Postcard From Seoul: Global Linux 2000

Proctors dropped us the following note after jetting home from the Global Linux 2000 meeting in Seoul, Korea. His account is brief, but it conveys a spirit of adventure and fun which only the thought of an RMS / ESR sing-along can.

Back from Korea and Global Linux 2000 with a killer case of jet-lag. All I gotta say is: it was an amazing experience. The show started with a ribbon cutting ceremony: Cliff Miller of Turbo, Tim Ney, the U.S. ambassador, the Korean minister of information and communication, among others, were all handed white gloves and a pair of scissors by a group of young women dressed in traditional Korean dresses. On the count of three, everyone cut the ribbon at once -- in front of a huge crowd of people and a corps of press.

In fact, that has to be one of the most incredible things about Global Linux 2000 -- Here we are: the North and South are reconciling after 50 years, Bill Gates is in town and the media kept showing up over and over in droves to cover the show and conference. It was a media flack's wet dream -- believe me, I know. It showed the enthusiasm of the Koreans for Linux.

But that wasn't the only miracle: ESR and RMS sat together briefly at a dinner reception for the participants in the Linux Greenhouse and friends. It was my birthday and after everyone sang "Happy Birthday," Richard stood up and did his own version -- only to be followed by Eric. I was sitting there, listening to them both sing to me and all I could think was "This is a oner." But it got better ...

The Greenhouse was going fab. The reason I got into this - why I love it (besides the obvious -- the pure genius of the hackers, basic principals of it) was for the enthusiasm. It's catching. And the Greenhousers are no different. This is a multi-national group of people who have companies that are doing everything from programming GNOME for PDAs to teaching GNU/Linux to more than 700,000 adult students in Sweden. They had meetings, they hacked, they danced together on the dancing machines that are the big thing in Korea -- kind of like karaoke for your feet.

Speaking of karaoke -- a bunch of us piled into this bus to go to the night market in Seoul and discovered that the bus was a KARAOKE bus. ESR sang "Deeper Shade of Pale" (he can really sing), and we all sang "We are the Champions." Eric changed the lyrics to "We'll keep on hacking to the end." It was wrong -- very, very wrong.

The night market is a giant, monolithic monument to entrepreneurship that's open all-night, every night. Hundreds of little stalls hawk everything from dried fish to Linux Sport tennis shoes. I do not lie -- someone in Korea named their shoes 'Linux Sport.' We had to buy a pair, really we did.

Did I mention that EVERYONE has a cell phone? Little old ladies, ten-year-old kids -- the young kids decorate them with 'Hello Kitty' charms and costumes (think Halloween for your cell phone). The food was completely wonderful - except the kimchee. I know, I'm a traitor -- but I have a very hard time getting behind rotten cabbage in hot sauce.

Photos will be posted soon on the Greenhouse site and ESR is threatening to add this trip to his travel diary -- where he'll put this little postcard to shame.

Comments

This is nice, but more can come out of Linux

[faeryman]

Yet again I see Linux making headlines, and yet again it is for naught. If Linux actually was such a strategic solution, we as a community would be overwhelmed with reports such as this. Linux must be integrated into every market if we are to see more than singular successes such as this one. Linux must deliver in the e-business sector for this to happen. A massive grassroots campaign must be employed as a whole to start seeing less talk, and more action for Linux.

I suggest the following:

1) Remove the multi-user aspect of the kernel. But faeryman you exclaim, Linux must have the multi-user nature in order to be Linux! And I ask why? khttpd is a viable alternative to Apache, thereby aiding Linux in end-to-end applications. The addition of more than one user adds extra security risks, and would you trust your data on an insecure B2B e-service? I think not!

2A) Remove all support for multiple architectures excepet x86. Again I am sure you are shocked at this notion. Let me explain. Firstly, the kernel sources are taking up over 1MBs of storage compressed. I shudder at the notion of how many inodes and blocks would be used if I were to uncompress it. This space is better suited to both extend customized bandwidth and empower e-commerce database. Ask yourself, would you want to know you could not complete that one extra e-business transaction beacuse your disk was full? Even though we are talking about terabytes worth of data, 2 megs can make or break your "clicks-and-mortar" architectures.

2B) Secondly, there is no need for your server OS to run on more than one platform. Linux is prized for running on old hardware. It does not make finacial sense to purchase new computers running non-x86 CPUs when your 486 will work fine for dynamic systems.

3) Remove all piping, inter-application communication, and windowing systems. These "features" have zero use for you to leverage front-end applications. There is no point in piping your e-commerce database through 'grep' or to a shell script. None. Applications have no need for communication if there is not multi-user aspect anyway. Would you want a hacker to run a DDoS in the background from your database server? I think not.

After these 3 crucial steps, I think it clear. Linux is not a viable option in either B2B markets or e-commerce applications. My recomendation is to run MS-DOS for the time being on your backend and big-iron servers. It meets the three above criterion for success, and has backing by a proven software company behind it. I have found that legal copies (not these pirated linux CD-R's by a man named 'RedHat') of MS-DOS 6.22 can be purchased for less than $25US at most stores.

Please consider my points Mr. Torvalds. Your customers will thank you in the end.

Re:Linux solves the world's problems!

[Vanders]

Instead of quoting part of the article in an attempt at Flamebait, let me explain it to you. Lets start with the whole quote:

In fact, that has to be one of the most incredible things about Global Linux 2000 -- Here we are: the North and South are reconciling after fifty years, Bill Gates is in town and the media kept showing up over and over in droves to cover the show and conference.

Now if we actually read that, what the writer is trying to say is:

"Lots of mainstream, news worthy things are currently happening in Korea (Such as the peace talks between North and South, Bill Gates currently visiting the country), and yet the media still choose to come and cover this relatively small Linux expo. This is good, it means the media are taking notice of us"

See? It's very easy, if you stop jerking your knee at the first oppurtunity.