Ruby 1.8.7 is out

Ruby 1.8.7 is out. The official announcement is here. What makes this release significant is that it includes several backports from Ruby 1.9 alongside the usual batch of bug fixes and performance improvements. Enjoy!

A mini review of OpenSolaris 2005.08

As I wrote in a previous post I was considiring trying out the new OpenSolaris 2005.08. And so I did.

I downloaded the installation image from the project’s web site, burned it and booted from it. The live cd experience was pleasant, it bore a heavy resemblance to that of Ubuntu. There is a nice driver information application that shows you which devices OpenSolaris managed to detect and install drivers for, and the ones it detected but didn’t have drivers for. I had issues with my on board ethernet adapter so I bought a ethernet adapter using the tested and true Realtek 8139 chipset. It worked like a charm with Solaris. All of my other hardware was working OK, except for my X-Fi sound card. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my display’s resolution was properly configured to 1680×1050(the video adapter is RadeonHD 2900Pro, hence the surprise). GNOME’s OpenSolaris theme matches the new default look and feel of Swing apps from the upcoming Java 6u10 and looks great in my opinion.

The installer is nothing special, but it gets the job done. I had some issues with it partitioning my hard drive the first time I ran it, but the second all went fine(I would have partitioned the drive by hand had I figured out how to use Solaris’s version of fdisk). The installation went smoothly from there. After it finished and I rebooted I was again pleasantly surprised to see that Solaris had generated a GRUB configuration section for my Windows XP installation, though it had generated the same section twice for some reason.

I have to say that OpenSolaris boots considerably slower than say Ubuntu. When you log in, GNOME also take more time to load completely than I’m used to. The set of apps you’ll find installed by default is pretty standard – Firefox 2 as the web browser, Thunderbird 2 as the e-mail client and the usual GNOME productivity tools. The only big missing player is OpenOffice, but it’s in the default repository. Java 6 is installed by default(only the JRE though). Python and Perl are also in, Ruby and gcc are not.

I dowloaded the latest OSS version for Solaris and with it I got sound right away from my X-Fi. Finding mp3 codec for Solaris was another story entirely… The GUI frontend to IPS(OpenSolaris’ package management system) is not bad, but it’s light years away from Synaptic. One should however consider the fact that the frontend is at version 0.1. I used it to install OpenOffice – it worked fine. The package selection available is pretty slim, but I guess that it will improve as the OS becomes more popular.

I was very disappointed with the lack of decent documentation on the project’s web site. Sure there are some installation notes and some docs about IPS, but a such a venture surely requires a handbook similar to FreeBSD’s. There are many differences between Linux and Solaris utilities of the same name and no central information hub for Solaris which one to consult should the need arise. Also – the package naming convention in the default repository is awful. All package names start with SUN which I personaly find confusing and annoying.

All in all OpenSolaris is a good OS, but I has a long way to go before it’s ready for the prime time. The most compelling reasons not to switch to Solaris now are probably the lack of documentation and prepackaged software. The system itself is solid and worth a try, especially if you have more time to spare to play with it.

Ubuntu 8.04 and X-Fi

Finally I’m enjoying quality sound from my X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card under Linux(Ubuntu 8.04). Unexpectedly the credit this time goes to OSS, not ALSA. The guys from the OSS project were the first to provide a working free driver for the X-Fi family of sound cards and I have to thank them for that.

If you have a X-Fi yourselves you might wanna check out these two articles – setup OSS on Hardy and configure apps to use OSS.

Enjoy.

Considering OpenSolaris 2008.05

A few days ago OpenSolaris 2008.05 was released. It is the first stable release of Project Indiana and may the considered the first major OpenSolaris release since Sun announced Solaris was going open source a few years ago. Personally I never expected OpenSolaris to work, considering the immense momentum GNU/Linux was gathered. However with Ian Murdock(Debian’s creator) in charge and Sun’s financial backing Project Indiana was bound to deliver us some impovements… With the advent of IPS(Image Packaging System), the polishing done on the desktop side and the inclusion of some very helpful software packages(like the radeonhd driver for example) in the main distribution OpenSolaris has become a serious contender for a workstation OS. Especially for Java developers… There are many reviews of the new OS on the net, most of which are favourable. All of this got me considering to try OpenSolaris 2008.05 on one of my computers at home and see for myself if it is a viable alternative to GNU/Linux. If you are considering like to me to take OpenSolaris 2008.05 for a spin you may find this short article, containing a few tips for common post installation tasks, helpful.

Some valuable Maven 2 resources

If you are doing serious Java development you definitely need some serious build tool for your projects. In the past Ant was the only viable choice, but in the recent years Maven has become extremely popular as well. Granted Maven is far more than a build tool, it is used primarily as such. But despite all it’s cool features Maven has one great problem – it’s lack of decent documentation. There are however two freely available books that really help fill this void – “Better Builds with Maven” and “Maven: The Definitive Guide“. The first book is a little out of date, the second is currently not quite finished, but they can help you a lot, especially if you’re just getting started with Maven.

The first post

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my blog! I’ll post here bits and pieces inspired by my humble experience as a software developer. Expect to see here primarily stuff about Java and Ruby, but also about software development in general. As a fan of the Star Wars franchise I often like to quote characters from the movies. I feel that this is the time for one such quote – “Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.”. I’m no dev wizard by any means, but I hope that I can help someone learn something helpful and maybe I’ll learn something from the readers of my blog(if I have any that is:)). In this sense one can say that in life we’re always the master and the apprentice at the same time… I hope you’ll enjoy reading my blog!