I think this is the first time in my life that we were adding new things to a paper just a few minutes from the deadline :S In fact, beyond the deadline....it was tough and I really hope it will not happen again. But, whatever, we sent our contribution to IPDPS 2012 and now we can sit and wait, hoping for the best :)
Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (past time, eh?) on my working laptop (a Lenovo T400). As often happens (at least to me) there are few things that don't work now, but I expect to fix them in the next days, nothing really bad (well, the audio breaks frequently now...) except that the system feels a little slower now.
The first that you will notice is the new graphical interface (Unity) which is something between OS X (with the side bar that contains shortcuts and running applications) and a tablet PC. In fact, the general idea behind Unity is the universality of the interface: it will be the same on PC, laptop, tablet, smart phones, etc... As such, screen dimensions become a first-order concern (especially for something link a Samsung 7-inch Galaxy tablet or a smart phone) and the classical gnome "two-bars" interface wold take a lot of space. Now, the fact is that I've installed Ubuntu on a laptop that I practically use as a desktop machine, with two monitors connected. So, no, screen space is not a concern for me. The new interface is kind of slow and unnecessarily complicated when you use a mouse or, like me, just the command line terminal: it takes you many click just to start an application that is not on the side bar. This is, indeed, similar to what happen with a tablet but it doesn't have to be so complicated for a laptop...
So, after a couple of days, I reverted to the old interface (when you log in, just select "Ubuntu classic" from the log in menu) and now I can enjoy the updated Ubuntu 11.04 software (finally Firefox 6 and OpenOffice 3, kernel 2.6.38 ... you still have to wait for Thunderbird 6, we stick with 3.1.1, and for the Linux kernel 3.0), that is, once I fixed the few problems I have.
As always, upgrading is never for free: in this case, you have to get used to the new interface (or stick with the old one) and fix the usual few problems but I would still recommend the upgrade.
Update: It looks like in Ubuntu 11.10 there's no Gnome interface anymore :S I tried to install a back-port but it was poor. I tried to adapt to Unity and it was a disaster... so I went back to my much loved KDE (the only problem being that now I have both desktop in my machine and that the system is not completely stable...)
Things that change and things that dont change....
Written by Roberto Gioiosa
Monday, 08 August 2011 17:03
Every time that I go back to my Rome, my hometown, I'm always amazed by two kind of things: those that change and those that don't. I don't live in Rome anymore, so it's quite easy for me to pick up things that have changed since last time I visited my family and friends. This time, for example, I noticed that the Fiumicino airport has changed considerably: the viability at the arrivals has been completely revisited and now cars, practically, can't get close to the exit. There is a shuttle service, instead, to and from short/long term parking lots (with expected arrival time...), a free 30 minutes parking, clear sign in English, etc. Many things seem just better organized. The airport is not yet at the level of the other European airports (not even Barcelona's one) but I appreciate the effort!
Then there are things that never change: I deeply sorry to see that, in 2011, Rome is still very dirty, especially in the suburbs, like where my family lives. And my house is in a very decent neighborhood! I let you imagine what happens in other places. I can't understand why, (again) in 2011, people can't simply throw paper or cigarettes butts into the trash beans... really, seriously, you can't? I went to the beach on the week end: same story. Beaches are dirty (as is the water) mainly because people don't pay attention to what they do. But, things change, fortunately, and Marevivo organizes (for the third year) a campaign ("Ma il mare non vale una cicca?") against people leaving cigarette butts on the beach. They provide special ashtrays, for free, to people, please, please, use them (better yet, don't smoke! the guy next to you is on vacation as well and would like to enjoy his time...). You can find more information here. Many things don't change, others, luckily, do, although slowly.
Since the first experience was very positive, Gokcen and I decided to work together again: this time we submitted to ACM ASPLOS 2012! Let's hope we continue the positive trend....
Our paper "STM2: A Parallel STM for High Performance Simultaneous Multi-Threading Systems" has been accepted for presentation at the 20th IEEE International Conference on Parallel Architecture and Compiler Technique" (PACT 2011) to be held in Galveston Island, Texas, US, next October! Congratulations Gokcen, you did a wonderful work!
Our paper has been submitted to IEEE PACT 2011. This is the first work Gokcen and I do togheter :) It's a good work and I hope we will have some more luck than the last time!
I was playing with the performance counter Linux tool (perf) on a 2.6.33 vanilla kernel and I realized that (again) the tool doesn't compile. It's (again) a problem with the ELF library (this time, libgelf).
Luckily I found a patch that fix the problem here. (alternatively, there is a link at the end). So, all you have to do is simply issue the following command from your linux-2.6.33 directory:
Apparently I'm going to Crete in September! My paper's been accepted for Cluster 2010!!!
Last year I also had a paper in the same conference but, unfortunately, I couldn't go :S The conference was in New Orleans and I would really have liked to see that city again... Well, I guess I can cheer myself up with this news! Crete: I'm coming!!!!!!
