Cobalt is living on through the release of the ROM and OS to open source enabling fans of the custom Linux build to run clones of the famous glowing blue boxes.
I had mentioned some time ago in Open Sourcery that since Sun’s release of Cobalt to the open source community - hosting numbers had seen a slight uptick to just over 900,000 on the platform (Netcraft stats). While not a ton of buzz has been circulating - there are plenty of active forums answering Cobalt questions and concerns arise when sources of update packages beocme unavailable.
There are a few sites dedicated to Cobalt - one of the most active being a Japanese site — Blue Quartz — where the porting and maintenance activity surrounding its open source evolution is taking place.
In addition - the original ROM is available at Sourceforge, which enables the Cobalt system to run on x86 architecture.
Finally, a professional consulting firm from Amsterdam — RaqTweak — is running a Cobalt-friendly operation internationally. I am working to get some comments from them on their current take of the Cobalt community and perhaps a perspective on its future, and bring it to the Open Sourcery blog soon.
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September 28th, 2004 at 3:47 pm
For REAL analysis on the state of the Cobalt platform, see Michael Stauber at solarspeed.net - in my opinion one of the three most well-versed Cobalt experts on the planet. With all due respect to RaqTweak - they are definitely OK - Michael has been at it longer than anyone else. Highly recommended.
September 30th, 2004 at 1:27 am
I agree, Michael is a Cobalt wizard… just out of curiosity, who are your other 2 “experts”??
:)