Linux

Future vision of VDI? What if the Hypervisor was cheaper and flexible enough to run on BladePC's/BladeWS's - could vMotion/XenMotion then switch on demand?

Dave Caddick — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:58:13 GMT

I am sure this is not really what VMware had in mind when they were touting VMware OnDemand? I'm guessing they had more of an idea that it would combine some of the benefits of ACE with ESX? ;-)

I have just got back from some training in Houston and while listening to a question from a colleague from the UK where he asked if "VDI was going to be able to use the full suite of Hypervisor functionality like vMotion..." and that got me thinking...

Some of the Conventional Wisdom around the place holds that VDI by itself will likely not be able to cover all of any one customers needs and most will more than likely need to look at quite possibly a number of different approaches to cover ALL employees and ALL Applications.

So with this in mind I'd be interested in your thoughts on the following idea?

Just a few thoughts around VDI??

Let's say that we stock a couple of decent servers with loads of resources and allows us to run quite a few VDI instances? OK? So one of the possible issues with the classic VDI so far is that if a user places a bit too much pressure on the resources then it has the potential to impact on all other users, being as it is a shared resource? (This is still one of the classic gotcha's in Terminal Server and Citrix PS - the session is sticky and it stays with the same server unless a logout/login occurs)

So one idea I'm kicking around is the possibility that if a user started something like a 120Mb Excel spreadsheet that might consume quite a bit of CPU then would it be possible to use the vMotion to transfer him to a BladePC, if they started 3 or 4 of them (or they needed more resources?) then transfer them to a BladeWS.....?

Seamlessly!! with the user completely unaware that this has happened!!

Now the fundamentals of vMotion (or XenMotion for that matter?) requires shared boot storage - BUT I don't think it needs to be NFS or iSCSI, etc. - the Citrix Provisioning Server or OS Streaming method like Neoware IM would probably work just as well in this scenario? As this then leaves the Virtual HardDisk/Storage in a common area accessible by the Vitrual Desktops regardless of whether they are running on VDI's, the BladePC's or the BladeWS's.

The other point is the similarity of CPU would possibly cause an issue, and this probably extends beyond just Intel/AMD? This appears to be a fundamental of vMotion/XenMotion? So this might not fly today, but it is possible that with improvements in the Hypervisors this issue might be overcome at some stage soon?

Anyway, what do you think of the *idea/concept*? As a user requires more CPU and resources they might be able to be transferred from shared resources (VDI on ESX) to individual resources (BladePC) and then high powered resources (BladeWS) - once the high intensity workload has finished then the user would be transferred seamlessly back through the stack to a VDI instance on the ESX server.

Please bear in mind that this is only a concept at the moment and there are clearly problems and issues to be overcome - but the main reason for this post is to ask if you think it has legs? What do you think?

Clearly the ESX/Hypervisor would need to be able to run on hardware outside of it’s current Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) but with Xen this might not be such an issue?

Is wonder if this is where XenDesktop is headed? ;-)

picotux - smallest Linux computer in the World

Dave Caddick — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:38:50 GMT

Now I have always been a fan of making the PC as small as possible, but this is verging on the ridiculous surely? I'm wondering how useful this device might actually be?

picotux - the smallest Linux Computer in the World

The picotux 100 is the world's smallest Linux computer, only slightly larger (35mm×19mm×19mm) than an RJ45 connector. More information can be found here.

picotux - smallest Linux computer in the World

Google's Android Developer Challenge

Dave Caddick — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:13:57 GMT

So it's an interesting way of Google to release their mobile offering in an Emulator/SDK download to stimulate interest before the actual hardware - and it certainly won't hurt that they've put $10m up for grabs for potential developers?

Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project

Getting Started

Learn about Android

Download the SDK

Join the community. Participate in our discussion group through email or the web.

The Android Developer Challenge will award $10 million to developers who build great apps for Android. Learn more!

Featured Videos

Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo some applications.

Three part overview of the Android architecture and APIs

First look at building an Android Application

more videos

The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, we're offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit.

Android

Asus ships mini-laptop, confirms Windows version

Dave Caddick — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:15:21 GMT

Well this is going to be interesting - a windows version is around the corner? well to be honest I kind of like the Linux GUI anyway, but what will be crucial to this device is that it doesn't sacrifice speed or battery life for a fancy Vista like GUI.

I have always been a fan of Laptops and Notebooks being mobile devices, as opposed to Desktop replacements, so my personal bias has always been for a maximum screen size of 12" - besides have you ever been sitting by someone in an aircraft when they try to use their Laptop in economy? ;-)

More and more these days the connectivity side of things with 3G etc is becoming more mainstream and as a process making it more attractive to use devices more in the manner of Thin Clients and simply *connect* to your resources like Exchange via OWA, Google Apps, Zoho Office etc.

It will be interesting to see how this device fares in the Market?

Asus has begun shipping its two-pound mini laptop, and says the system will be available with "Windows" by the end of the year. The Asus Eee PC uses flash storage and is based on a 900 MHz Celeron M processor.
(Click here for a larger view of the Asus Eee PC)
Originally tipped to cost $199, the device is now priced at $400, initially in a Linux configuration with 4 GB of storage. (You can access more information on this, along with reviews of the device, on our sister site LinuxDevices, here.)

The Eee PC is a tiny, SSD-based laptop

Acer said in a statement that the Eee PC will be available with preinstalled Windows XP "by the end of the year," though no information was provided about which version of the OS will be offered. Potentially, Windows XP could require more memory and storage, demanding a somewhat higher price.
In principle, Windows XP Embedded (XPe) could alleviate this. However, Microsoft is thought to restrict XPe licensing to special-function, pre-programmed devices, such as for the embedded software infrastructure in thin client terminals or set-top boxes. If so, this would prevent its use in devices such as mini-laptops or UMPCs (ultra-mobile PCs). Still, Microsoft has become more aggressive in competing with Linux lately.
Without tipping Microsoft's hand on this matter, Scott Di Valerio, corporate VP of Microsoft's OEM division, stated, "we are excited to work with Asus to enable a Windows-based software and services solution for this new category of mobile PCs." With Windows on board, the Eee PC will better accommodate corporate requirements, Asus said in a statement.
Staging a series of press events worldwide, including one at the upscale Stanford Shopping Center in Silicon Valley, Asus said initial sales have been at the rate of one Eee PC every six seconds. In the U.S., the unit is available at online retailer Newegg.com and reportedly will also be sold at Best Buy stores.
Features and specifications cited by Asus for the Eee PC include the following:

Processor -- Intel Celeron M clocked at 900 MHz

Memory -- 512 MB of RAM, upgradeable to 1 MB by replacing the standard SODIMM

Storage -- 4 GB "solid-state drive"

Display -- 7-inch color TFT with 800 x 400 resolution

Camera -- webcam mounted above the screen

Audio -- dual speakers for stereo sound

Networking:

10/100 Ethernet

802.11b/g wireless LAN

Other I/O:

3 x USB

VGA port for external monitor

Expansion:

SD card reader

Memory stick reader

mini PCI-express slot (accessible internally)

Battery life -- 3-4 hours

Weight -- 2 pounds (.9 kg)

As noted above, the Eee PC is available now. More information can be found at the company's Web site, here.

Asus ships mini-laptop, confirms Windows version

HOWTO Configure Ubuntu for Active Directory Authentication

Dave Caddick — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:10:09 GMT

In one of those typical Internet moments when "it wasn't what I was looking for - but it looked like some very useful information that I would like the time to implement"?

I have been thinking of getting this working correctly at home based on some virtual machines, but as it's not something that has a burning need to get done it probably won't get done anytime soon - but I'm sure this will come up somewhere so thought it useful to point out that there is this comprehensive guide from Novell as well as the one at the Ubuntu Wiki site: ActiveDirectoryHowto

HOWTO: Configure Ubuntu for Active Directory Authentication

Introduction

There are two important concepts for users: authentication, and accounts. With Active Directory authentication uses the Kerberos 5 protocol, and account information uses LDAP. Therefore we need to configure Kerberos 5 and LDAP on Ubuntu in order to manage users in an Active Directory.

Throughout this article the following IP addresses are going to be used, adjust appropriately for your network.
IP address Description 10.30.2.1 Router and DNS server or proxy 10.30.2.2 DHCP and TFTP server 10.30.2.10 NFS server 10.30.2.20 LTSP server 10.30.2.100-200 LTSP clients
It is assumed Active Directory is configured with an AD realm of EXAMPLE.COM and we will create one user:
account name: wendy UID: 1002 GID: 1002 home directory: /home/wendy shell: /bin/bash
[edit]

Accounts

For LDAP accounts the software package libnss-ldap is required, in Ubuntu Dapper CD this is not in the main repository it is part of the universe repository, however if you are using an internet repository it is part of the main repository and you can skip to the next stage. In order to access to the universe repository edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the universe lines.
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security ## team. deb http://hk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe main restricted multiverse deb-src http://hk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe main restricted
Then update the package list and install.
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install libnss-ldap
Enter the address of the Active Directory server.

The Active Directory is accessed with the LDAP protocol

Specify the LDAP search basedn

The LDAP search base DN is where to search for user account information

more at source... HOWTO: Configure Ubuntu for Active Directory Authentication - DeveloperNet

Change of location

Dave Caddick — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:08:46 GMT

Hi All,

I have been posting both at this site as well as at my new blogging home of www.techagility.info for a few weeks now, and although I still have some tweaking to do on the graphics side of things, it's time to open the doors for all. I will probably still drop the odd post this way, but essentially all is now going to the new site.

So the home page is at www.techagility.info and if you are after the feed then you can find it at www.techagility.info/feed

See you there? ;-)

List of “White Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms

Dave Caddick — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:27:39 GMT

I have been looking a bit deeper at the blogging side of things and investigating if it's worth getting a bit more serious, as well as having some great ideas about creating a Social Network, so based on this I have run up quite a few virtual Servers and installed DNN (DotNetNuke), Community Server, Movabletype and Wordpress, amongst others, both in Windows and Linux flavours and I have to state that from my pitiful level of Linux knowledge creating a LAMP server is not that easy.

LAMP for the uninitiated is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl and it was typically the PHP/Perl bit that usually frustrated me.

Anyway, so I have been doing quite a bit of research on the idea of how hard it is to create this and came across these great resources if you're considering trying the same thing?

And there is also this huge chart at Techcrunch to start you off:
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/white_label_social_networking_solutions_chart2.html

List of “White Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms

Social Networking goes mainstream
I was recently asked by a buddy to name off some social networking platforms that could be branded or changed as needed (that’s where that term ‘white label’ has come from). It’s somewhat relevant as Om Malik has now asked a rhetorical question if Social Network tools are just a feature of website. Overtime, like blogs, these will ‘normalize’.

What is “White Label” Software?
This is software you can brand and integrate tightly into your existing domain. The user experience should be near seamless, therefore any company can have their own MySpace. Kindly do not submit Social Networking tools that don’t meet this criteria, as the list can extend to hundreds if not thousands of companies.

The List
Here’s a list of Social Networking platforms, or suites that you could take and rebrand, if you know of any others, please leave a comment (many of the following are from those that left comments, like Gideon who left quite a few links). Not sorted in any particular order:

BlogTronix
I met Vassil, the CEO, I think it has a chance of giving Sharepoint a run for it’s money given it’s Intranet type features

Sharepoint
Microsoft’s collaboration suite is getting social networking tools for it’s 2007 version, I’m waiting for Microsoft to call me to do a demo.

Five Across
SF company just acquired by Cisco

Community Server
I was looking at this while at a previous role, this is what the famous Channel 9 was built on, as well as Dell 1to1 and Xbox

more at source....

Linux desktop imitating OSX - now if I can only find the Vista Theme?

Dave Caddick — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:25:32 GMT

I'm currently looking for advice on how to make Ubuntu look like Vista, but in the meantime I also came across this very nicely detailed guide on how to get Linux/Ubuntu to imitate the OSX look and feel - very nice work.

Linux desktop imitating OSX

This is my second article about how to modify your Gnome Linux Desktop to look like OSX desktop. My first article is one year old and since that, there has been many changes in both, my knowledge and availability of the software and themes. This article is not written in such a detail than the first one. Remember that you can always take a look at the old article too. And I have also written Orange-look guide for Ubuntu which contains some good tips. This article answers better to question WHAT than HOW. What do I need if I want to imitate OSX? And not so much "how can I change my wallpaper" stuff.

Original design of the user interface that is
imitated here was created by Apple inc.

you can discuss about this article and OSX-modifying in general at Ubuntuforums in this thread. There is also a discusson thread in Finnish.

I decided to write another guide, because my first guide became surprisingly popular. There are about 1000 unique visitors per day on my site and 26000 unique users per month. That is a lot more than I suspected and ever hoped. Thank you all!

Why I wrote this article?

Ok, there are almost always misunderstandings when people modify their OS to look some other OS. This is NOT about "I want a mac" or "I want OSX". If I would want a mac, I would go and buy one of those. No, this is simply about having fun by imitating and finding the limits of Gnome desktop. I often read that Gnome is considered very plain and not very configurable. I can't agree with that. Gnome is usable and simple, but yet very powerfull and it is possible to modify Gnome into anything you want. Now, I challenge KDE and OSX users to do the same. Can you make your KDE to look OSX as well as Gnome can imitate it? Or can you change your OSX to look Gnome, KDE or Windows? I doubt it, but I love to be proved wrong! ;)

Just to be clear, I don't want that OSX-look would be the default look of the Gnome. Gnome is beautiful with Tango icons and it should continue to follow it's own clean and usable style. I'm glad I made that clear. :) Now, let's begin...

Desktop Effects

OSX has some nice desktop effects like expose and magic lamp. Those not only make your desktop look good, but also improve usability. Of course, not all effets are good for usability and that's why Linux gives you a choice of which effects to use. Recently Compiz and Beryl were merged back to one project that is called Compiz Fusion. Compiz Fusion is a program that creates those amazing effects.

Screenshot illustrating "magic lamp" effect when window is minimized to the dock.

Basic elements of the OSX desktop

OSX has a desktop with icons as almost all desktop environments has. What gives OSX it's unique look is a dock that works as application launcher and taskmanager at the same time. Another element is an application menubar that is located on the top of the screen. This bar displays current application's menu and some system tray icons, clock etc. This differs from all the other desktop environments as fas as I know.

Emulating OSX Dock

Screenshot of Avant-window-navigator emulating OSX-dock.

There are many open source projects that aims to offer OSX-dock style dock for Linux desktop. There are KXDocker, Avant-window-navigator, kiba-dock and Gnome-dock (which is actually a techology demo). My favourites are Neil J. Patel's Avant-window-navigator and Gnome-dock that was written by MacSlow. In the screenshot above you can see Avant-window-navigator that is my current choice. It can be easily modified to look like OSX-dock and it works as application laucher AND taskbar. There are also nice plugins for it that allows applications to change icon on dock. This allows Gaim to use status icons on bar and Rhythmbox to display alubm art as icon.

Screenshot of Avant-window-navigator emulating OSX-dock.

Screenshot of Gnome-panel that is modified to look like OSX menubar

Now that we have a panel with nice and shiny look, it's time to add some gnome-applets to it. To imitate OSX I recommend you to use clock applet, notification-area applet, deskbar-applet, macmenu-applet and some menu-applet to add that apple logo. Deskbar is a user interface for Tracker and Beagle that you can use for desktop search. Macmenu-applet is the trickiest one here. Gnome doesn't support this kind of behaviour for default so you'll need to patch GTK-librarys with some code that AqD provided to the community. You can read more about macmenu-applet and patches at Ubuntuforums. System tray icons are based on the current icon theme. So the correct way to change them is to change the icon-theme.

There is deb-packages for Ubuntu Feisty users available at Ubuntuforums. Just see this post. There is a download link and installation instructions. These packages improve AqD's patches even more. For example, underscores '_' are removed from menuitems.

Boot screen

I couldn't find a decent OSX-look-a-like bootpslash theme for Linux. So again, I did it myself. This is the great thing with the Linux. You can always do things by your self if it's not provided already. I created an usplash theme that tries to imitate OSX boot screen. There is one difference though. In real OSX boot screen there is a nice round animation and in my theme there is a progress bar. Maybe in the future I'll learn how to make that animation to Linux boot screen. I think that it's possible to do it with usplash.

I'm not a usplash theme guru yet, so this theme is not perfect. Especially it doesn't support widescreen resolutions. If you have 4:3 resolution monitor then everything is ok. If you have widescreen resolution then there will be black bars on both sides of the bootimage. If you know how to fix this, please contact me. Below is a screenshot of my current usplash theme, which you can download from here.

Screenshot of my usplash theme. This image is lacking the progress bar.

Wallpaper and desktop icons

Wallpaper isn't really a part of OSX, because everyone can change that. It still creates a nice illusion if you use the wallpaper that is used to see on other OS. That's why, if you want real OSX-look then you should also use OSX-wallpaper. Get the wallpaper from here.

Well, I don't have much to say about desktop icons. There are only few and there is nothing special about them. Just create desktop icons as you have used to.

Screenshot of clean Gnome desktop that is modified to look like OSX.

Fonts

OSX uses Lucida Grande font. You can download this and other mac fonts from here. Below is a screenshot of my font settings. I also recommend you to add this .fonts.conf file under your home directory. It improves font rendering after X has been restarted.

My font settings on Gnome.

Login screen

Gnome uses GDM as a graphical login screen. There are many nice OSX-looking themes available, but none of them was good enough for me. So I took the best one and modified it a little bit. Only a little, but it's all about details. ;) You can download GDM-theme from here. It's not perfect, but I really don't care. It's about 5 seconds on my screen and that's it. This theme is based on AppleLinux theme.

Screenshot of GDM-theme.

System themes

I didn't find GTK-theme that would imitate OSX as well as GTK allows. That's why I decided to create my own theme that I based on Glossy P theme, which was a good starting point. I used some of the graphics directly from Glossy P and some I did by myself. It's not a prefect copy of OSX, because there are some limitations in GTK that I can't get around. You can download my GTK-theme from here.

At the moment I use Beryl compositing and it's emerald window manager. There is a great OSX Tiger theme for emerald which you can download from here.

Application specific themes

Unfortunately, not all GTK-applications uses icon-theme icons. For example Gaim, Terminal Server Client and Liferea has their own icons, which cannot be affected by changing the global icon-theme. Also Firefox and Thunderbird has themes that are out of the scope of global Gnome themeing. I don't have time and energy to write guide to all of those programs, but you should read my two previous articles, which discuss this in more detail. Here I will just offer few links and that's it.

Icons

Icons are essetial part of the desktop design. OSX has nice glossy icons and Gnome has... well... gnome has icons. I'm glad to see that Gnome started to use Tango style icons which is a huge improvment, but those doesn't really fit to OSX look that we are trying to imitate here. I have created a nice and full covering icon-theme for Gnome that uses real OSX icons and other cool icons made by talented people. Only the problem is, that I don't have copyrights and I'm uncertain can I release them here without gettig problems to myself.

I advice you to create your own theme by collecting OSX-style icons from the internet. There are plenty of icons available for example at DeviantArt.

Polishing user interface

It's all about details. Espesially when you are trying to imitate something or someone. So here are some final tips that I recommend you to do. First remove that gnome-splash screen. There is no use for that and it's not very elegant. Below is a screenshot where "Show splash screen on login" is unchecked. Do the same. Notice that in latest Gnome this has to be done with gconf-editor since it's not an option in session window anymore.

Another thing that I did is that I removed icons from menus. This gives a cleaner look, but it also might make your desktop less usable. At least in Gimp those icons are very handy. Anyway, here is a screenshot of my menu & toolbar settings.

All in all, keep things simple! Do not add dozens of icons to your desktop. :)

Emulating OSX menubar
OSX has only one menubar on the screen at the time. This menubar is displayed at the top of the screen with clock and system tray icons. Gnome doesn't have this kind of bar at default, but it is possible to make one. What you need is gnome-panel that is 24 pixels high. Use OSX-like background image for your panel. You can download it below. Just select the one that is correct to your resolution. If there is not version available for your resolution, it's not difficult to create one with GIMP.
I won't discuss installing and configuring Compiz Fusion in this article for two reasons. First, there are dozens of HOWTO-guides, which tell you how to do that. Second, it depends a lot of which graphics card you have, which distro you use etc. So, I recommend that you take a look of OpenCompositing forums for more information.

If VECD is an expensive option for a VDI then perhaps you might want to consider a Linux variant that looks like Windows XP?

Dave Caddick — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 01:31:02 GMT

So how are things progressing with regard to any serious Virtual Desktop scenarios? Do you know of any? VMware still touts the effort by Prudential in the UK as a success story, but that was done nearly two years ago, well before MS came to appreciate the level of interest in Virtualizing the Desktop.

From what I've seen and heard down here in Australia the major roadblock to any movement on this is the lack of clarity from MS Licensing regarding releasing of any Pricing for the VECD unless of course it's tied to the Software Subscription model?

If this "fence sitting" by Microsoft continues on much longer I wonder if anyone is going to seriously look at trying to run a variant of Linux in a VDI play? http://wskills.blogspot.com/2006/12/linux-that-looks-like-windows-xp.html

And this then poses another interesting thought? If MS are going to raise the stakes in making it pretty expensive for Desktop Virtualization by insisting on Customers purchasing a Retail Vista License to be valid it makes you wonder if this starts to open the door for the Linux Desktop support plays like RedHat and.... surprise, surprise, Novell....???

It's funny how things turn full circle, isn't it? ;-))

Even if you aren't serious about using Linux/Novell for a VDI scenario - I'd suggest you would be certainly well advised to bring up the possibility when you are discussing Pricing and Licensing with MS representatives?

Neoware has now been rebranded and has a new web site

Dave Caddick — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:29:48 GMT

Rebranding Neoware

With the advent of virtualization technology, increasing security breaches, stiffer regulatory compliance, and renewed interest in energy savings, thin client computing is becoming a stronger challenger to the traditional desktop and laptop PC. By earning a position as a trusted, experienced player, Neoware is poised to deliver the benefits of thin client computing to more companies than ever. Together with our new Web site and logo, we’ve adopted a new “tag line”… “redefine computing.”

For the first time, Neoware is on the attack – not at competing thin client companies – but at the vastly larger PC category itself. We believe thin client computing has advanced to the point where it can meet the requirements of most professionals who are now using traditional, inefficient, costly, and energy consuming PCs.

Think for a moment: we’re not fighting for market share with Wyse and HP. We’re challenging the decades-old assumption that the traditional PC is the only viable computing platform for the enterprise. And technology, security, cost, regulatory compliance, and energy consumption are all on our side.

Example:

Lower Costs with improved hardware utilization and energy savings
Increased Control over corporate assets for greater compliance
Flexibility in desktop management
Increased Data Security with sensitive data residing on the server
Enhanced Desktop Security with no viruses, Trojans, and malware
Simplified Support of end user desktops
Improved IT responsiveness, flexibility and overall business continuity

With major desktop virtualization initiatives gaining steam from industry leaders, and a host of new technologies – such as streaming software and connection brokers – arriving on the scene, Neoware is providing its customers with a clear view of virtualization. We can help you understand how desktop virtualization works, and how it can drive costs out of desktop management.

Open Standards, Easy Integration

In keeping with Neoware's commitment to providing open, industry standard solutions that are easy to integrate into the infrastructure of your choice, Neoware offers desktop device compatability with the industry's leading virtual desktop initiatives:

IBM Virtualized Client Solution (VCS)
VMware® Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Citrix® Dynamic Desktop Initiative (DDI)