Linux Expo

[Leon Brocard]

So, what did you guys think of Linux Expo?

I drove[1] down to London with some of Bath.pm yesterday
and got in to Linux Expo from  11ish -> 4ish.

I was so not impressed with the late registration system.
They get you to write stuff out on cards, and then type
it in to Windoze boxes in front of you. Methinks simple
collecting business cards would have been 20x faster.

I enter the hall and marvel as to how small it is. We rush
off to see IBM's talk. The talks (um sorry "strategic
conferences") are given in a small area of the expo (seating
for ~100) which was already packed at 11am. Blimey. Don't
manage to hear any of the talk, so we wander around instead.

Stand summary:

 o Red Hat had lots of people demoing Red Hat, with lots of
   high-ranking people around, oh, and Alan Cox
   
 o Dell had a large stand with no-one of importance and 
   only a business pc to show off. This was in deep contrast
   to IBM and Debian. We went up to them and asked why they
   didn't have any cool hardware. The response was: "Like 
   what?"
 
 o Debian had a really small stand, but had a Libretto running
   Linux as well as other cool hardware
   
 o IBM had a Beowulf cluster of Netfinity servers in a rack,
   with a pop-out LCD screen and keyboard. They were also showing
   off Domino, DB2, and some other stuff
   
 o Oracle had a bit of a boring stand with a couple of Windows
   PC's showing off, um, stuff. Later on in the evening it looked
   like they were installing Red Hat on all of them ;-)

 o Intel had a closed presentation room for the Internet Economy.
   Boring, about two years old, boring, and he didn't mention
   Linux at all in his talk
   
 o Cache had a large stand with a huge rotating globe in
   the middle. They'd have done better if they'd explained
   what exactly a post-relational database was
   
 o Cobalt Networks had a small stand, but were showing some
   cool blue Raqs and Qubes. They had the best giveaway :
   a cool transparent blue pen
   
 o Alpha Processor Inc were there, with seriously large
   heatsinks on their chips

Did I mention that the room was really small? Oh, I did.
Let me mention it again: it was sooooo smallll.

Anway, I also managed to get into the keynote by Bob
Young of Red Hat [2], as well as "The Linux Debate". This was
hard, and involved getting there an hour early, and sitting on
the floor right at the front.

Bob Young was very cool indeed. He's a great speaker and
it was a wonderful talk. He explained that Red Hat was simply
a brand, and that all that was going for it was the brand
name. I guess this means that Red Hat might diversify into
other arenas, but I'm not sure on this.

A good line in his talk was that at one point he thought his
target audience was both "rocket scientists working at NASA
using Beowulf clusters" and "art students using Linux robots".

People asked some stupid questions.

"The Great Linux Debate" was a small debate between people
from Oracle, Dell, Red Hat, Suse and IBM. The view I got was
that Oracle and Dell aren't supporting Linux - they're only
doing it because their big customers have asked them to do 
it. IBM is in it for the "solutions" money. Suse and Red Hat
are doing it for the money and because it's good.

The Suse guy didn't have a great command of English, but he
had much better points than the other guys. A question asked
was "When will SMP be enterprise-class in Linux?" and he
started off by saying "Well, I was down in the pub having
a beer with so-and-so, who is the Linux SMP guru, and he
said...", bringing everyone back down to earth and showing
that Linux isn't a corporation.

Oh, and Bob Young slagged of the Sun Community License.

So, in summary: the venue was pathetic, the exhibitors mostly
had no clue, and Bob Young was cool.

Leon "phew, that was long!" Brocard

[1] The train track between Bath and London doesn't have a
    terribly good safety record atm...
[2] Interesting story: we were sitting around having a coffee
    and I asked of my mates "Does Bob Young look like that?".
	And lo and behold it was he.
-- 
Leon Brocard................................http://bath.pm.org/
leon at netcraft.com........................http://www.astray.com/

... Human equality is a contingent fact of history