There has been a lot of movement in the embedded space lately, especially with respect to Linux. So, let's take a look at where this is going. First, when I see the term "embedded", I think, no moving parts. The two things that typically move inside a computer are fans and drives. Fans are needed for cooling. Cooling is needed because processors generate heat when they process. So, to avoid cooling fans, we need a cooler processor, that can be cooled by air (and maybe a good heat dissipation system), but needs no fans. A processor can keep its cool if the code it processes is efficient. So, there you go. An embedded system needs efficient code and a cool running processor.

I've been looking for a stable long term distro release. Debian is always great with its "stable" version. At UbuntuLive, Matt Zimmerman, CTO at Canonical showed a roadmap as part of his presentation. Sometimes, a visual aid makes all the difference. It looks like Dapper Drake, aka Ubuntu 6.06 will be around until 2011 on the server. That's long enough for me!. With backports of stable software, LTS is beginning to look a lot like Debian stable.

 

Clonezilla is an open source imaging product for utilizing unicast or multicast sessions to clone operating systems and redeploy them en-masse.  The developers of Clonezilla were on the scene in Portland at Ubuntu Live to talk about their project.

For those of us that were not able to make it to Ubuntu Live '07, or couldn't attend the Clonezilla presentation, Kristian Erik Hermansen posted the links to the video, audio and pdf files for the presentation on the Ubuntu mailing list.

Here are the links to the presentation files.

Flash Video:
http://kristian-hermansen.com/clonezilla/ubuntu-live-2007-clonezilla-kristian-erik-hermansen.html

RAW MP4 Video:
http://kristian-hermansen.com/clonezilla/Clonezilla-talk-by-Kristian.mp4

Podcast MP3:
http://kristian-hermansen.com/clonezilla/ubuntu-live-2007-clonezilla-better-than-ghost-kristian-erik-hermansen.mp3

Presentation PDF:
http://kristian-hermansen.com/clonezilla/clonezilla.pdf

I was on my flight back from Portland, Oregon, where I spend a week at UbuntuLive and OSCON 2007. With all that energy on my mind, I put on my headphones and gazed at the western sky. The sun had just set and the sky looked an eerie Ubuntu-orange.  I was listening to Karsh Kale's Realize, a mix of tabla (Indian classical drums) and electronica. While I appreciate the science of pure classical music, I often prefer mixes, where artists attempt to take pieces from here and there and come up with their own interpretation of what art should be.
As I listened to Empty Hands I could feel the nuances of beats and electronica as they provided support to the lyrics (I understand Hindi/Urdu, so your mileage may vary) weaving a fabric that is energetic, and yet adheres to standards of classical music.

Several presentation slides from UbuntuLive 2007 are now up at http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/60/presentations.html

 

Ubuntu's mobile environment targets a platform that's not a PDA or a mobile phone platform. They would like to build a platform very much like Nokia's maemo. The project has taken off with over 250 people on the mailing list. The approach is different from most others in that it does not require (afaict) a cross platform compile environment. It is not clear as to how this will be different from OpenMoko or Maemo. Ubuntu claims that its components will be free and open, unlike, say, Maemo's which has Opera pre-packaged. Their focus is supposedly a much better user experience. Of course, there is no release as yet, so its a wait and see situation. In case you were wondering what Intel's moblin.org is for, it is a site for graphical tools for building the system for Ubuntu Mobile Environment. The first release of the UME will be aligned with 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon).

From Jeff Waugh's presentation.

 

 

I finally got to see, touch and feel the legendary "One Laptop per Child" $100 machine. Its smaller and heavier and much cooler (as in "it rocks!") than I imagined.

 

Although the OpenMoko booth won't open until tomorrow, Michael Shiloh was showing us two Neo 1973 phones that he had with him. The phone really exists!!! Pen shown for scale.

 

 

 

 

 

I just finished presenting on the Case Studies Panel for Education at Ubuntu Live 2007. The session was a bit hurried, but the slides are up. View them inline or grab them for later.