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Today at the Ubuntu Cloud Summit here in Oakland I grabbed sometime with Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady.  It was Stephen who originally brought up the idea of creating a Dell laptop running Ubuntu targeted at developers.

I talked to Stephen about how he would characterize today’s world of developers and what he feels project Sputnik needs to deliver on to be successful.

Extra-credit reading

• The Register: Dell puts Sputnik open-source laptop on launch pad
• Engadget: Project Sputnik: Dell’s Ubuntu-based XPS13 laptop for developers
• WSJ: Dude, Dell’s Building an Open Source Laptop
• The Verge: Dell’s Project Sputnik pairs Ubuntu with the XPS 13 to help create a developer’s dream
• Ars Technica: New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support

Pau for now…

Last Friday Cote and I took a break from the mad rush getting ready for today’s Sputnik announce and grabbed a conference room to record a short video.  Below we discuss the project, how it came about, what its goals are and where it could go from here.

-> Weigh in on Dell IdeaStorm: Project Sputnik

Extra-credit reading

• DevOpsAngle: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed for Developers
• GigaOm: Dell tests open-source laptop for developers
• VentureBeat: Neckbeards, rejoice! Dell’s new Linux ultrabook was developed just for you
• Cote’s Blog: Project Sputnik
• Hacker News: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers (devopsangle.com)
  

Today I am very excited, I finally get to talk about project Sputnik!  In a nutshell, drumroll please, here it is:

Made possible by an internal innovation fund, project Sputnik is a 6 month effort to explore the possibility of creating an open source laptop targeted directly at developers.  It is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Dell’s XPS13 laptop.

To put it in context, Sputnik is part of an effort by Dell to better understand and serve the needs of developers in Web companies.  We want to finds ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible.  And what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish, running the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux.

Why a developer laptop

When we first started setting up the web vertical to focus on companies who use the internet as their platform, we brought in Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk to learn as much as we could about the needs of developers.  One of the ideas that Stephen tossed out was a Dell laptop running Ubuntu, targeting developers.  We thought the idea was pretty cool and filed it away.

As we continued talking to customers and developers the topic of Ubuntu kept coming up and we came across a fair number of devs who were asking for a Dell laptop specifically based on it.  To my knowledge, no other OEM has yet made a system specifically targeted at devs and figured it was time to see what that might mean.  When the XPS13 launched we realized that we found the perfect platform to start with and when Dell’s incubation program was announced we knew I had the vehicle to get the effort kick started.

I should also add that Ubuntu was a natural choice not only because of its popularity in the Web world but Dell has quite a bit of experience with it.  In fact Dell has enabled and pre-installed out-of-the-factory Ubuntu on more computer models than any other OEM.

What’s Sputnik actually running?

The install image available for Sputnik contains

1. drivers/patches for Hardware enablement
2. a basic offering of key tools and utilities (see the complete list at the end of this entry)
3. coming soon, a software management tool to go out to a github repository to pull down various developer profiles.

Hardware enablement

In putting together the project, the area that we focused on first was hardware enablement.  As Linux users are all too painfully aware, Linux drivers are not always available for various platforms.  We have been working hand in hand with Canonical, the commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu and identified three main areas on the XPS13:

1. An issue with brightness
2. The Wifi hotkey
3. The touchpad and multi touch support

The first two have been resolved but the last one re the touchpad is still at large.  The issue is a bit of a pain particularly the lack of palm rejection support which can cause your cursor to jump by mistake.  We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Developer profile management

Hardware enablement is table stakes but where Sputnik starts to get interesting is when we talk about profiles.  No two developers are alike so instead of stuffing the system with every possible tool or app a developer could possibly want, we are trying a different approach.  As mentioned above, the actual “stuff” on the install image is pretty basic, instead we are working with a few developers to put together a tool that can go out to a github repository and pull down various developer profiles.  The first profiles we are targeting are Android, Ruby and JavaScript.

As a one of our alpha cosmonauts, Charles Lowell, explained (we have been working with three local developers in Austin, Charles, Mike Pav and Dustin Kirkland to put together our initial offering together.   And yes I know Sputnik was unmanned but its our project and we wanted to call the testers “cosmonauts.” )

What I’d like to see is not only a gold-standard configuration, but also a meta-system to manage your developer configuration… The devops revolution is about configuration as code. How cool would it be if my laptop configuration were code that I could store in a source repo somewhere?

After we build the management tool and some basic profiles to get the effort started, we are hoping that the community will take over and began creating profiles of their own.

Getting Feedback and UDS activities

The idea is to conduct project Sputnik out in the open.  There is a Storm Session that went live this morning on Dell Idea Storm for people to discuss the project and submit feedback, comments and ideas.  Later today here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Dustin, Mario Limonciello of Dell and I will be hosting a UDS session to discuss Sputnik.  Additionally at UDS there is a coding contest that has been kicked off.  The three people who write the best Juju charms will each get an XPS13.

The Vision: a Launchpad to the cloud

As mentioned at the start, Sputnik is currently a 6month project to investigate an Ubuntu laptop.  If successful, we have big plans for the effort.

When we initially pitched Sputnik to Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth a couple months ago he really liked the idea.  In his eyes however, he saw something bigger.  Where it got really interesting for him was when this laptop was optimized for DevOps.  In this scenario we would have a common set of tools from client, to test, to production, thereby tying Sputnik via a common tool chain to a cloud backend powered by OpenStack.  Developers could create “micro clouds” locally and then push them to the cloud writ large.

We see a lot of potential in Sputnik to provide developers with a simple and powerful tool.  Only time will tell however so stay tuned to this blog, check out the Sputnik Storm session and weigh in on the project, what you’d like to see and how you think it can be made better.

Pau for now…

Extra-credit reading

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Review | Desktop OS | ZDNet
• Ferreting out Innovation

Links and notes

•  Sputnik Storm session on idea storm

• Sputnik install image

Touchpad issue

Current behavior is that the touchpad functions as a basic pointing device, but lacks some desirable functionality:

1. Pinch, zoom, & flick
2. Palm negation (esp. important on larger touchpads where it’s easy for your hand to inadvertently touch the surface)
3. Side/edge scrolling
4. Two finger scrolling

We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Basic Install

== standard meta packages ==

ubuntu-desktop^

standard^

== scm ==

git

git-core

bzr

bzr-gtk

bzr-git

python-launchpadlib

== utilities ==

screen

byobu

tmux

meld

juju

charm-tools

charm-helper-sh

euca2ools

puppet

chef (available post install)

== editors ==

emacs

vim

vim-gnome

== browsers ==

chromium-browser

firefox

== common build tools/utilities & dependencies == fakeroot build-essential crash kexec-tools kvm makedumpfile kernel-wedge fwts devscripts

libncurses5

libncurses5-dev

libelf-dev

asciidoc

binutils-dev

If you’ve been following my tweets you may have heard about “Project Sputnik.”  While I’m not quite ready to talk about it, I wanted to give some insight into the program that’s helped get it off the ground.

Innovation Incubation

At the beginning of the year Dell launched an internal incubation fund with the idea of rooting out innovation throughout the company.  The thought was that there are probably a bunch of cool ideas tucked away in the heads of employees at all different levels of the company, ideas that would ultimately benefit our customers if given a little protection and help to get off the ground.

The three Dell employees behind it, Nnamdi Orakwue, Michale Cote and Matt Baker act like a mini  internal VC firm hearing pitches from employees.  Those projects they approve get a small amount of cash to build out their idea for six months.  At the end of six months the projects will either get their training wheels taken off and folded into business units, apply for more funding or disbanded.

Enter Sputnik

The program is just getting started and the first project green lighted was Project Sputnik.  I’m very excited about it and am looking forward to be able to talk all about it in the near distant future.  Stay tuned…

Extra-credit reading

• Forbes.com: Real Innovation: What It Really Is, and How to Really Do It (Really)

Pau for now…

Earlier this month at DevOpsDays here in Austin the Dell Crowbar crew hosted a session and gave a demo.  If you’re not familiar with it, Crowbar is an open source software framework written at Dell.  I grabbed some time with Crowbar architect Rob Hirschfeld and got him to recap how far we’ve come in its less than a year and where he sees us going over the next year.

Extra-credit reading

• Crowbar on github
• Rob’s blog
• DevOpsDays Austin kicks off, A short history

• DevOpsDays Austin — The provisioning panel starring JuJu, Crowbar, Puppet, Chef and Pallet