So, my Christmas present to myself was a new gaming box, as my ASUS Netbook with only 1GB of RAM just wasn’t cutting it for some of the graphical and gaming stuff I wanted to explore. After shopping around, a great deal was found at MSY in Geelong (warning: worst website UX I’ve seen in a while).

My new baby is an ASUS R701V with 16GB of RAM, 2GB dedicated NVIDIA graphics and a Bang and Olufsen sound system. Noice. There is one downside however, in that it comes pre-shipped (mind your pronunciation) with Windows 8. Enter the whole UEFI secure boot debacle. This install wasn’t going to be as easy as downloading Wubi and rebooting…

Firstly, I sought advice from Matthew Garrett, recognised in the industry as a go-to person in this area. He kindly advised that I should use the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 12.10. So, I headed on over to the Ubuntu site and torrented down the 12.10 AMD 64-bit ISO (around 760MB).

• Next, I used the tool from Pen Drive Linux to create a bootable USB stick (8GB SanDisk). I chose the ‘Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop’ option in the Pen Drive drop down, and used the ISO that had finished torrenting.
• The next challenge was to figure out which key would let me into the BIOS settings on boot. Found this helpful page and identified ‘Insert’ as the ASUS BIOS key.
• I was able to set the first boot device to the USB key. Interestingly, there weren’t any options to disable UEFI secure boot
• I disabled the ‘fast boot’ setting
• On boot, the grub menu loaded and I was able to choose from testing out Ubuntu, installing or exiting.
• I tried each of these options, but the computer in all cases just hung with a blank screen, and didn’t do anything

My next attempt is going to be;

• Redoing the USB stick to use ‘unlisted Linux’ – as the chosen ‘Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop’ might be specifically for 32-bit not 64-bit
• Attempting to install again

UPDATE: Tried the following, but still the same symptoms;

• Redid the USB stick using Pen Drive Linux to unlisted Linux – same symptoms
• Burned the ISO to USB stick using dd as suggested by Jeremy – same symptoms

This means that it’s more likely that the issue is that the graphics driver as suggested by Eric – but I’m not sure how to work around it?

Thanks again everyone for your helpful advice. This just makes me more determined to make this machine dual bootable.

FURTHER UPDATE: My sh skills are rusty, here’s how I burnt it to USB stick using dd

reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ ls
ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso
reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ dd if=ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M
dd: opening `/dev/sdb1': Permission denied
reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ sudo dd if=ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M
[sudo] password for reidk: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for reidk: 
763+0 records in
763+0 records out
800063488 bytes (800 MB) copied, 50.7539 s, 15.8 MB/s

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tried manually editing the grub bootloading options as per this Ubuntu help article, using the nomodeset switch, but still the same symptoms…

MOAR UPDATE: Also tried the Wubi installer for 12.10 64 bit, and it errored on reboot and couldn’t find

wubildr.mbr
Also tried installing on different drives (C: and D:) but to no avail, still the same error.

Catarina Mota – Open Hardware

Mota, a distinguished resesearcher and founder of the Open Hardware Association  opened Day 3 with her keynote on open hardware. She explained how open hardware was lowering the barrier to entry to a number of fields such as DIY 3D printing, DIY biomedicine and many others – by making it easier to get involved.

She told the story of Sparkfun, a company which was started through the need to source parts for open hardware. Parts were shipped from someone’s basement – and they’ve now grown to have a turnover of over $20 million annually.

She went on to demonstrate how the growth of Arduino has been exponential and how ‘backyard brains’ are now changing the world through open hardware, producing projects like the global village construction set – which is essentially lifesize lego. 3D printing is also starting to reach maturity, with technology such as Repraps and Makerbots having more of a presence in the community.

This growth has led to the birth of the Open Hardware Association as a body to help support the community as it grows up.

Mota drew a number of differentiations between open hardware and open software. Asking the question

What does open mean for hardware?

she explained that the assets used in open hardware were things like bills of materials, schematics and CAD designs, and that standard formats for the production of these were again lowering the barrier to entry of the community. A challenge remains in terms of an equivalent repository to something like GitHub or SourceForge for open hardware.

Some of the other challenges facing the open hardware community were things like sourcing local parts and materials. For example, the specialist plastics used by Reprap and Makerbot are difficult to source and expensive if you live in the developing world.

Mota also explained how open hardware works through iteration, in contrast to open software which works through a process of collaboration. Each hardware design is an iterative and possibly derivative design – rather than collaborative.

Small and medium scale component manufacturing also remains a challenge – for instance breadboard designs are not efficient to produce on a small scale. However, there is now a lot of momentum to aggregate these – say 4 or 5 developers having their boards printed at once by a manufacturer to reduce costs – effectively leading to the crowdsourcing of manufacturing.

Mota illustrated how open hardware is leading to a rebirth in tinkering and repair – arts that have been lost within a consumerist society. Technology like Ardunio is being used in education to pique the interest of students in technology, and the business model that is currently used -

give away the bits, sell the kit

is still apparently viable.

Mota concluded that 2013 is the year of open hardware. The community is on the cusp of some major developments – such as breaking through into markets such as consumer electronics – and there are exciting if uncertain times ahead.

Mota’s presentation was one of my favourites so far of LinuxCon – not just because it was from a female presenter who is so well respected within the industry, but also because her presentation style and general demeanour were so respectful and humble. She was one of only a handful of presenters who thanked the Linux Foundation for the opportunity, and her whole attitude of wanting to learn and grow from the open software community was lovely.

Linux Torvalds – Where Linux is going

The room was jam packed to hear the Linux superstar being interviewed on stage by Dirk Hoendl. His first question what what he was most proud of – which he answered with what can be achieved by the community as a large body. In fact, it is the community, and what they do with Linux that keeps Linus so motivated. Technologies led by the community but founded on Linux – such as the one laptop per child project are an example of what the community can do together. He also noted that he finds some of the smaller open source projects to be the most interesting.

When asked by Dirk which award he was most proud of, he stated that he didn’t really care about awards, and again posited the community as his key motivating factor. His key quote here was definitely worthwhile;

There’s no Nobel Prize for computer science

When asked what concerns him about the future of opensource and Linux in general, Torvalds stated that a number of opensource projects that he’s seen have less direction than they could have, and that they would benefit from taking direction from outside. He was also a little concerned over personality clashes within the community – stating that while disagreement is a catalyst for growth, sometimes it can be quite personal.

He also mentioned that the patent system was fundamentally broken- an unsurprising claim from an open source advocate. Similarly, he talked about how embedded Linux remains a challenge – particularly for things like mobile phones – here referencing the divergence between the Android kernel and the main Linux kernel (although now they are set to merge again). He explained how supporting embedded systems can be a lot of work for kernel developers.

When asked who is the next Linux Torvalds, the next innovator, he sidestepped the question by stating that

sometimes the old ways are the correct ways

particularly with respect to operating systems.

Torvalds also mentioned the lack of diversity in the community when asked about he age of kernel developers steadily increasing – citing the fact that many are now employed by tech firms once they become developers, in contrast to students and younger developers several years ago. He broached the gender question himself, stating that 99% of Linux developers were male, and that the community needed more female developers, but that he wasn’t sure how to fix this.

I thought this showed a lack of insight into the work of groups like the Ada Initiative (inter alia), who have done research into open culture participation by women. This research has led to concrete, tangible recommendations for steps that can be done to increase participation by women.

Stephen Hemminger – Taking the fear out of contributing

Vyatta’s Hemminger set the scene by stating that it is hard to start contributing to open source generally – and to the kernel in particular – when there isn’t a lot of support – you can be easily scared off.

He covered the different reasons why people contribute to open source, such as wanting to learn, being intellectually curious, needing a challenge and to a certain extent being altruistic. He also mentioned that people wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t – at least in some way – fun.

Hemminger gave an overview of what the kernel contribution process is supposed to look like – and contrasted this with what it *is* actually like for developers – where there is a lot of flaming and trolling in the mix instead. In his experience, he has found encouragement and feedback really important – particularly when navigating a community where fiefdoms and political battles exist.

He covered three main cases of submission failure;

• Big changes – Massive changes are less likely to be accepted because they are harder to review and assure
• Arrogance – an unwarranted sense of pride in ability can detract from how the utility of a patch is perceived by the community
• Divisive changes – Changes that are incompatible, are proprietary, are reinventions or just plain ugly are likely to fail.

So, how can this be addressed? Hemminger drew a number of analogies with his involvement in Toastmasters, where the process for evaluating public speeches is highly formalised. The techniques used by Toastmasters, such as being prepared, active listening and sandwich techniques for giving feedback, focusing on the presentation and not the person – were all worthwhile techniques to improve kernel submission evaluation.

Hemminger also touched on the role of mentoring within the community, and explained how local mentoring is generally better – as face to face can be very productive. Having the role of mentor clearly documented helps  – with functions such as being a local dvocate, and a cheerleader for the person.

This presentation was really about culture change within the Linux community – and while the assertions were made I remain skeptical that they will be adopted widely.

Mårten Mickos – Open Source Cloud Platforms

Mårten Mickos of Eucalyptus opened day two with a presentation on open source cloud platforms. He opened by naming the big four open source cloud platforms – OpenNebula, OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus -  the ‘four beautiful open source sisters’. He drew further analogy by explaining that Starbucks is the public cloud – you know exactly what you can get, and that the home espresso machine you have on your bench is the private cloud. They serve different purposes.

He went on to explain the different types of cloud – public, private, hybrid, and mobile  – and asserted that everything will go mobile eventually – a prediction I wholeheartedly agree with. As a Eucalyptus rep, he was obviously outlining where Eucalyptus’ services sit, and he positioned them between the public cloud and data centre – where people might be making their first move from the data centre to the cloud, or in reverse where there are some services they wish to bring back in house.

Mickos’ stated that Eucalyptus understood the desire of developers to have their workloads liberated from the underpinning cloud platform – and to not be locked in to any one platform. This ability is scaring some hardware vendors, as increased core and node utilisation from leveraging cloud services means that less hardware is required.

Mickos went on to opine the four open cloud offerings were a source of better innovation through cross pollination – their competitive collaboration made each strive to be better. In conclusion, Mickos stated that the open cloud provides developers with freedom of environment, scale and deployment.

Monty Taylor – Growing an open source community

Taylor, of OpenStack fame, demonstrated how they grew their community through a fundamental commitment to openness. This starts from the basic belief that anyone can participate and contribute in the project, and that there is a sense of liberte, egalite and fraternite throughout. The freedom of the project also needs to be assured through ascribing an appropriate license, and the governance models and process of the project also need to be egalitarian. While a benevolent dictator (in the form of an individual or a large corporate sponsor) may seem like a positive thing, this can be offputting for meritorious contributors. Taylor explained how open, participative design summits – copied from the Ubuntu model – were also used to help cohesion within the community. He further explained that the repositories for a project also need to be transparent and open, and that code reviews were necessary to ensure quality, but they also needed to be transparent and open in nature.

The key takeaway here was that in order to grow a community in opensource, everything about it needs to be open – the code, the governance, the processes, the contributions etc.

Matt Asay – Picking the next black swan in open source

Matt Asay, who works with 10gen (a mongoDB company), presented on how to pick the next ‘winners’ of open source. He opened by sharing some of the biggest ‘black swan’ events of the past 40 years – such as ‘no one will every need more than 640kb of RAM’ – and highlighting that it’s difficult to predict the future.

One key principle that’s often employed is to ‘follow the money’, but Asay demonstrated that this is not always true. In open source, in contrast with the commercial sector, money and profits are not always a harbinger of success. Some open source companies make massive technical breakthroughs without being financial successes.

Instead, he encouraged those interested to observe the user and developer ratios of projects – and quoted a figure that for every 1000 users, there are 10 bug reporters – and one developer. So the ratios are important.

Other factors to consider when picking open source winners included whether the project was prepared for participation by having assets such as documentation, modularity, accessibility to code and to knowledge of the project, a solid codebase and a license to fit the need. Where the code was hosted was another factor, and Asay highlighted how the market dominance of SourceForge and SVN was being usurped in recent times by GitHub.

He also encouraged us to follow the developers and the data – as big data is getting bigger all the time, with technologies such as Hadoop, NoSQL and analytics having a larger role to play int he future. Big data is big on processing, and big on storage, and this has forced companies such as Google, Facebook (viz. Cassandra) and Amazon to write their own stuff – big data was the driver. From there it was not a massive leap to show how to pick open source winners by following job market trends. Buzzwords such as HTML5, iOS, Android, Puppet, Hadoop et all weren’t even invented 2-3 years ago.

He concluded by stating that in open source, we build what matters. We innovate in technology – and open source is focussed on big issues – not – for example’s sake – on finding ways to get people to click more advertisements.

Imad Sousou – Linux at Intel

Sousou opened with an explanation of Moore’s Law, and how it has more or less held true for the last forty years. He then applied the law to the automotive sector – and if a VW Beetle followed Moore’s Law, it would go at over 300,000 km/h and run for 5cents a week! The type of constant innovation that allows to evolve at such a rapid pace takes a lot of dedication, commitment – and investment.

Sousou demonstrated how Intel had played a key role in Linux communication and many open source projects such as Wayland, dLeyna and many others, with the overriding theme being the development of apps in web technologies. Here, two challenges are still present – API completeness and performance. The W3C APIs simply don’t cover what an application needs to do, so Intel have helped create the System Application working gorup within the W3C to improve this. They are also working on web technologies performance, to help improve things like fluid animation. Their investment in automotive Linux is also to be noted – and one wonders whether it will be long before we have Linux not just in the the desktop, the data centre and in our mobile devices, but also under the bonnet.

Ralf Flaxa – Enterprise Linux Evolution

Flaza, VP Engineering at SuSE opened by stating that he didn’t want to give us the standard sales pitch. Instead, he told us a story of how he became involved in Linux – and it was all because he wanted a serial driver. From his first Linux Kongress in 1994, he still feels the sense of collaboration and community, even though many members of the Linux ‘family’ are now his direct competitors.

Much of his talk echoes previously covered themes – such as what it means to be ‘open’. To be truly open means being open in many ways – open source, open licence, open community, open governance, open repositories, open to invite the competition and open to contribution.

He gave a number of hints on how to achieve this such as

• grant influence only to contributors
• welcome contribution in any form – documentation, code, money, testing
• encourage beginners and lower the barrier to entry
• remember to give credit and recognition
• strive for the best possible code base
• keep things simple by modularising them and breaking them down into digestible bits

Conference Drinks sponsored by Intel at Casa Battló