OSCON: Project Sputnik Explained + Coverage recap

July 30, 2012

The week before last I had a fantastic time at OSCON, seeing old friends and making new ones.  As always, the hallway track was the one I found most enlightening.

On the second day we announced that project Sputnik would be going from project to product in the fall and got a fantastic response (see some of the articles written about it at the end).  On the day of the announce Mike Hendrickson, O’Reilly’s VP of content strategy, interviewed me about the project (check out Mike’s project Sputnik review).  That video is the first one below.

I also did a “cliffs notes” version with Janet Bartleson which clocked in at one minute and 47 seconds so if you’re short on time you can check out the second one.

Extra-credit reading

  • Slideshow: Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: OSCON 2012: The Open-Source Creative Engine Drives the Economy – eWeek
  • Dell announces Ubuntu developer laptop – ITWeb
  • Dell Launching Ubuntu Linux Developer Laptop After Successful Pilot Program Dubbed ‘Project Sputnik’ – International Digital Times
  • Dell set to launch their Ubuntu developer laptop, Sputnik, later this year – TweakTown
  • Dell’s Sputnik project is a go – Technoholik
  • Dell expands open source initiatives – ITWeb
  • Linux fans rejoice: Dell XPS 13 will come with Ubuntu – BetaNews
  • Dell Takes Another Crack at Linux Boxes with Project Sputnik, Launching This Fall – HotHardware
  • Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook For Developers Will Launch In 2012 – The Droid Guy
  • Dell launching Sputnik, the Ubuntu developer laptop, this year – Ars Technica
  • Dell to launch Ubuntu-based XPS 13 laptop this fall – Hardware.Info (UK)
  • Open-Source Goes Ultraportable With Dell Pre-Installed Ubuntu XPS 13 Offering – Mobile Magazine
  • Dell to ship XPS 13 with Ubuntu Linux in some areas, Precise Pangolin goes ultraportable – Engadget
  • Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu Linux Installed Launches This Fall – Geeky Gadgets
  • Linux comes to ultrabooks: Dell to preload OS on XPS 13 – CNET
  • Dell to launch Linux ultrabook in Fall – Fierce CIO
  • 4 Ways Dell Is Becoming An Open Source Company – TechCrunch
  • Shuttleworth talks up Ubuntu 12.10, growing acceptance of Linux on desktop and Ubuntu Unity – ZDNET
  • Dell’s Developer Laptop – i-Programmer
  • Dell announces expansion of three open source initiatives – eChannelLine
  • Dell’s Development Computer, Project Sputnik, Coming this Fall – LAPTOP Magazine
  • Dell Opens Up To Open Source Again – RedOrbit
  • As Windows 8 looms, Dell readies Ubuntu laptop for fall release – ExtremeTech
  • Dell adds to OpenStack and creates cloud notebook – DatacenterDynamics
  • Dell’s Project Sputnik is go for launch – Bit-tech.net
  • Dell Solidifies Commitment to Open Source, Developers at OSCON – eWeek
  • Dell Linux-Based Laptop Goes On Sale This Fall – The Inquisitr
  • Dell Expands OpenStack Cloud Efforts, and Other Open Source Programs – OStatic
  • The Ultrabooks Dell Ubuntu developers arrive later this year – Xataka (Spain)
  • Dell ready to sell laptops with Ubuntu – hwjournal.net (Italy)
  • Dell puts Linux ultrabook – PuntoInformatico (Italy)
  • Dell brings XPS 13 laptop from Ubuntu – Hardware.info (Dutch)
  • Dell’s New Ubuntu Linux Laptop Is Coming This Fall – PC World
  • A first look at Dell’s “Sputnik” Ubuntu Linux developer laptop – ZDNet
  • A first look at Ubuntu 12.04 (Photo Gallery) – ZDNet
  • Dell Gives Linux Laptops Another Chance – TechCrunch
  • Dell launching Project Sputnik developer laptops in fall – Ubergizmo
  • Dell to release Project Sputnik developer laptop this fall – The Verge
  • Dell to launch Project Sputnik developer laptops this fall – SlashGear
  • Pentaho, Datameer Join Dell’s Project Sputnik – The VAR Guy
  • Dell to offer Ubuntu XPS 13 laptops this Autumn – Inquirer
  • Dell introduced based on OpenStack cloud solutions – Servers.PCOnline (China)
  • Dell’s to sell Ubuntu ultrabooks this fall, Project Sputnik graduates from beta – Liliputing
  • New Ubuntu Laptop, from Dell, to Head for Developers – OStatic
  • Dell confirms Linux laptop and expands OpenStack cloud solutions – V3.co.uk
  • Dell’s Ubuntu Ultrabook arrives this autumn – PC Pro
  • Dell readies Linux Ultrabook for autumn release – Reg Hardware
  • Coming: Dell Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04 for Developers – The H
  • Dell Ubuntu Linux Developer Laptop Launches this Fall: Project Sputnik FTW – Mobile & Apps
  • Project Sputnik Versus Microsoft – PC Magazine
  • Dell’s Ubuntu Laptop Program Enters Beta, ‘Blows Away’ Expectations – PC World
  • Dell’s Project Sputnik Set To Build The Ultimate Developer Laptop – Crazy Engineers
  • Dell release a Linux laptop in autumn‎ – TICbeat (Spain)
  • Project Sputnik: The Ubuntu laptop from Dell in approach – Blogeee.net, CNET (France)
  • Project Sputnik: the laptop to cloud developers – Tom’s Hardware (France)
  • Dell puts a foot in the Linux market – Mac Generation (France)
  • Soon an XPS 13 from Dell with Ubuntu 4.12 – Revioo.com (France)
  • Sputnik is concretely: Dell Ultra with Ubuntu Book 12:04 in Autumn – Pro-Linux (Germany)
  • Officially launched the project “Sputnik” notebook PC development to developers only with Dell, the Ubuntu – SourceForge.JP Magazine (Japan)
  • Dell XPS 13 starts this autumn sale with Ubuntu – Tweakers.net (Netherlands)
  • New Linux PC from Dell – Computerworld (Norway)
  • Dell materializes its Linux project – Silicon News (Spain)
  • Dell is preparing a new laptop with GNU / Linux – Somos Libres (Peru)
  • Dell will begin selling computers with Linux preinstalled at the factory – FayerWayer (Spanish)
  • Laptop Dell Launches Special Project Developer Sputnik This September – Chip Online Portal (Indonesia)
  • Dell returns to the market for Linux-Laptop– CyberSecurity (Russia)
  • Dell offers Linux-laptops a second chance – DailyComm (Russia)
  • Dell revives project for Linux laptops – Tech News (Bulgaria)
  • Dell Returned to the Market for Linux Laptops – siteua.org (Russia)
  • 4 Intriguing Desktop Linux Options Coming Soon to Retail Stores – Linux.com

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Posted by Barton George

Hadoop World, a belated summary

February 13, 2012

With O’Reilly’s big data conference Strata coming up in just a couple of weeks, I thought I might as well get around to finally writing up my notes from Hadoop World .  The event, which was put on by Cloudera, was held last November 8-9 in New York city.   There were over 1,400 attendees from 580 companies and 27 countries with two thirds of the audience being technical.

Growing beyond geek fest

The event itself has picked up significant momentum over the last three years going from 500 attendees, to 900 the second year, to over 1400 this past year.  The tone has gone from geek-fest to an event focused also on business problems e.g. one of the keynotes was by Larry Feinsmith, managing director of the office of the CIO at JP Morgan Chase.  Besides Dell, other large companies like HP, Oracle and Cisco also participated.

As a platinum sponsor, Dell  had both a booth and a technical presentation.   At the event we announced that we would be open sourcing the Crowbar barclamp for Hadoop and at out booth we showed off the Dell | Hadoop Big Data Solution which is based on Cloudera Enterprise.

Cutting’s observations

Doug Cutting, the father of  Hadoop, Cloudera employee and chairman of the Apache software foundation, gave a much anticipated keynote.  Here are some of the key things I caught:

  • Still young: While Cutting felt that Hadoop had made tremendous progress he saw it as still young with lots of missing parts and niches to be filled.
  • Big Top: He talked about the Apache “Bigtop” project which is an open source program to pull together the various pieces of the Hadoop ecosystem.  He explained that Bigtop is intended to serve as the basis for the Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop (CDH), much the same way Fedora is the basis  for RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux).
  • “Hadoop” as “Linux“: Cutting also talked about how Hadoop has become the kernel of the distributed OS for big data.  He explained that, much the same way that “Linux” is technically only the kernel of the GNU Linux operating system, people are using the word Hadoop to mean the entire Hadoop ecosystem including utilities.

Interviews from the event

To get more of the flavor of the event here is a series of interviews I conducted at the show, plus one where I got the camera turned on me:

Extra-credit reading

Blogs regarding Dell’s crowbar announcement

Hadoop Glossary

  • Hadoop ecosystem
    • Hadoop: An open source platform, developed at Yahoo that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using a simple programming model. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage.  It is particularly suited to large volumes of unstructured data such as Facebook comments and Twitter tweets, email and instant messages, and security and application logs.
    • MapReduce: a software framework for easily writing applications which process vast amounts of data (multi-terabyte data-sets) in parallel on large clusters of commodity hardware in a reliable, fault-tolerant manner.  Hadoop acts as a platform for executing MapReduce.  MapReduce came out of Google
    • HDFS: Hadoop’s Distributed File system allows large application workloads to be broken into smaller data blocks that are replicated and distributed across a cluster of commodity hardware for faster processing.
  • Major Hadoop utilities:
    • HBase: The Hadoop database that supports structured data storage for large tables.   It provides real time read/write access to your big data.
    • Hive:  A data warehousing solution built on top of Hadoop.  An Apache project
    • Pig: A platform for analyzing large data that leverages parallel computation.  An Apache project
    • ZooKeeper:  Allows Hadoop administrators to track and coordinate distributed applications.  An Apache project
    • Oozie: a workflow engine for Hadoop
    • Flume: a service designed to collect data and put it into your  Hadoop environment
    • Whirr: a set of libraries for running cloud services.  It’s ideal for running temporary Hadoop clusters to carry out a proof of concept, or to run a few one-time jobs.
    • Sqoop: a tool designed to transfer data between Hadoop and relational databases.  An Apache project
    • Hue: a browser-based desktop interface for interacting with Hadoop

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Posted by Barton George

Depression good for Cloud

October 8, 2008

Yesterday, Nat Torkington had an interesting post on O’Reilly Radar (not to be confused with Radar O’Reilly) entitled “The effect of the Depression on Technology.”

Whether I would classify what we’re in as a “Depression” or not, is beside the point.  The economy is definitely not doing well and folks are spooked.  Seeing the glass as half-full, Nat see’s this current period as good for innovation, good for free and open source software and good for services and cloud computing:

…open source services and cloud computing will benefit from the tight financial situation where conditions will favour opex and not capex. It wil be nigh impossible to borrow to buy hardware or a major software license….cloud computing lets a company pay a little to use someone else’s enormous capital investment.

Opex vs. Capex

This opex vs. capex distinction is one of the great advantages of services provided by the cloud (in both good times and bad). It helps to break down barriers to adoption, and allows purchases to be made in a timely manner rather than getting bogged down in endless approval cycles.

Separate from approval-cycle-avoidance, the other adoption mega-accelerator for cloud-based services is the basic hosted nature of the services.   Offsite hosting and maintenance mean that new services can be switched virtually instantaneously without needing to burden the often already over-taxed IT side of the house.

So, while I agree with Nat’s thinking, I hope we don’t have to test it for too long.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George