Linux

Earlier this week I blogged about my data center colleagues over at Dell's Enterprise Technology Center (aka Dell TechCenter). They are a community of system-admins, data center managers and other technical people that are on the hunt for new ways to get more out of their data center servers, storage and networking equipment.

This week, Dell TechCenter launched the Dell Masters Program, a network of technical superstars within Dell TechCenter who create and contribute community content (scripts, whitepapers, videos etc.) based on their own experiences, ideas and innovations.

Take a look at a post written by Dell-Scott H (aka @dellservergeek or Scott Hanson by his wife, colleagues and friends) on the Dell TechCenter blog announcing the new program. He walks you through how to get registered and why stinkin' badges are not part of this program.

Editor-in-Chief Tom Kolnowski sums it up nicely, "The Dell Masters Program is all about using deep peer-to-peer networking."

The Red Hat Summit is taking place September 1-4 in Chicago, and Dell will be an active participant in the activities. We're an "Enterprise Sponsor" of the event, and we'll have a both in the partner pavilion, showing off our latest and greatest servers as well as giving away flashlights and USB keys for those that come by.

We also have two Dell engineers leading technical sessions during the summit. The first session is on Wednesday at 1 PM, titled "Simplifying Linux iSCSI Management with iSNS", and is lead jointly by Dell's Shyam Iyer along with Mike Christie from Red Hat. They'll be discussing simpler, faster ways to achieve storage LUN/volume provisioning through a single management console. The second session is lead by one of Dell's Linux Technology Strategist in the Office of the CTO, Matt Domsch. His session takes place on Friday at 11 AM, and is titled "Simplifying New Server Deployment." Matt will be discussing how Dell and Red Hat are simplifying new server deployment using Red Hat Enterprise Linux's device driver update model and Dell's built-in systems management features.

Click here to find more details on the Dell sessions and a complete list of all the other sessions going on during the Red Hat Summit.

If you're attending the Red Hat Summit, please stop by the both and/or the technical sessions to meet us. We'd love to hear any feedback you have around running Linux on Dell systems.

There's been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere since Google announced the Chrome OS last week. For those of you who didn't follow the discussions, the Chrome OS is an experience-targeted cloud OS that has the potential to push the boundaries and definition of the alternative operating environment. According to Google's blog post, the Chrome OS is specifically targeted towards the netbook class device. While there's still lots of questions about the OS, the idea has potential. I think it will be interesting to see what the interaction between Chrome OS and Android will ultimately be within the cloud. Given that Google has made it clear that the Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010, there's still a lot of time to see how this will develop. As with most new technology, Dell plans to evaluate the Chrome OS and other alternative operating environments, like we've done in the past. Luckily (for me!), Dell enjoys a great relationship with Google. As we have more details to share on the topic, we'll do it here.

Alternative operating systems, continue to evolve, flourish and prosper. Over the last 18 months, we have seen Linux and its derivatives make their way into the hands of consumers (hooray!!). We have also seen smartphone and MID operating systems such as Android and the Palm Pre's WebOS showing signs of enthusiasm and prosperity.  It's a wonderful time to witness and participate in such a renaissance within the PC and small device industry.  These alternative operating environments are truly "different" from the traditional Windows platform - they don't attempt to simply "mimic" Windows.

Alternative operating system provide users with an focused experience: highlighting a particular feature - such as web browsing, email, or media consumption. Within Dell, we call this an "experience-targeted" platform as it represents the primal focus of the alternative environment:  direct and focus the user towards a specific set of features (or "experiences" in marketing terms). Most alternative operating environments also come with this "focused" feature.  As is typically the case, these alternative operating environments are not Windows compatible - they do not run the standard Windows/Win32 applications that are so common. This can be seen as a disadvantage. However, these alternative operating environments attempt to address this shortcoming by focusing their feature set with a self-directed experience: entice and direct the user to its strengths.

Moblin is the next evolutionary step of the traditional Linux environment where focus on smaller devices and small screens is a requirement. It takes a different approach to its user experience from either Dell's current offering or Ubuntu Netbook Remix by further simplifying the self-directedness of the desktop - no user guide should be needed to learn how to use Moblin. Additionally, Moblin replaces some of the traditional Linux applications, such as media players, browsers, etc..., with equivalent versions that have been specifically optimized to align with this new design behavior/look and feel of Moblin. Applications take up the entire desktop in Moblin (because screen real estate is a premium in these kinds of devices).  Hence, applications that are optimized around that behavior provide a greater user experience over the traditional Linux version of the same application.  Moblin continues this theme by providing a new simplified network connectivity manager - one that again, looks and behaves like a more integrated application within the Moblin desktop. Like our Linux offering on Mini netbooks and UNR, simplicity is a key design element in Moblin. Users of Moblin see a targeted feature set (browsing, social networking/email, media) and the entire Moblin desktop directs and focuses the user on those features.  Dell is very interested in Moblin at present and is working very closely with its key Moblin partners (Intel and Canonical) investigating potential offerings.

Add this all up, and down the road this means that customers will have all kinds of choices on the OS side. If you're into open source options, I predict lots of exciting times ahead for us all!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about netbooks via IdeaStorm and through @Dell_Mini on Twitter since we asked you to join us last week. Since then, we've received lots of ideas and have over 150 followers on Twitter. We look forward to your continued feedback.

One of the first things we noticed at our @Dell_Mini Twitter account was that some of you are interested in running Android on a Dell Mini. I went looking for Doug Anson who’s one of our software gurus in the Office of the CTO to get his thoughts. He and other folks at Dell like him are responsible for investigating future technology options in our products.

Update: Just saw a tweet from Doug that he's kicking the tires on Moblin.

In this video, he shows off a couple of Mini 10v systems running Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Android where he had network and browsing functionality without too much of a fuss.

For more, take a look:

There's been a fair bit of discussion recently about Wolfram Alpha's upcoming launch of what they are calling their "computational knowledge engine." 

The Independent wrote a lengthy article on the capabilities of the new search tool, suggesting that it is "an invention that could change the Internet forever." They summarize what they consider to be the major milestones of the Internet with Wolfram Alpha's launch as one of seven events that are remarkable.

Worldwide network: A brief history of the internet (source: The Independent, May 3, 2009)

• 1969 The internet is created by the US Department of Defense with the networking of computers at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute.
• 1979 The British Post Office uses the technology to create the first international computer networks.
• 1980 Bill Gates's deal to put a Microsoft Operating System on IBM's computers paves the way for almost universal computer ownership.
• 1984 Apple launches the first successful 'modern' computer interface using graphics to represent files and folders, drop-down menus and, crucially, mouse control.
• 1989 Tim Berners-Lee creates the world wide web – using browsers, pages and links to make communication on the internet simple.
• 1996 Google begins as a research project at Stanford University. The company is formally founded two years later by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
• 2009 Dr Stephen Wolfram launches Wolfram Alpha.

Other's haven't lacked opinions and reviews of the service. Cnet's Rafe Needleman and Stephen Shankland got an inside look and have given their thoughts in this article and in this one, as have ZDNet's Sam Diaz and Larry Dignan.

Just when everyone had become overly fixated on who would acquire Twitter, along comes a company from Champaign, Illinois, to shake things up. For those under the age of 25, Champaign is home to the University of Illinois and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where the NCSA's Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina created Mosaic, considered to be the first popular graphical browser for the World Wide Web.

Wolfram Alpha published a blog post today outlining the two companies they are working with to bring their new service to market. R Systems Inc. has built the 44th fastest supercomputer (per the June 2008 TOP500 list) known as the R-Smarr powered by a Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) server solution. Dell DCS also provided another supercomputer based on quad-board, dual-processor, quad-core Harpertown servers for their data center.

There are many more details on Wolfram Alpha to come soon.