly upgraded space as the boot option ... More About: Solaris
Solaris 10 update 3 released
2006-12-12 09:11:00 Solaris 10 update 3 seems to have been released and is available for download. I have Solaris 10 update 2 which I installed mainly to learn the new cool ZFS (which I love, btw...thanks for making filesystem management so easy, guys!).Time to get a hand on update 3 soon, before heavy traffic hits the download sites. Wonder if it has any new features for an individual user like me. It'll have bug fixes so worth getting it.Thanks to milek and uadmin for the heads up. More About: Released , Update , Solaris , Lease , Ease
Trends in CPU design
2006-12-11 20:11:00 For the past few years, in the processor field, the trend has been slowly shifting from a single high Hz CPU to multicore processors. Intel has Xeon dual core and has managed to paste two such chips to bring out what it calls quad core, AMD still has only Opteron dual-core CPUs and is likely to release native quad-core chip next year. There are other smaller players like Azul claiming to have much more cores in a CPU but the real players are only four of them, the remaining two being IBM and Sun Microsystems. IBM along with partners worked on designing Cell chip but it is a special-purpose processor, not for general computing. Sun surprised everyone last year with its eight-core Niagara processor also known as UltraSparc T1. It not only had eight cores in a single chip, but has the capability to run 4 simultaneous hardware threads in each of them giving an impression to the OS of running on a 32 CPU machine.Sun is going to follow it with Niagara 2 which will have twice the number o... More About: Design , Trends , Computer , Ends , Trend
Microsoft Unix
2006-12-11 13:44:00 It sounds funny now, but Micro soft once actually had the most widely installed Unix base. Its version of Unix was called Xenix and it was distributed in the 80's by many vendors. What happened to it since then? Well, Microsoft sold it to SCO and moved on to develop OS/2 with IBM and then Windows NT.Wikipedia has some interesting tidbits of information for Xenix here.How it looked like back in the 80's? Here is a screenshot from wikipedia.System V release 4, the standard for Unix today was formed by merging SunOS, BSD, Xenix, and System V.Of course, the legacy of Microsoft Xenix is still around. But where to look to see the history of Unix ? All the flavours of Unix are closed source, or are they? Thanks to open sourcing of Solaris , we can now take a look into all the real Unix code and find some gems of Copyrights that silently narrate the history of Unix development.For example, to see how the development of Unix has passed on from the University of California at Berkeley to AT&a... More About: Linux
MacOS X and Linux expert views , anyone
2006-12-10 16:25:00 I must confess I haven't touched Linux for a long time now. The last time I seriously worked on it was RedHat 7.2 Linux which I used to learn MPI during my masters. I know it definitely has progressed a lot in the last few yrs. So, what are the new features added to the kernel or the distributions since then. I can't seem to remember any apart from some filesystems and lots of drivers.Newer version of MacOS X will have X-Ray technology which is nothing but DTrace with a nice GUI on top.If you know of some good features that are in Linux now, especially which are as revolutionary as the ones in Solaris ( see my last post) and are not available elsewhere, please leave a comment. I might try a new distro sometime soon.Xen, I think would be a cool addition, but it is not unique for Linux. It will be very interesting to work with, though. More About: Views , Anyone , Expert
Best Operating System for geeks?
More articles from this author:2006-12-10 09:55:00 Most wannabe geeks would say Linux , though it is just a kernel and not an OS. Some would answer Ubuntu or Gentoo depending on which is the 'in thing'. A few people would perhaps say MacOS X is the best. Windows , of course, is not the one geeks want to be associated with.One more OS is making waves in the academia and business world and with serious geeks for the last yr or so, after it was open sourced. For all the right reasons. That is the grand daddy of all, the most popular Unix - Solaris OS. No other operating system, not even Linux can claim to have as much geeky meat as Solaris. Some of the mouth watering stuff in Solaris 10, especially for geeks include:Zones - software virtualization feature which has no match in any other OS. I can't remember which technology in any other OS comes even close. BSD jails, perhaps.ZFS - the ultra modern file system, again with no match. The only thing that comes close is VxFS but ZFS is free with source code in the open.DTrace - again no m... More About: System , Geeks , Operating System 1, 2 |
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