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| via Speed Test NET |
China’s National University of Defense Technology, NUDT , developers of the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, and Canonical , the organization behind Ubuntu, today announce a collaboration to bring OpenStack to the world’s fastest supercomputer for high performance cloud environments.
The new collaboration with Canonical will enable Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu OpenStack and Ubuntu’s orchestration tool, Juju, to run Tienhe2. Today, Ubuntu OpenStack is running on 256 high performance nodes and this will grow to over 6400 nodes in the coming months. The nodes will be available to Government departments in Guangdong province as well as other NUDT partners for analysis, census, and eGovernment applications.
Both OpenStack and Ubuntu’s orchestration tool, Juju, will run on Tianhe-2 to enable NUDT partners and affiliate to rapidly deploy and manage very high performance cloud environments. The Juju orchestration tool makes it easy to design, deploy, scale and manage cloud workloads in OpenStack (cloud) environments. Workloads running on Tianhe-2 will enjoy higher inter-connect bandwidth and computing power for point heavy or memory intensive application.
Professor QingBo Wu at NUDT comments; “NUDT is a pioneer of technology, especially in the area of high performance. Tianhe-2, the world’s fastest supercomputer runs on Ubuntu Kylin and now with OpenStack and Ubuntu Juju, we are able to deliver high performance OpenStack.”
“To see the fastest supercomputer running OpenStack is already a beautiful thing,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu. “To see it running OpenStack with workloads orchestrated by Ubuntu Juju is incredibly powerful. We can’t wait to see it rolled out further.”
NUDT designed and built Tianhe-2, which runs on its own Kylin Cloud Linux operating system and has held the record for the world’s fastest supercomputer since 2013, having recorded results of Linpack Performance (Rmax)33,862.7 TFlop/s. The servers use Intel Xeon processors, Intel Xeon Phi co-processors and a 160Gb per second interconnect for super-fast data transfer between nodes.
ReactOS® is a free open source operating system based on the best design principles found in the Windows NT® architecture (Windows versions such as Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012 are built on Windows NT architecture). Written completely from scratch, ReactOS is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the UNIX architecture.
The main goal of the ReactOS® project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your Windows® applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS® is to allow you to use it as alternative to Windows® without the need to change software you are used to.
ReactOS 0.3.15 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.
Is Microsoft going the way of the Soviet Union? Vivek Wadhwa, vice president for academics and innovation at Singularity University, director of research at Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, and a fellow at Stanford Law School, thinks so. A good friend of the Making Sen$e Business Desk, Wadhwa takes another look at Microsoft's future -- an issue he explored earlier this week in his column on the Washington Post's Innovations blog.
Vivek Wadhwa: When companies become too big, they usually lose their ability to innovate. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Apple, GE and Google, but most become complacent and focus increasingly on defending their existing turf rather than on creating new markets. Thus they begin their march into oblivion.
That is the present state of Microsoft. It has become an old giant, obsessed with defending its aging products. If Microsoft doesn't change course, it is likely to suffer the same fate as that old superpower, the former Soviet Union, whose obsession with preserving its bloated bureaucracy led to its destruction.
Microsoft has lost ground in practically every emerging field, including mobile computing, music players, smartphones, search and social networking. Yes, it has had an odd success or two, such as the Xbox, but these are just flukes.
It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have talented people working for it. Quite to the contrary, it has an abundance of talent. For two decades, it was the tech industry's strongest talent magnet. It hired the best of the best. And most of these geniuses haven't left -- yet.
My former students and friends who work at Microsoft tell me that they love the company, but are stifled by its bureaucracy, turf wars and central planning. Big ideas get quashed because they don't fit into the corporate vision; products with great potential are killed because they could threaten the company's core products. These employees believe that their talent is being wasted. They long for the days when Microsoft was a lean mean fighting machine.
That's why I believe that the best path forward for Microsoft is to break itself up into a number of fighting machines -- smaller companies that compete with upstarts in Silicon Valley and with each other. These micro-Microsofts need to have the freedom to take risks and cannibalize the company's core products. That won't happen under its present structure.
The Windows 8 fiasco illustrates the problems that Microsoft faces. Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 that was designed for tablet computers with touch screens, has a beautiful user interface and functionality. In many ways, it is better than Apple's iOS and Google's Android. But Microsoft was obsessed with protecting its Windows operating system and Office tools franchise. So it bundled a version of Microsoft Office into RT. To make the desktop version of Windows 8 consistent with RT, it added to it the same tiled user interface and removed the Start button.
Most desktop computers and laptops, however, don't have touch screens. And Windows users aren't used to computers without Start buttons. So they hated Windows 8 desktop, and it was a commercial disaster.
The inclusion of Microsoft Office on RT and Microsoft's desire to protect its operating system's pricing structure led it to charge re-sellers a price rumored to be about $85 (the re-seller price is a well-guarded secret). This is more than what lower-end tablets will soon cost, and competes directly with Android, which Google gives away. That's why RT, too, was a commercial disaster.
The sensible thing for Microsoft to do would have been to provide a lighter version of RT -- for free. It would have competed head to head with Android and would likely have won because it has a superior user interface. Microsoft could have made money by charging for special features and apps such as Office. If Microsoft's RT division had had the freedom, it might also have done the unimaginable by bundling Google's Office apps and other competitive products into it.
Tablet prices are dropping rapidly. I expect that next year, there will be several players selling devices that cost less than $100. Full-featured tablets that cost around $50 -- and less -- are also on the horizon. When these become available, the market for tablets will explode. There will be hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of such devices. Instead of running Microsoft's RT, they will likely run Android. Microsoft has lost its opportunity to sell additional products on these devices through its obsession with protecting its legacy software. Windows and Office will likely slip into oblivion like the five year plans and Politburo the Soviet Union clung to.
But there is still hope for Microsoft. It has a wealth of great people and great technologies in its labs. They need to be untethered from the central bureaucracy and set free to compete and take big risks. I am not too optimistic, though, that this will happen. I worry that Microsoft will go the way of Kodak, RIM and Nokia -- or even the former Soviet Union -- all of which tanked because they were busy protecting old turf.
For a long time, Microsoft Office has been the reigning champ of office suites, but that doesn't mean the free alternative, LibreOffice, isn't worth considering. Let's take a look at how the two compare, and if it's finally possible to ditch the paid option for the free one.
You might not think it's really fair to compare the free LibreOffice and the paid Microsoft Office, but the two are a lot closer in features than you might think. For one, LibreOffice is compatible with a lot more systems, including Windows, OS X, and Linux, while Microsoft Office's newest version is restricted to just Windows 7 and Windows 8. Besides: it’s not about which one is “better” or “more feature filled.” It’s about whether your work requires what Microsoft has to offer, or if you can get by with something free and save a bit of money. Now, with LibreOffice reaching 4.1, we've decided it's time to give it an in-depth comparison with Microsoft Office.
While we certainly can't go through each feature one-by-one, we'll attempt to get a good look at how they compare. If you're interested in looking for a specific feature, head to this page and search for it on the table. It should give you a pretty good idea of exactly which features are in which suite. In this post, we're going to talk in more general terms.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Finally tonight: video games, virtual reality and how changes in those technologies may be connected with economic behavior.
NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman and Paul's avatar are our guides, part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
And you should know his story contains some video game violence.
MAN: You should feel like you're there.
MAN: Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.
PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour): Video games, one of the world's fastest-growing industries, with more than $80 billion a year in revenues now, more than twice that of movies.
MAN: The feeling of dropping is really awesome.
PAUL SOLMAN: And at a recent developers conference in San Francisco, the race was on to try out a breakthrough that could take the industry to an entirely new level.
MAN: This is insane.
PAUL SOLMAN: Though not yet ready for retail -- it's expected to sell for about $300 -- the Oculus Rift is already being hailed as the Holy Grail of gaming, a lightweight, affordable headset to deliver totally immersive virtual reality, or V.R.
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| My Ubuntu 13, GNOME Desktop (click for larger view) |
The Easiest Way to Move to Windows 7!
PCmover is the ONLY software that moves programs, files and settings from your old PC to your new PC – even restore from an image (or old hard drive) or perform an in-place upgrade.
The easy-to-use wizard will guide you in selecting which programs, files and settings you want on your PC. When complete, your new computer will have the personality and functionality of your old PC. And, PCmover is safe – it removes nothing from your old PC, won’t overwrite anything on your new PC, and includes an easy "Undo" feature.
When you think of “Ubuntu Linux,” you probably think of the community Linux distribution and the Linux desktop. That’s great, but Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, also wants you to think of Ubuntu as a server and cloud operating system platform. To that end, Canonical has been working with IBM to get Ubuntu certified on IBM’s high-end System P Power hardware line and System z mainframes.
Yes, that’s right little Ubuntu Linux may soon be certified and running on top-of-the-line IBM enterprise hardware. Before this, Canonical worked successfully with IBM on bringing Ubuntu certifications for IBM’s x86-powered System x and BladeCenter lines.
Officially, all Canonical has to say is “Our company policy is that we don’t comment on any rumors that might be circulating. We’ll of course keep you well informed of any news that comes out of Canonical.” Away from public relations though I’m hearing that Canonical and IBM have working hard on expanding Ubuntu’s reach on IBM hardware.
If all goes well, Ubuntu will be officially supported on System p within the month and it will be certified on the Z mainframes by year’s end. This is happening because Canonical is working hard on increasing its business market share. While Ubuntu is arguably the single most popular Linux distribution with individuals, it’s always lagged behind most Red Hat and SUSE, formerly Novell, in business. Canonical wants to change that.
In order to do that, Canonical has been improving its partnerships with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs); major server companies such as Dell, and its enterprise customers. This next step into high-end business computing with IBM makes perfect sense in pursuing this strategy.
As for IBM? Linux has been very, very good for IBM over the last decade and they’re getting to like Ubuntu. Historically, IBM has allied with Red Hat and Novell/SUSE. But, as IBM’s VP of Open Systems Development, Dan Frye told me recently, IBM is operating system and Linux agnostic. IBM will support what its customers want, and so, it appears to me, that IBM’s customers must now be asking for Ubuntu. Sometime soon it looks like they’ll be getting it.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): If I put my stored and accumulated content on the cloud, is it private?
CECILIA KANG, The Washington Post: Well, that's a good question.
The -- the devices will be encrypted. And that's what Apple said in passing. But there's a lot of questions as to your privacy and the security of cloud-based applications, Internet-based services. We have seen a lot of attacks on information, hacking attacks into Sony, Nintendo, PBS. You have seen a lot of these -- this -- the vulnerability of information that resides on the Internet.
And when I say it resides on the Internet, I mean that it resides on servers. You don't know where they are, but there are large data farms all over the country around the world, where bits -- your bits and pieces, the bits, I should say, of the music that you have, the videos that you have, the bits, the actual digital packets, they reside in these places that you don't really as much control of.
So, when you make this decision to switch to cloud-based applications, it's much easier, more convenient and often much cheaper. But there often is the -- there is the consideration of a tradeoff, perhaps, in that there may be less security involved. It's much safer when you have your information on your own computer that only you can access than on the Internet.
And your privacy is also perhaps in -- in question, in that more people, more companies have access to what you're doing. And they can see what you're doing online.
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When I hear the word “fork”, I reach for my gun. OK. Maybe it is not that bad. But in the open source world, “fork” is a loaded term. It can, of course, be an expression of a basic open source freedom. But it can also represent “fighting words”. It is like the way we use the term “regime” for a government we don’t like, or “cult” for a religion we disapprove of. Calling something a “fork” is rarely intended as a compliment.
So I’ll avoid the term “fork” for the remainder of this post and instead talk about the legacy of one notable open source project, OpenOffice.org, which has over the last decade spawned numerous derivative products, some open source, some proprietary, some which fully coordinate with the main project, others which have diverged, some which have prospered and endured for many years, others which did not, some which tried to offer more than OpenOffice, and others which attempted, intentionally, to offer less, some which changed the core code and other which simply added extensions.
If one just read the headlines over the past month one would get the mistaken notion that LibreOffice was the first attempt to take the OpenOffice.org open source code and make a different product from it, or even a separate open source project. This is far from true. There have been many spin-off products/projects, including:I’ve tracked down some dates of various releases of these projects and placed them on a time line above. (see full article)
- StarOffice (with a history that goes back even further, pre-Sun, to StarDivision)
- Symphony
- EuroOffice
- RedOffice
- NeoOffice
- PlusOffice
- OxygenOffice
- PlusOffice
- Go-OO
- Portable OpenOffice
- and, of course, LibreOffice
So before we ring the death knell for OpenOffice, let’s recognized the potency of this code base, in terms of its ability to spawn new projects. LibreOffice is the latest, but likely not the last example we will see. This is a market where “one size fits all” does not ring true. I’d expect to see different variations on these editors, just as there are different kinds of users, and different markets which use these kinds of tools. Whether you call it a “distribution” or a “fork”, I really don’t care. But I do believe that the only kind of open source project that does not spawn off additional projects like this is a dead project.
News Facts
- Further demonstrating its commitment to the OpenOffice.org community, Oracle today announced that it is participating in the ODF Plugfest, being held in Brussels, October 14-15.
- On the fifth anniversary of the Open Document Format (ODF) becoming an International Standard, Oracle applauds the community and OASIS for its efforts and renews its commitment to the ODF-based OpenOffice.org productivity suite.
- Oracle’s growing team of developers, QA engineers, and user experience personnel will continue developing, improving, and supporting OpenOffice.org as open source, building on the 7.5 million lines of code already contributed to the community.
- Oracle demonstrates its commitment to OpenOffice.org with new versions of this free product in collaboration with the community – OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 and OpenOffice.org 3.3 Beta – both representing advances in features and performance advancements with the introduction of new tools and extensions. Significant community contributions include localization, quality assurance, porting, documentation and user experience.
- Oracle’s ongoing support for OpenOffice.org reinforces its commitment to developing software based on open standards, providing IT users with flexibility, lower short and long-term costs and freedom from vendor lock-in.
- By investing significant resources in developing, testing, optimizing, and supporting other open source technologies such as MySQL, GlassFish, Linux, PHP, Apache, Eclipse, Berkeley DB, NetBeans, VirtualBox, Xen, and InnoDB, Oracle is invested in their future development and contributing back to the communities that produce it.
- With more than 100 million users, OpenOffice.org is the most advanced, feature-rich open source productivity suite, and continued contributions through www.openoffice.org will only improve this already popular software. Oracle views ODF as critical to providing OpenOffice.org with a complete, open, and modern document format, empowering interoperability and choice on the desktop.
- Oracle invites community participation in the OpenOffice.org conference, ODF Plugfests, and discussion groups, and welcomes contributions to the code base.
The open source community behind the free OpenOffice productivity suite is to create an independent Document Foundation and to rebrand its software as LibreOffice.
This move is being seen as an attempt to distance itself from Oracle which has so far declined to donate the OpenOffice brand to the project.
According to the new foundation's first official press release:
"After ten years' successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launches an independent foundation called The Document Foundation, to fulfill the promise of independence written in the original charter"
The Document Foundation has received support from almost the entire OpenOffice programming community, including Novell, Red Hat and Google, leaving only Oracle with the original OpenOffice repository. The Foundation said that it had invited Oracle to become a member of the new organization, and to donate the brand it acquired with Sun Microsystems 18 months ago but that until a decision is reached the LibreOffice brand will be used to refer to the Document Foundation's software development efforts.
Speaking for the group of volunteers involved in the development of OpenOffice, Sophie Gautier, former maintainer of the French-speaking language project said:
"We believe that the Foundation is a key step for the evolution of the free office suite, as it liberates the development of the code and the evolution of the project from the constraints represented by the commercial interests of a single company."
The beta of LibreOffice is available for download on the Document Foundations website and developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software.
Well, that didn't take long. When The Document Foundation (TDF) created LibreOffice from OpenOffice's code, they let the door open for Oracle, OpenOffice's main stake-owner, to join them. Oracle's reply was to tell anyone involved with LibreOffice to get the heck out of OpenOffice.
This isn't too much of a surprise. Oracle made it clear that wouldn't be joining with The Document Foundation in working on LibreOffice.
What I did find surprising is that Oracle turned a fork into a fight. In a regularly scheduled OpenOffice.org community council meeting on Oct. 14, council chair and Oracle employee Louis Suárez-Potts wrote, "I would like to propose that the TDF members of the CC consider the points those of us who have not joined TDF have made about conflict of interest and confusion ... I would further ask them to resign their offices, so as to remove the apparent conflict of interest their current representational roles produce."
These OpenOffice.org council members, who are also TDF leaders, include Charles H. Schulz, a major OpenOffice.org contributor for almost ten years; Christoph Noack, co-leader of the OpenOffice User Experience Project; and Cor Nouws, a well-known OpenOffice developer with more than six years of experience in the project. In short, these aren't just leaders — they're important OpenOffice developers.
They haven't declared yet what they'll do to this de facto ultimatum. It seems to me though that they have little choice but to leave. Certainly Oracle wants them out as soon as possible. Suárez-Potts wrote that he wanted a "final decision on your part" as soon as possible. "It is of [the] utmost importance that we do not confuse users and contributors as to what is what, as to the identity of OpenOffice.org -- or of your organization."
I can understand how Oracle wants to quickly define this matter as Oracle vs. everyone involved with LibreOffice. But it's a really dumb move.
The Document Foundation wasn't so much about setting up a rival to OpenOffice as it was about giving an important but stagnant open-source program a kick in the pants. OpenOffice was and is good, but it's not been getting significantly better in years. TDF wanted to change that.
Oracle thinks it's more important to fight with some of the people who could have been its strongest supporters than try to work with them. Dumb! Cutting off your nose to spite your face is always a mistake.
Of course, this is all a piece of Oracle's "my way or the highway" approach to all the open-source programs it inherited from Sun. Oracle may support open source in general, but it's doing a lousy job of doing what's best for the its own open-source programs.
This is going to come back to haunt Oracle. I fully expect for LibreOffice to replace OpenOffice as the number one open-source office suite and chief rival to Microsoft Office within the next twelve months.
I make no guarantee that any advice given on these pages will work as expected. There are just too many variables depending on Operator Systems and hardware configurations to give any advice that will always work.
Where possible, I will provide links to my source.
