Riak is gone..

Sad to see this NoSQL database and company gone!.

Python #1

Python is #1 programming language among developers this year, jumped two places up, according to IEEE Spectrum.

Convergence of OS for IoT?

After trying Brillio and other initiatives of coming up with the Operating System for IoT devices Google finally centered its OS around it’s popular OS, Android. Android Things announced last week essentially pulls all it’s device support to the OS that can become a unifying one with all low form factor devices!.

There have been some consolidation the low foot print OS market (around RTOS vendors like WindRiver etc.) but with emergence of micro foot print devices like Rasberry Pi, Intel Edison etc. divergence started again. With Android support let’s see if we this convergence starts happening again.

Microsoft is Linux Foundation Platinum Member!

After joining Eclipse Foundation, Microsoft has gone full 180 to join the Linux Foundation and became a platinum member.

So officially there may not be two OS vertical silos in future, good or bad, time has to tell!.

Quick intro to Microservices

One and half minute introduction to Microservices from Developer/Deployment/IT perspective here

If you have been in IT development for long you can see similarity to the marketing materials that promoted Server-Client computing comparing with the mainframe computing!.

Happy Birthday Ubuntu

Oct 20, 2004 was the announcement of “Warty Warthog”, it started off with 4.10. Today it is 16.10 and 12 years of its growth!. I had been using it from 4.10 and it has matured over version 8+ and it became my primary operating system in my laptop from release 10+.

May you live for long..

Docker containers.

Have published a blog post in IEEE computing now site on Docker container experience that I had recently and a brief history about it. Had previously posted one more on OneOps in the same site. Check it out and provide your comments.

History of microprocessors

IEEE magazine carries a interesting article that traces to origins of microprocessors to pre-Intel era and how some advances before Intel by other companies fell way side with the commercial popularity of Intel chipsets.

There is a 8bit simulator online that revoked memories of my assembly language programming days..

Linux @25 years!

August 26, 1991 this mail was sent by Linus Trovaldas and a new OS development started, started tracking this from early 1992 and it’s been a fantastic experience thus far, I owe a lot to this group in my career!.

From a boot/root floppy disks that we had to put alternately in A: and/or B: to start the OS, fixing couple of VGA bugs in early days, providing test reports to some of the early kernels(mail challenged days!), till making it as my only OS in laptop it has given lot’s of positive memories. There were some minor discomforts that came along (lost hard disks with data and couldn’t recover and lot’s of nightouts to reinstalls) but none can beat the VirusFree, work focussed OS environment it gives. MacOS’s offer the same in some enterprises but sadly the other OpenSource flavours are still to find their place in mainstream laptop and desktop OS preference in many of them still!

It will be a good birthday gift if some large enterprises can give employees option of OpenSource Linux OS packages(Ubuntu, CentOS, Mint etc.) apart from Microsoft OS on their work desks and laptops!.

Android Monopoly

Android OS share in smartphone market has completely reached dominance with the iOS and Windows Phone OS shares declining according to Gartner.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q16 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	2Q16 Units	2Q16 Market Share (%)	2Q15 Units	2Q15 Market Share (%)
Android	296,912.8	86.2	271,647.0	82.2
iOS	44,395.0	12.9	48,085.5	14.6
Windows	1,971.0	0.6	8,198.2	2.5
Blackberry	400.4	0.1	1,153.2	0.3
Others	680.6	0.2	1,229.0	0.4
Total	344,359.7	100.0	330,312.9	100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2016)

Samsung is the leader in branded device vendor and the unknown brands put together having highest share in hardware.

Reminds me of the PC market of 1990’s where Microsoft Windows dominated with IBM, Compaq and Dell being branded hardware sellers and very high unbranded PC share for hardware!.

Anything to infer/learn from this for the Android folks?