UK Linux Expo: Growth, Suits And Vodka

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

"Linux Expo 2000, running June 1 and 2 in London, is widely seen in the British IT industry as an indicator that Linux has come of age. It is now in its second year, with 35% more exhibitors than last year and expecting a 70% increase in visitor numbers. Despite such figures, it is not a huge show, with around 80 exhibitors. However, this Expo seems to be primarily an opportunity for Business to prove how net-centric it has become and to show how well it has embraced Linux whilst the Geek Evangelists struggle to remind the besuited visitor of the Open Source philosophy.

It was the usual uneasy fit. The Linux Professional Institute couldn't help referring to the sponsorship they had received from Mandrake who had the neighbouring stall. The LPI was part of a .org ghetto on the lower floor along with Debian -- selling a six CD set including source code for seven pounds -- and such other luminaries as the Linux User Groups. All around them, the commercial face of Linux in Europe was touting its wares.

The deals on show covered the spectrum from server co-location to the servers themselves and from Linux Utilities for a fiver to commercial packages which have been rapidly ported to the lively new Linux markets. A good selection of Linux distributors were available on-site. Red Hat had the largest stand while SuSe seemed to be getting the most visitors. My quote of the day had to be the SuSE guy at the prize draw: "This is genuine -- a guy with a German accent giving away software." SuSE's popularity may also have had something to do with the advertised appearance of User Friendly and the opportunity to get a Dust Puppy to take home, but some of the UFie comments were a little scary. Their headline quote was taken from a slashdot post and much of what they had to say seemed to suggest that userfriendly.org is in the process of "leveraging" their undeniably successful core product.

This seemed to be a theme of a number of other exhibitors, though Red Hat actively stated that there is only one Linux -- and I'm sure they were talking about the kernel rather than attempting to dismiss their competitors' market share. This is despite the appearance of at least two distributions I hadn't heard of before and the presence of a stall which had the primary purpose of selling downloads of other people's distros cheaper.

The Mandrake stand seemed quite popular while SGI definitely scored points with the best Quake setup at the show. SGI also had the most original attraction of the event -- an Ice Penguin. The ice carving stood on a plinth and had a hole drilled through from one shoulder and coming out the bottom of the belly. At appropriate moments, an SGI staffer would pour a stream of vodka in the shoulder which cooled and splashed into the lucky recipient's plastic cup. The choice of Smirnoff alleviated the potential problems of insufficient cooling which may have occurred if cheaper source product had been in use.

Towards the end of the day, Mailbox Internet -- who started off as the UK's primary Apple-friendly ISP -- started handing out beer to anyone who managed to maintain a serious conversation with their sales staff. This approach was far more rewarding than that taken by Pervasive. I asked their sales guy to compare his database product with mySQL and PostrgreSQL and his basic response was that you get what you pay for. Perhaps he would have tried a different tack if I hadn't been wearing a suit and a tie. This was the essential problem with the event -- over 80% of the exhibitors were commercial outfits but less than 20% of the visitors were Suits. The Geeks were there in force in the hope of finding Illiad and talking amongst themselves and I suspect that Lonix , the London Linux User Group, with its professed aim "to drink beer and have fun" was more successful at recruiting than many of the commercial exhibitors. Meanwhile, many of the exhibitors made me feel naked without a business card to hand over and one company was advertising MCSE training.

For all that, it was an interesting event and a reminder that there are ways of obtaining information without visiting google. In fact, this was a pretty good example of the Bazaar that ESR and cluetrain tell us about. It was an environment where small operations and large have an almost equal voice and where passion beats gimmicks -- which is where Linux began, is it not?

My score for the afternoon: 1 beer, 1 vodka, 1 T-shirt, 3 CDs and about a thousand brochures."

Daniel James also sent this report from the show floor, with some quick product descriptions and other Expo news:

"This mailing is coming to you from the LinuxUser stand at the Linux Expo in London. The exhibition is more than twice as big as last autumn's show, with stands on two floors and the European Linux Conference hosted by SUSE on the floor above. Here's the pick of the news from the show.

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Stronghold SSL web server
Stronghold 3 has been released by C2Net Software. It's a 128-bit SSL server based on Apache. It costs $995, but you can download an evaluation version from http://www.c2.net

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New Alpha motherboard
The UP1100 has been revealed at the Expo - partnered with a 21264 Alpha processor, it's aimed at Beowulf clusters, web servers and development and rendering boxes. API have also announced a partnership with QSW which will develop Linux supercomputers. Check out http://www.alpha-processor.com and http://www.quadrics.com

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Mailbox Internet partners with SUSE
Mailbox claim to be the first 100% Linux ISP, and they've formed a partnership with SUSE to co-promote Linux on the desktop. http://www.mailbox.net.uk

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New Silicon Graphics Linux boxes
SGI have been showing off their 230L Visual Workstation, preinstalled with RedHat 6.1 and OpenGL 1.2 graphics drivers. They've also announced that IBM's Web Sphere will be available on the new 1450 Linux server, to run alongside DB2. http://www.sgi.co.uk

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Best freebie at the show?
TurboLinux tatoos - we've all got one. They did promise that they wear off eventually ... More next week. Don't forget to send in your Linux-related snippets to me at daniel@linuxuser.co.uk"

For another voice covering UK Linux Expo, try mart's roundup of the event, linked from LinuxUK.