Apparently, Arjan van de Ven has declared war on context switches and process wakeups in Red Hat’s bugzilla. A bunch of nice bugs there, and many more to come. Ryan recently wrote about this mess and ways to look for it, too.

The surprise for me was a bug about yum-updatesd — well, okay, that wasn’t much of a surprise — and related atrocities. It turns out that the Python shell wakes up every 100msec. Even when it has nothing to do. Try it at home:

$ python
Python 2.4.3 (#2, Aug 25 2006, 17:37:59)
[GCC 4.1.2 20060817 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.1-11ubuntu1)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

And in another terminal:

$ strace -p $(pidof python)
Process 13787 attached - interrupt to quit
select(1, [0], NULL, NULL, {0, 96000})  = 0 (Timeout)
select(1, [0], NULL, NULL, {0, 100000}) = 0 (Timeout)
select(1, [0], NULL, NULL, {0, 100000}) = 0 (Timeout)
...

Holy crap! With pygobject and threading in the mix, for every long lifecycle Python process left running on your desktop machine — and for Ubuntu users, it really adds up — your CPU is getting a thorough workout while your battery auditions for the next explosive YouTube video meme. Let’s not even start on data centre use cases… Just buy more cooling!

Seriously, can you imagine? How much code do you think they’re running on the Enterprise — even when they’re stuck on emergency power because Wesley got his fly stuck in the reactor core again?

They still had to keep over a thousand people breathing, all their communicators working, critical computing infrastructure functioning, and so on. Reckon they’d sink power and cycles into wasted context switches? Nosiree. Wouldn’t happen. They never had to deal with this shit in Star Trek!

And that is why Python gets our very first Not Ready for the Enterprise review.

I mean, the Enterprise is not like a dump truck. You can’t just put things in it and expect it to work. The Enterprise is more like a series of tubes, and when you get a fat wad of agitated Python stuck in those tubes, you’ve got snakes on a m@#%#rf%!cking spaceship, and that just ain’t right!

Trek to Tubes to SoaP, ftw!

(Completely outrageous examples and fabrication used for effect. No actual Pythons were harmed during the creation of this entry.)

Who knows what kinds of fine motor systems extra-terrestrial beings will possess? Are they sure to have opposable thumbs and slender digits? We don’t know, and that kind of adaptability and accessibility is exactly what makes Ubuntu Server… Ready for the Enterprise.

Thanks to Nokia, I’ve had the 770 for a while, but given the lack of pervasive public wifi in Australia, its housebound use cases have been limited to web browsing… In front of the television, in bed, or (mostly) on the toilet. But the latest firmware — currently in beta, soon to be released — changes everything.

I just spoke to daf for 12 minutes via the 770’s new Telepathy-powered Google Talk / Jabber client. The audio quality isn’t as good as the desktop client, but they’re working on it. I tried it with headphones and without — if you pop the 770 in your top pocket and wander around the house, it’s almost like you’re using a Star Trek communicator (albeit without the voice control).

Contacts and presence are tightly integrated into the user experience — there’s no buddy list in the traditional sense, just a category for contacts who are online. Just the way I like it.

The fresh theme is bright and punchy, the new feed reader is surprisingly good, and there’s a whole bunch of neat fixes and polish throughout. Imagine — a device that improves with age, with meaty, high-value software updates! Rocking.

I’m really looking forward to the sweet PIM action that Opened Hand have been working on, too.

Of course, this also means that claims of enterprise-readiness suggest that a product or service is “ready for use in Star Trek”.

Update: Since publishing this well-received article, I have started a series of posts about ideas, products and services that are — or are not — Ready for the Enterprise. Enjoy!