Felipe Gaucho's Blog

April 2007 Archives

Will Java become Open Source in JavaONE?

Top SUN guys, global media coverage, thousands of developers and the rock stars of Java community - basically all stakeholders of the Java universe will be together next week at San Francisco. For sure it is one of the best moments to seal the joint between OSS community and Java people. No, I have no internal information, there is no secrets leak here, just my humble opinion and ten bucks I bet with a friend about this :) I hope to be ten dollars richer next week :) ... see you there.

Ubuntu test-drive for Windows users.

Simple and direct, let's install everything you need to try out Java on Linux at your Windows machine.

Step by step guide to run Ubuntu on top of your Windows XP/2000 operational system:

Step #0 Downloading the required software:

1. VMware Player 1.0.3 (30 MB)
2. Ubuntu 7.04 VMware Image Download (906 MB)
3. 7-zip 4.42 (1 MB) - any RAR unpacking tool here, 7-zip is Open Source.

Step #1 Installing VMWare Player

1. VMWare is distributed as an executable file, so you just need to click on it to get the virtual machine player running on your computer. A special note is about some configuration changes suggested by default during the installation, as shown in the figure below:

Click here for detailed installation instructions.

Step #2 Running Ubuntu Linux on the VMWare Player

1. First of all, you need to unpack the Linux image you've just downloaded. Follow these steps:
   1. Install 7-zip: it comes as an executable file, just run it and accept the default options - no danger here ;). Since 7-zip is suggested here just to unpack the RAR file, you can uninstall it after this step, despite I suggest you to play with this nice Open Source tool in order to evaluate its value before throwing it away.
   2. On Windows Explorer, right click on the Ubuntu_704_VMware.rar file and select 7-zip/Extract here. Done, wait until the unpack process is done to finish and you are ready to taste Linux on your machine.
2. Open the virtual machine player: Windows Start Menu / All programs / VMWare / VMWare Player
3. When the VMWare startups, it asks you to point the file Ubuntu.vmdk (the one just extracted by 7-zip). Navigate to that file and press OK
4. The next window asks you about the location of the virutal machine configuration, just accept the suggestion and press OK
5. The next window is a weird alert about the absense of the Ubuntu CD-ROM, just ignore it and press OK.
6. The first window of the system will ask you to login:

   		(Benutzername) - Username: jars
   		(Passwort)    - Password: jars
   

7. If everything is fine, Ubuntu will be loaded into the player - Welcome to Linux!
8. Navigating between the operational systems (Ctrl + Alt): do you notice now you have two different operational systems running on your machine? You can use both at the same time, testing usability and evaluating by yourself how to do things in both environments. To navigate between the virtual machine player and the host Windows OS:
   • Inside Ubuntu: just click Ctrl+Alt to return to Windows.
   • On Windows, just click with the mouse button on the VMWare window and you will be transferred to the Linux system.
   Very easy, isn't it? Remember the mouse will be locked inside the VMWare window when you are using Ubuntu. To see a window beside the active one and to not be allowed to click on it is an unatural usability for Windows users, but you'll become accustomed very quickly to that :)

Step #3 Configuring Ubuntu to your keyboard/language

The Ubuntu image you are running comes in German by default - thanks jars.de for distributing the image. For most users, German is not the default language and the keyboard may also startup wrongly configured at the first time. Here there are some few steps you must proceed in order to get comfortable usability from your new operating system.

1. Changing the locale configuration: in the Ubuntu menu, select System/Administration/Sprachunterstützung

   

   Important: for some reason, under VMWare the locale was not update automatically after I press OK. The solution is windows-like ;) I pressed the red button on the top right corner of the operational system, and logout the system (Ausschalten or Neu starten). After restart the Ubuntu on the VMWare player, it comes with the selected language working fine. I guess through line commands everything should work smoothly, but I am trying to keep it simple, so I suggest the MS-style reboot procedure to fix the locale :)
2. Changing the keyboard configuration: in the Ubuntu menu, select System/Einstellungen/Tastatur

   

   then you must select your hardware configuration. Tip: if you don't know what it is, just press Ctrl+Alt and then check in your windows control panel about the hardware configuration of your machine.

   

• Ubuntu's forum: Absolute Beginner Talk
• Linux community @ java.net
• Unofficial Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Starter Guide

Step #4 Playing Java on Linux

A long time ago dream is every day more simple to become reality. Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is the first Linux distribution that comes with the Java platform embeded by default. We have a lot of tricks to be discussed here, but for now the most important is to get it running. In order to test Java installed in your new Ubuntu, just trigger Eclipse from the operation system menu:

Done! Now you select the workspace folder, and leave it running in your new desktop:

Netbeans and Glassfish

The image provided by jars.de comes without Netbeans and Glassfish. There is a simple line command to download and install everything at once. Open a console - at the OS menu: Applications/Acessories/Terminal and then run the following line:

sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-javadb glassfish netbeans5.5

VMWare player is free, but the tool required to create the images not. For that reason, I cannot publish a ready for using version of Ubuntu, in english and with full JEE5 platform :). But I am sure it is a question of short-time to some one provide us such version. A good chance is the linux.java.net community.

SUN Tech Days @ Brazil

The giant SUN Tech Days @ Brazil

Certificates of presence - how to deal with that?

An interesting point of our tech days is about certificates. The attendants of the event are coming from all layers of the software industry, including students, professors, professionals and business people. Different people, different goals but since the event is during the commercial hours, some of the students and professional require certificates to show to the companies they are out of the office but still investing in their technical education. A burocracy, simple and quite reasonable, but something a bit complex if you think about that.

Two issues: first of all, the certificate themselves: they must be designed, printed and released in some way - that's the easy part, since you will reuse it several times. The second aspect about certificates is the controlling over who is really attending the conference. After some evaluation, we agree the controlling is not feasible without a lot of resources investment, so we decided to simplify the certificates process. The SUN Tech Days has a web application for registration, that includes the name and the e-mail of the participants. Well, we decided to generate a PDF with the individual certificate and send back to the registered users after the event. It is not bullet proof, but at least it is a simple, economical and echological solution. People who really need to get a printed certificate, can do it by themselves. We plan to use locked PDF - the ones you can't modify - to guarantee a minimum trustful level. Or use a PGP key to sign the original documents, or other great ideas about trustful documents that geeks love to discuss :)

Global registering of conference attendants.

Other idea I already posted here about a global server containing the registering of all conferences people had attended all over the planet - sorted by region, country or whatever it is required to be useful. In this case, a person would be identified by a unique ID, and this ID would be associated to his JUG. It is not useful only for dummy reasons like proving to your boss you were in a conference, but it can be used for marketing campaigns and discount programs similar to the ones used by Las Vegas casinos. If you are a frequent attendant of big conferences, why not receiving a privileged treatment on the next events ? Or why not receiving business benefits as a vip attendant ? :)

That's all. Remember to check the SUN Tech Days nearest your home, these events are really a great moment to keep in touch with your community.

Scriptlet programming challenge 4 students (JDK6 x Groovy)

ELCA announced an entry level scriptlet competition at Jazoon'07, with focus in innovative thinking and rapid application development based on the new features of the JDK 6 or based on Groovy.

The prizes are quite attractive for students, including free Jazoon'07 vouchers and books from Amazon. And, of course, the best prize: proving your skills in one of the richest markets in the world :)

All codes should be submitted by e-mail until April 30th, so hurry up with your best thoughts ;)

Interested in participating? check details here.

	def deadline = 'April 30th';
	def name='alert'; println "$deadline!";
	def magic = '0xCAFEBABE';
	// see you @ Jazoon'07

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