Solaris was originally developed by Sun Microsystem as a proprietary operating system:

• Successor of SunOS (which was based on BSD UNIX)
• Released in 1992 (based on AT&T UNIX)
• Known for its scalability and technologies like DTrace and ZFS
• Runs on SPARC and x86 hardware
• Uses GNOME for the desktop (same as Linux)

In 2005, Sun released the source code of Solaris to the opensource community as OpenSolaris, the reference version of Solaris. Sun then released Solaris 10 with contributions from the OpenSolaris community.

When Oracle purchased Sun in 2009, they decided to stop contributing patches to OpenSolaris and continue the development of Solaris 11 as a closed project. This led to the departure of some the most eminent Solaris developers, e.g. the inventors of DTrace, ZFS, Zones & Solaris Networking, to create illumos, a foundation whose mission is to create and popularise OpenIndiana, a better Solaris than Oracle’s Solaris.

OpenIndiana is opensource and the latest release is dated October 2012. As a fork of OpenSolaris, the stated aim of the project is to become the defacto OpenSolaris distribution installed on production servers where security and bug fixes are required free of charge.

At Knowledge7, we provide Solaris compatible training courses to major clients using OpenIndiana. Feel free to contact us if you have similar requirements.

Knowledge7, in collaboration with Mozilla, hosted the first Mozilla Webmaker event in Mauritius open to all. Olivier Yip Tong, Software Engineer at Mozilla delivered a hands-on presentation of Webmaker tools, namely X-Ray Googles and Thimble, on Thursday 20th December 2012.

Mozilla Webmaker is a set of fun and easy tools to learn the Web using HTML, Javascript and CSS. The objective is to foster the next generation of web makers. With X-Ray Googles, one can explore the different components of a web page, change them, remix them and publish the changes online. Thimble provides user-friendly tools for creating one’s own web page. A wide range of templates are available for starting quickly.

The participants who were journalists, software developers and educators at various levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) are now very keen to use the Webmaker tools in their day to day activities. Nausheen, an ICT support teacher in a ZEP school is enthusiastic: “Webmaker is a great tool to use in the classroom. The kids will love it.” David, a Physics teacher, is convinced that “these tools can be easily integrated into programs because colleges already have computer labs and audio-visual facilities.”

Mozilla is a non-profit organization, based in the USA and with offices worldwide, dedicated to empower people through the Web. The global community of Mozilla users, contributors and developers work to innovate by providing software such as the world class Firefox browser. At Knowledge7, we strive to share expertise and knowledge with all. Like Mozilla, Knowledge7 promotes openness, innovation & opportunities on the Web.

You may click here to view more photos of the event.

We wish you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year 2013. We hope to serve you better next year.

I want the Internet to remain open and free. I don’t want some people and some governments to impose stupid rules on billions on us.

Read more here and here.

Take action now!

At Knowledge7, we love Python.

We have been using Python for about one year now, in the process, have discovered quite a lot of Python libraries that we use on a daily basis. Here they are:

• Flask is a web framework which we use to build most of our (new) backends.
• SQLAlchemy is an Object-Relational Mapper.
• Requests is used to issue HTTP requests and handle responses.
• Rauth is OAuth for Python.
• BeautifulSoup and pyquery for parsing XML and HTML documents.
• Fabric for sending commands to distant servers using SSH.
• Virtualenvwrapper to create multiple Python environments (useful for testing new libraries for example).

And this is just the beginning.

Avinash Meetoo, Directeur de Knowledge7, a fait cette présentation sur les réseaux sociaux le Samedi 10 November 2012 aux Présidents des divers chapitres du Rotary Club de Maurice.

This week, we start a new feature on the Knowledge7 blog inspired by The Setup. We’ll try to have people describing their computer setup and how they can be productive with it on a regular basis. Let’s start with my own setup:

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am the Founder and Managing-Director of Knowledge7, provider of quality consultancy and training services for open source software such as Linux, PHP/MySQL, Java and HTML5/Android. Previously, I was a lecturer in Computer Science at tertiary level and a consultant in one of the major consulting firms of the island. I studied in France and I have a Masters degree (Diplôme d’Ingénieur) and an MPhil (DEA) in Computer Science.

I am a well-known blogger and I participate extensively on social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook as well as in workshops and conferences on topics such as the Internet, social networks, mobile and cloud technologies. I am regularly interviewed in the local press on these technology topics.

I am married to Christina and we have two children: Anya and Kyan.

What hardware do you use?

My work computer is an inexpensive Dell Inspiron 15″ with 4Gb of RAM. At home, I use an iMac with 8Gb of RAM.

I also use an Amazon Kindle for reading ebooks, a Google Nexus 7 tablet and a Google Nexus One smartphone (which I intend to replace very shortly with a Nexus 4). I am a big fan of Android because, well, I am a geek.

And what software?

My work laptop runs Fedora Linux 17. I spend a lot of my time in Google Chrome, Eclipse (for Android development) as well as the command line (for vi, git, etc). I use LibreOffice a lot as well as Gimp for all my graphical processing and Scribus for desktop publishing. I really believe that open source software is as good, if not better, than proprietary alternatives.

My iMac still runs Snow Leopard (because I am a bit pissed off with Apple and don’t want to install Lion just for the sake of it). I use the iMac mainly for browsing (Chrome), photo (Canon DPP) and video editing (iMovie which suits me perfectly), composing music (Logic Express which I love and have been using for ages now…) and flight simming (X-Plane 9 which is bloody gorgeous on the iMac).

My Android devices all run CyanogenMod nightlies (because I love living dangerously — nah, that’s not true: the nightlies are very stable and I love being able to have a new operating system mostly every night)

What would be your dream setup?

I would love to have a laptop with a much better resolution (mine runs at 1366 x 768). The size of the screen is perfect but the resolution is crap. I would prefer something like 1600 x 1200 but it seems laptop manufacturers are too lazy now…

And, naturally, I’m hoping Father Xmas will give me a Google Nexus 4 at the end of the year 🙂