Ubuntu comes to the Windows desktop — OpenStack summit

April 26, 2016

Recently an announcement was made that took a lot of people by surprise.  Canonical and Microsoft announced that Ubuntu was now able to run on the Windows desktop.

Ubuntu Goes to Microsoft’s Windows 10 Bash – LinuxInsider

Dustin Kirkland was the main man on the Canonical side who drove this.  I caught up with Dustin at the OpenStack summit to learn more about this seemingly strange move by Microsoft.

Take a listen

Some of the ground Dustin covers

  • Ubuntu and Azure and the Microsoft partnership
  • Microsoft approached Canonical about bringing Ubuntu to the Windows desktop (looking to attract developers using Linux)
  • The Microsoft kernel team has built the Windows subsystem for Linux – Translates Linux systems calls to Windows system calls – Canonical asked to deliver the userspace
  • When users type bash they end up in an environment which is essentially Ubuntu minus the kernel
  • What have been the reactions to this move from the various constituents

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Where LXD fits within the virtualization and container landscape — OpenStack Summit

April 26, 2016

Yesterday here at the OpenStack summit here in Austin I caught a few of the sessions in the track that Canonical was hosting.  One of the sessions dealt with Canonical’s LXD and where it fits into the whole virtualization/container space.

The talk was given by Dustin Kirkland and after he had finished, I grabbed him to explain the basics of LXD and the landscape it fits within.

Have a listen

Some of the ground Dustin covers:

  • What is LXD and how is it different from virtual machines and containers
  • How LXD acts like a hypervisor but is fundamentally a container
  • Application containers vs Machine containers
    • Applications containers like Docker host a single proccess on a filesystem
    • Machine containers from LXD boot a full OS on their filesystems
  • Where do microservices fit in this model
  • How Docker and LXD are complementary
  • 16.04LTS ships with LXD

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Gazzang – One of the 10 Austin startups to check out at SXSW

March 10, 2012

Last night we  held our first SXSW meet up at Opal Divines.  Opals is very close to the worldwide headquarters of Gazzang, which last week was named by GigaOm one of The 10 Austin startups you need to meet at SXSW 2012.  Gazzang focuses on securing your data in the cloud via transparent data encryption.

Given the  proximity and the promise of free beer, I was able to twist the arms of four members of their development team and get them to join us.  Here is a quick video featuring Dustin Kirkland, Sergio Pena, Hector Acosta, and Eddie Garcia.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Ubuntu cloud update — OpenStack, Eucalyptus, Ensemble & Orchestra

June 7, 2011

Today when I was walking the floor at the Cloud Expo here in New York, I ran into fellow Austinite Dustin Kirkland.  Dustin is the manager for systems integration team for Ubuntu.  I got Dustin to give me the low down on the most recent UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) that concluded a few weeks ago in Budapest:

Some of the ground that Dustin covers

  • The big areas of focus on the server side coming out of Budapest
  • Getting behind OpenStack as the Ubuntu IaaS platform
  • [1:09] The pioneering work they’ve done with Eucalyptus and how its use case differs from that of OpenStack
  • [2:05] The Ensemble project, a service orchestration framework for the cloud which is the brainchild of Mark Shuttleworth.
  • [3:59] Ubuntu Orchestra for cloud installation, provisioning and configuration management (using Puppet)

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Talking to Canonical’s KVM Kid — Dustin Kirkland

April 28, 2009

At Austin Cloud Camp on Saturday I ran into Ubuntu linux developer and Canonical employee, Dustin Kirkland.  Dustin is on the server developer team at Canonical and, as he explains it, focuses on various aspects of virtualization, the plumbing layer below cloud computing.  I grabbed Dustin for a few minutes and chatted with him about last week’s release and what he’s been working on.

Some of the topics Dustin Tackles:

  • KVM, Canonical’s hypervisor of choice
  • Ubuntu’s next release and its focus on Eucalyptus to enable companies to set-up their own EC2 compatible “private clouds” based on Ubuntu servers.
  • What Dustin likes most about cloud computing (hint: think green)
  • What he likes most about working at Canonical

Update: And on a related note — Eucalyptus goes commercial with $5.5M funding round

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Pics and Prose from Cloud Camp Austin ’09

April 27, 2009

Michael Cote of Redmonk welcomes us all. (credit Dave Nielsen)

Michael Cote of Redmonk welcomes us all. (credit Dave Nielsen)

This past Saturday, Cloud Camp Austin was held down on the UT campus.  There was a very healthy turnout and a lot of great discussions were generated.

Sequence of Events

After opening salutations, camp got underway with a series of six five-minute lightening talks delivered by the camp’s gold sponsors.

My lightening talk: Mapping Processes in the Cloud (credit: Dave Nielsen)

My lightening talk: Mapping Processes in the Cloud (credit: Dave Nielsen)

The Main Event

From there, Dave Nielsen, the man who originally developed the cloud camp format (and who took most of the pictures in this post — see them all), guided us through the process of coming up with topics for session discussions.  That process, appropriately enough given that this was an unconference, began with an “unpanel.”

The Unpannel: Splunk representative, not sure, Cote, Dustin from Canonical, myself (credit Dave Nielsen)

The Unpannel: Michael Wilde of Splunk, (not sure), Dustin from Canonical, Cote, myself (credit Dave Nielsen)

All Together Now

The way it worked was the room first brainstormed a list of topics they were interested in discussing/learning more about.  Anyone who thought they were an expert on one or more of these topics got to get up from their seats and form a five person panel at the front of the room.   Each member of the panel then answered two questions from the board and as the question was answered the audience was asked if the topic had been covered by the answer or if it warranted further discussion in an afternoon session

(L->R) Dave Nielsen leads us through our unconference set up. Canonical's Dustin Kirkland and hero-for-hire John West lend a hand.

(L->R) Dave Nielsen leads us through our unconference set up. Canonical's Dustin Kirkland and hero-for-hire John West lend a hand.

A Schedule is Born

After the panel, as a group we all decided what the final sessions would be and who would lead them.  To lead a session you could either be knowledgeable in the area or completely clueless but wanted to learn about it.

The completed schedule: three sessions ran at a time and there were three time slots (credit Dave Nielsen)

The completed schedule: three sessions ran at a time and there were three time slots (credit Dave Nielsen)

Coming Soon

While at camp I did a couple of video interviews, one with Dustin Kirkland of Canonical and one with Todd Morey of Mosso/Rackspace.  I should be posting those in the next few days.  I also found myself on the other end of the microphone being interviewed by Mr. Cote.  That should be appearing in the near distant future on his blog.

Update:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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