fidzu : opera

Opera Software today released the beta of Opera 11.60, the next update of its flagship desktop browser. The beta introduces Ragnarök, Opera's implementation of the new HTML5 parsing algorithm. Because HTML5 specifies how browsers should handle incorrect code, browsers will soon handle coding missteps the same way - a big win for web-application compatibility across browsers.

10 Nov 2011 9:00am GMT

Today's the big release for Oracle Solaris 11, after 7 years of development. For me, the Solaris 11 release comes a little more than 11 years after I joined the X11 engineering team at what was then Sun, and finishes off some projects that were started all the way back then.

For instance, when I joined the X team, Sun was finishing off the removal of the old OpenWindows desktop, and we kept getting questions asking about the rest of the stuff being shipped in /usr/openwin, the directory that held both the OpenLook applications and the X Window System software. I wrote up an ARC case at the time to move the X software to /usr/X11, but there were various issues and higher priority work, so we didn't end up starting that move until near the end of the Solaris 10 development cycle several years later. Solaris 10 thus had a mix of the recently added Xorg server and related code delivered in /usr/X11, while most of the existing bits from Sun's proprietary fork of X11R6 were still in /usr/openwin.

During Solaris 11 development, we finished that move, and then jumped again, moving the programs directly into /usr/bin, following the general Solaris 11 strategy of using /usr/bin for most of the programs shipped with the OS, and using other directories, such as /usr/gnu/bin, /usr/xpg4/bin, /usr/sunos/bin, and /usr/ucb for conflicting alternate implementations of the programs shipped in /usr/bin, no longer as a way to segregate out various subsystems to allow the OS to better fit onto the 105Mb hard disks that shipped with Sun workstations back when /usr/openwin was created. However, if for some reason you wanted to build your own set of X binaries, you could put them in /usr/X11R7 (as I do for testing builds of the upstream git master repos), and then put that first in your $PATH, so nothing is really lost here.

The other major project that was started during Solaris 10 development and finished for Solaris 11 was replacing that old proprietary fork of X11R6, including the Xsun server, with the modernized, modularized, open source X11R7.* code base from the new X.Org, including the Xorg server. The final result, included in this Solaris 11 release, is based mostly on the X11R7.6 release, including recent additions such as the XCB API I blogged about last year, though we did include newer versions of modules that had upstream releases since the X11R7.6 katamari, such as Xorg server version 1.10.3.

That said, we do still apply some local patches, configuration options, and other changes, for things from just fitting into the Solaris man page style or adding support for Trusted Extensions labeled desktops. You can see all of those changes in our source repository, which is searchable and browsable via OpenGrok on src.opensolaris.org (or via hgweb on community mirrors such as openindiana.org) and available for anonymous hg cloning as well. That xnv-clone tree is now frozen, a permanent snapshot of the Solaris 11 sources, while we've created a new x-s11-update-clone tree for the Solaris 11 update releases now being developed to follow on from here.

Naturally, when your OS has 7 years between major release cycles, the hardware environment you run on greatly changes in the meantime as well, and as the layer that handles the graphics hardware, there have been changes due to that. Most of the SPARC graphics devices that were supported in Solaris 10 aren't any more, because the platforms they ran in are no longer supported - we still ship a couple SPARC drivers that are supported, the efb driver for the Sun XVR-50, XVR-100, and XVR-300 cards based on the ATI Radeon chipsets, and the astfb driver for the AST2100 remote Keyboard/Video/Mouse/Storage (rKVMS) chipset in the server ILOM devices. On the x86 side, the EOL of 32-bit platforms let us clear out a lot of the older x86 video device drivers for chipsets and cards you wouldn't find in x64 systems - of course, there's still many supported there, due to the wider variety of graphics hardware found in the x64 world, and even some recent updates, such as the addition of Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) support for Intel graphics up through the Sandy Bridge generation.

For those who followed the development as it happened, either via watching our open source code releases or using one of the many development builds and interim releases such as the various Solaris Express trains, much of this is old news to you. For those who didn't, or who want a refresher on the details, you can see last year's summary in my X11 changes in the 2010.11 release blog post. Once again, the detailed change logs for the X11 packages are available, though unfortunately, all the links in them to the bug reports are now broken, so browsing the hg history log is probably more informative.

Since that update, which covered up to the build 151 released as 2010.11, we've continued development and polishing to get this Solaris 11 release finished up. We added a couple more components, including the previously mentioned xcb libraries, the FreeGLUT library, and the Xdmx Distributed Multihead X server. We cleaned up documentation, including the addition of some docs for the Xserver DTrace provider in /usr/share/doc/Xserver/. The packaging was improved, clearing up errors and optimizing the builds to reduce unnecessary updates. A few old and rarely used components were dropped, including the rstart program for starting up X clients remotely (ssh X forwarding replaces this in a more secure fashion) and the xrx plugin for embedding X applications in a web browser page (which hasn't been kept up to date with the rapidly evolving browser environment). Because Solaris 11 only supports 64-bit systems, and most of the upstream X code was already 64-bit clean, the X servers and most of the X applications are now shipped as 64-bit builds, though the libraries of course are delivered in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for binary compatibility with applications of each flavor. The Solaris auditing system can now record each attempt by a client to connect to the Xorg server and whether or not it succeeded, for sites which need that level of detail.

In total, we recorded 1512 change request id's during Solaris 11 development, from the time we forked the "Nevada" gate from the Solaris 10 release until the final code freeze for todays release - some were one line bug fixes, some were man page updates, some were minor RFE's and some were major projects, but in the end, the result is both very different (and hopefully much better) than what we started with, and yet, still contains the core X11 code base with 24 years of backwards compatibility in the core protocols and APIs.

09 Nov 2011 10:10pm GMT

Solaris 11 is available for download "SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.0", based on build snv_175b.

There are of course many changes since Solaris 10, most of them have been available in the latest build of OpenSolaris but there are some new that are unique to the final release of Solaris 11.

Install images are available for download and works on all current SPARC machines which is the T and M-series. There are also images available for X86-based machines which also can be used in VirtualBox. Here is a quick reference for the brand new packaging system: IPS one liners.

I will post more detailed follow-up after I've had time to test it for more than a few hours.

Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 - What's new
Download Oracle Solaris 11
Future features of Solaris 11

09 Nov 2011 6:57pm GMT

# usermod -K type=role root
# usermod -R +root -A +solaris.system.maintenance darrenm
# rolemod -K roleauth=user
# passwd -N root

09 Nov 2011 6:38pm GMT

Rwandan MTN subscribers will now have access to the Opera Mini browser, which gives them faster and cheaper access to the Web through their mobile devices, as well as quick access to their favorite sites and MTN portals.

09 Nov 2011 2:00pm GMT

Mxit, the leading mobile social platform in Africa, today announced a partnership agreement with Opera Software. Opera and Mxit will work together to bring the best mobile experience to consumers in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

07 Nov 2011 9:00am GMT

Winter is coming, so it's time to find some indoors activities. How about some more cooking inspiration from Vietnam? Don't mind if we do!

After a quick read you should be able to find much more than just tasty cakes. Let's do a full three course meal! As a starter we recommend this awesome sushi plate... followed by some classic noodles and beef. For dessert it's your choice between an amazing panna cotta and mousse cake. Following that, we recommend socializing while enjoying a wide variety of cupcakes!

When you encounter a blog called "Lovelykitchen" you know it's going to be a good stay. Congratulations Dumbonie you are our Member of the Week! :chef:

04 Nov 2011 1:48pm GMT

Before we start the presentation this week, we would like to state that our insatiable love for mooncakes did not influence our choice in Member of the Week. Any such correlation is most probably coincidental.The blog is in Vietnamese. Don't worry though, we added some translation magic to the links.

A tourism student from Hanoi with a passion for tasty sweets, her blog is a gastronomical adventure with everything from Halloweenish Devil Eye Cakes and Passion Fruit Ice cream to our favorite Mooncakes.

Let your mouth water as you explore the blog of our Member of the Week Ngọc Anh. Congratulations, please keep the cakes coming!

28 Oct 2011 1:11pm GMT

This week we're going to Denmark. He's been a member of My Opera for a while. Like so many of us he paused his blogging for a little while, but now he's back stronger than ever.

What makes this blog so special? It consists of two main sections. The music section contains song of the week and song quiz. In the movies section we find a Movie of the Week section.

Get your music and movie inspiration right here. Welcome back FlaRin, congratulations on becoming our Member of the Week! :hat:

21 Oct 2011 2:24pm GMT