[Theubucon] Is anyone from IBM attending the UbuCon this year?
David Desrosiers
daviddes at us.ibm.com
Wed Aug 2 05:20:48 PDT 2006
I'm wondering if anyone from IBM is attending the UbuCon this year. I've
asked internally and didn't get much of a response.. I'd like to pass on
some information about our OpenPower project to the attendees if possible.
First, some background..
I'm reaching out to the various Linux user and developer communities to
offer free remote access to POWER hardware and other development
resources. This is not a spam message and I'm not trying to sell anything
at all, so if you're interested, please read on.
There are numerous interesting projects going on with the various Linux on
POWER and OpenPower initiatives within IBM this year and next. But first,
a brief introduction about myself..
My name is David A. Desrosiers (no, not THAT[1] David Desrosiers, make
sure you use the "A." in the middle if you Google me). I've been working
with Linux and Open Source since the early 90's back in the days of
Ygdrassil, comp.os.minix and downloading Linux onto dozens of floppies to
install it, and before that, I used AIX.
Several years ago, I used to work for a company called Linuxcare in San
Francisco, CA in their Research group with some pretty well-known Open
Source developers. Remember the original "Bootable Business Card"[2]? That
was one of our projects. "The 1-800 Number for Linux"? That was us too.
The company rapidly collapsed on itself as a Linux and Open Source
company, and all of the talent went to other companies.
Now, I work within IBM with the title of "Linux on POWER Developer Program
Manager". I am one of the IBM interfaces into the Open Source user and
developer community to help them gain access to hardware, documentation
and other resources that they might need to develop on Linux on POWER
(LoP) or port their applications to, the POWER platform. This isn't a
"sales" position so don't worry, I'm not collecting email addresses or
selling anything, I am here strictly to
help promote hardware and resources to Open Source developers, a community
I've interfaced with for over a decade.
I'm also a long-time Open Source developer, maintainer and tinkerer and
have been for many years with Linux. I'm the current maintainer of at
least one well-known project you might know about; pilot-link[3].
pilot-link is the glue between your Palm OS handheld device and your
Linux/Unix desktop and PIM/calendaring data. If you use your Palm with
Linux, in 99.9% of the cases, you're using code I maintain in some way.
Lots of OSS and commercial projects rely upon the code in pilot-link to
function, and we get zero help from Palm themselves to maintain our
ongoing efforts. Plucker[4] is another very popular project I have been
using, supporting, and hacking on with a team of others for close to 7
years. Plucker is an on-Palm application for reading offline HTML, ebooks,
text files, HOWTO documents, and other pieces of written material. You can
see some of the documents and projects I've deployed with Plucker over
here[5].
I also freely host dozens of projects and contribute code, web space,
mailing lists and other resources to help these projects succeed through
an online resource called SourceFubar.Net[6]. Feel free to ask me about my
other involvement in the Linux community if you're curious.
But back on track... developing in very constrained and embedded Linux
environments and handhelds provides is very different from developing on
something as vast and "virtual" as the POWER platform, so this is a slight
learning curve for me as well. My main focus within IBM is to help bridge
the gap between the Open Source development community and the internal IBM
development process, to help developers and users grow to use and like the
POWER platform as their main development platform.
Some of my tasks include helping to provide remote access to POWER-based
hardware for developers (and up-and-coming developers, tinkerers, hackers
and curious lookers-be) to use to learn, test, debug and develop new or
existing applications on the POWER platform. There are some subtle
differences between the POWER architecture and Intel's x86 architecture.
This makes having access to real hardware to develop on, very important.
I'll go into some detail on that a bit later if you want.
If you're interested in checking out what these POWER systems actually
feel like under the hood, you can sign up and log in remotely to one of
the University systems we've set up at the Oregon State University,
University of Portland, University of Augsburg, Peking University and many
others. It's our intent and goal to bring several other universities
online later this year as well. You'll get a shell account, disk space and
all of the tools and resources you'll need to work with the hardware and
software components on the systems, for free.
No cost at all. Truly free.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/openpower/
Create an account, pull over some source code from some of your favorite
projects and try building and testing it under the POWER architecture.
Each server offers its own configuration and options with your remote
(non-root) shell account.
Oregon State University Open Source Labs:
http://wiki.osuosl.org/display/PPC64/Home
--------------------------------------------------------
Server........: Apple PowerMac G5
Equipment.....: 2-Way 2.5Ghz
Memory........: 4GB
Installation..: Gentoo Linux
SourceForge.net compile farm, with OpenPower
http://sourceforge.net/docs/compile_farm#cf_overview
--------------------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Installation..: SuSE Enterprise Linux 9
Australia National University
http://clug.anu.edu.au/
--------------------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
Memory........: 2GB
Installation..: Debian
University of Augsburg, in Augsburg Germany (Debian)
http://tuxppc.rz.uni-augsburg.de/doc/faq/
--------------------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
Memory........: 8GB
Installation..: Debian
Peking University, Peking China (SuSE)
http://ppclinux.pku.edu.cn/
--------------------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
Memory........: 16GB
Installation..: SuSE Enterprise 9
There's quite a few other things going on that I'll elaborate on later.
I'm busy developing on the POWER architecture, splitting my duties between
being an interpretor for the Open Source community/IBM as well as my own
Open Source responsibilities. It's great, fun stuff all-around.
Feel free to comment or ask me any questions you might have about how you
can get involved, and I'll do what I can to get you the answer, or point
you to the right people who can get you the answer for you.
Don't forget to check out or Linux on POWER blogs[7] and our Linux on
POWER Wiki[8] as well, if you're interested in getting involved.
[1] http://www.simpleplan.com/band.php
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card
[3] http://www.pilot-link.org/
[4] http://www.plkr.org/
[5] http://code.plkr.org/
[6] http://www.sourcefubar.net/
[7] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?roll=0&blog=752
[8] http://www-941.haw.ibm.com/collaboration/wiki/display/LinuxP/Home
David A. Desrosiers
Linux on Power Developer Program Manager
daviddes at us.ibm.com
Office: 860-271-1642
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