Slashdot Mirror
Linux Advocacy At PC Expo
The important thing about the PC Expo Linux presentation, though, wasn't audience size, but that it wasn't the typical "preaching to the converted" situation we see at Linux and Open Source conferences. This was an audience that had to be told what Linux was, and what it could do, almost from scratch. The whispers I heard as I sat at the back of the room, taking notes, indicated that most of the people seated near me knew that Linux was an operating system for computers, but little more than that. They paid attention -- and many of them took notes.
Indeed, some of the people listening to Mark and Maddog took more notes than I did, because to them the idea of a Beowulf system was brand-new, as was Mark's claim that 99% of Fortune 2000 companies -- including Microsoft -- use Linux in one way or another. Most of the material in Mark and Maddog's presentations was pretty old hat to long-time Slashdot readers. But to the people in that room, almost all of them Windows users, it was all worth hearing.
The LinuxMall.com "Linux Summit" held Monday was even smaller than today's Linux keynote -- Mark estimated attendance as "about forty" --but both events had good crowds, in the sense that most of the people sitting there, finding out about Linux for the first time, had paid between $200 and $1300 to attend PC Expo, and felt that learning about Linux was a worthwhile use of their limited time at the show.
I didnt notice that in preview, but I did notice after 'submit'... In retrospect 'it doesn't do _____' may have been better. Of course, someone would find some app called '_____' and piss me off with that :)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Posted by 11223:
:) (Remember, it's FreeBSD with a funky graphics system). As for WINE on BeOS, a porting team is working on it but it depends upon having X-Windows on BeOS at this point, which is near unusable.
OS X will be the answer
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
*Please* don't try and claim that Linux can do "everything that W2K can do and better".
Because it can't.
Linux has its many strengths, but so does Windows 2000. Please come to terms with this fact.
For example, Windows 2000's security model is *far* more advanced than the one employed within Linux (and the other Unices).
Of course, Linux has its many advantages too, but to advocate Linux as being better in every way is just *stupid*. It will fail at the first hurdle.... "So where's the GUI for me to automate the RAID partioning on my server?".
*Intelligent* advocates are needed.
Linux is certainly not the end. Someday, something newer, better, and more sophisticated will replace it.
What we can hope for, though -- what we should strive for, in fact -- is that the shift from proprietary software to open source software is a permanent one. At least for the mass-market, horizontal stuff like operating systems, web browsers, and office suites. It is a worthwhile goal to pursue the permanence of open standards and open systems. This will not only prevent another monopolist from taking over, but it will allow the shift from paradigm to paradigm to take place as smoothly as possible.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Perhaps that is what accounts for the low presence and attendance of Linux folk at this particular expo. May it be that the Penguin world has outgrown its niche position of unexpensive NT/Novell replacement for small enterprises and has established a market for itself, complete with dedicated expos?
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
how many people were in attendance, in total, during the linux-oriented keynote? 144 might actually be a lot, if the total attendance was only 1000 people at that time.
and, i would like to see Kurzweil as well, probably more than John Hall, unless it's John S Hall, of course.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Ah, exactly where is Microsoft losing any ground?
With the market share they have held, they have little place to go but down.
Maybe in the small server market, let me amend that by saying that maybe they're not gaining ground quite as fast as they'd like to.
According to IDC, they aren't gaining ground at all. Microsoft's server market share was completely flat between 1998 and 1999. IDC are normally big time Microsoft apologists, and Microsoft advertises heavily in their publications, so they would have no incentive to be biased against Microsoft.
On the desktop though they're the king for the foreseeable future. I mean be real.
Even though I wouldn't dispute that Microsoft will have the biggest market share on the desktop for at least the next several years, that doesn't mean they aren't losing ground. MacOS has made a big comeback, and according to IDC, Linux is giving MacOS a serious run for its money for the #2 position (according to IDC MacOS has risen to from something like 3% to around 5% and Linux has surged from virtually nothing to 4% of the desktop market). Additionally, other alternatives such as BeOS and the *BSDs are starting to mature and are starting to make at least small gains in desktop market share.
Another interesting market is PDAs. So far Windows CE has been pretty much a complete flop against PalmOS, and significant interest has started for Linux in this market as well.
Dedicated servers are a market that Microsoft has been trying very hard and mostly unsucessfully at breaking into. Linux, *BSD and QNX seem to have pretty much divvy'd that market up.
I mean be real.
It isn't real for anyone to think that the status quo will remain forever.
I have to admit even I'm intrigued by win2000. By all accounts I've heard it's not half bad.
I'm not at all interested in Windows 2000. Most of the people I know at work who have tried it have ended up going back to either NT 4 or Windows 98 in frustration either after having repeated system trashed problems, incompatibilities or disappointing performance. Its not like those guys are all anti-Microsoft either, those of us that are never bothered trying it at all. And its not like we are average users, I am talking about all either development or systems staff.
Linux can't claim better stability either - I've been running Win2K since the early betas, and it's never crashed on me.
You must be incredibly brilliant or lucky or both. All of the people I know at work (and we are talking developers and sysadmins, not average users) who have tried Windows 2000 have run into serious stability problems with it to the point that they have had to reload machines to get them to work.
> Is anybody actually using Beowulf in a non-academic, non-experimental system?
/. article talking about a company that uses a 1000-node Beowulf running genetic algorithms to produce patentable software products.
Visit www.beowulf.org.
Yes, there is a strong correlation between "Beowulf" and "academic", but it's not 1.0. And there's an even stronger correlation with "experimental", since massive number crunching is so important to modelling.
But if you skim the list at the link, you'll see that a lot of the applications have commercial potential, even if (mostly) currently used in research: applications in chemisty, meteorology, graphics, economics, satellite imagery, materials design, etc.
Also, a googling turns up this older article claiming that Beowulfs were in use (or at least under study) at Boeing, Bristol Myers, and Proctor & Gamble. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a lot of companies were beowulfing, since most companies don't make a big PR noise about their IT infrastructure, and might even prefer to keep it secret as if it were a competitive advantage.
Finally, I vaguely remember an older
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Mark's claim that 99% of Fortune 2000 companies...use Linux in one way or another.
I don't find it hard to believe at all. Linux came over the radar about the same time ".com" came over the radar. Companies have been creating Web pages by the gazillion, and this demanded server resources beyond their traditional corporate requirements - and budgets.
Corporate conservatism is a reality, but I know from personal experience that there is one force that can compete with it: managers want quick solutions; managers don't want to sign purchase orders. In corporate IT, it's almost always a case of "Never have so few done so much with so little."
So the conjunction of "Linux over the radar", ".com over the radar", and traditional managerial stinginess has put a phenomenal number of Linux boxen on the network over the past couple of years - possibly as many as 5,000,000.
Managerial tightfistedness has undoubtedly led to the adoption of lots of Beowulfen and Samba servers over the last couple of years as well. Perhaps even preferentially in Fortune 2000 companies, since bigger companies generally have bigger IT requirements, and the savings by going Linux vs certain other solutions can add up to many millions of dollars over a fairly short period of time.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
no, Microsoft does use linux.... at least for testing. I remember a while back there was linux.microsoft.com which was discover on the web running linux and apache. Soon after the artical was released the site was taken down.
Besides if Microsoft didnt run linux, where would it get all its good technoligies for windows 2001? Theve taken everything useful they can from apple
Also SUN didnt show up. Im pretty sure that they where there last year. They did have a linux pavilion, but there where only two vendors (redhat and linuxmall). linux mall was makeing a desperate attempt to sell stuffed tuxs. On a positive note, transmeta had a very stong presence, linus was even there on Tuesday answering questions and showing his face.
with windows, instability seems to be less predictable than with linux. For me, linux apps will die in the same spot every time, where windows apps will crash almost totally unpredictably. This leads me to believe that some will be lucky, and some will just not have the same combo of hardware, buggy drivers, buggy software, etc. Leads me to believe that windows isnt designed such that it could segregate processes, etc, very well.
shows fame is a two-edged sword... (not a broadsword then :)
:)
It could (in some cases) be described as a daikatana
Voting Moo Anyway!
It seems everyone is extremely intent on pushing Linux to be THE one and only OS. I know it's a wonderful OS and I use it on one of my servers and have plans to upgrade a few other servers from MS to Linux, but I don't feel that having Linux exclusively is the way to go. I know that there will always be other operating systems, but in a theoretical world, what if linux takes over 100% completely. I can think of a ton of advantages to this, but what disadvantages would we possibly face that haven't popped up already? It seems like it might force a lot of people out of comp. sci. I mean, how many of us started learning about computers on Windows before we ever knew about Linux?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Also working in a "Micro$oft-only shop," I believe that there are really only a few relatively basic reasons for their dominance.
First and foremost always seems to be "support". Talk to any Micro$oft rep/team leader about linux, and the first question/bitch about it is "well, yeah, it may be cool, but who supports it?" As if it's not obvious that *several* vendors compete for the best "linux support"... Red Hat, Caldera, Corel, Mandrake, etc. (please, no 'Mandrake is just red hat!' or 'that's not a real distro!'... I don't know what a real distro is anymore, except debian and slakware...)
The "support" issue comes up in other places too. For example, I write software (database frontends) mostly in Visual Basic and ASP. Why? Do I actually like them (and active-x for that matter) better than C++/Perl/PHP/Python?
No, not really. It's because "Someone may have to support your code in the future!" Visual Basic really isn't all that more standard than C++, but I keep being told that "The next guy might not be as bright as you, and, well, the company would be in deep water if nobody is able to support the data warehouse!" I just learned VB three months ago... I doubt they would ever end up with a less experienced programmer than me... and if they *did*, 90% of all formal CS training in college is done in C++ anyway.
Another very common reason here is interopterability. (sp? ehh?) Linux office apps are either "too immature" or "don't work together" or are "too hard to figure out".
Please. ApplixWare and StarOffice both pretty damn intuitive, I think. Office components in both seem to play with each other. Sure there are some bugs, but there are also bugs in M$ products. Many exec/mgmt people are under the delusion that failings in compatibility between Office/Outlook/IE-based-DBMS's are due to "too much load", or "too many people on the localnet" etc., rather than inherent flaws. Just the same types of comments ISP tech support gets when IE or Dial-Up Networking doesn't bring their e-mail quickly enough.
There is, of course, the issue of familiarity that Picass0 brought up in the previous post. Lastly, most M$ products we use are entrenched in the system because of some obscure feature that is "absolutely necessary" and "you can't do with linux/apache/mysql".
Of course, mail service/external www/dns is all done on a couple of linux boxes...
So the question is really, what the heck is "support"? The ability to rewrite my code, or fix desktops? Deploy new versions of shit on our customer service stations? Worse yet, how can it be provided satisfactorily for linux if it means something different every time it is used in conversation? Hell if I know...
When I grow up, I want to have Christopher Walken hair.
Of course, the expo is Microsoft-centric; it is dealing with technologies of interest to end-users! The average end-user does not know what Linux is, because it was not designed for him. Two summers ago, I did some customer support, and I can only imagine how users who call the help-desk with questions like "how do I double-click" would react to Linux. In its complete form, Linux and UNIX only appeal to technophiles with either servers or high-end workstations.
That being said, I think that many more embedded devices over the next few years will be designed around Linux. Since the source is available, the Linux kernel can be optimized for the device being designed, and there are no licensing fees. So, it is far more likely that Linux would show up all over Comdex, rather than PC Expo
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
...Mark's claim that 99% of Fortune 2000 companies -- including Microsoft -- use Linux in one way or another.
Ninety-nine percent...as in, all but 20? Which 20 are those, I wonder?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Seriously, not to knock on people for caring, but trade shows are just that. A place for marketing. A place to say, "hey check out our cool shit". Of course most of it is hardware and commercial software. There's not that much of a financial push from Linux Corporation's marketing department, now is there?
This kind of thing is great, because it totally makes it so that when some guy says to an executive "we want to use Redhat for blah blah blah" the executive is past the "red what?" stage and goes "Oh yeah, I saw a story about them on CNN, I know who they are".
The more decision-makers who are at least familiar with the name the better, since M$ have proved often that reputation often precedes quality when it comes time to make decisions.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Part of this is true. A non-technical friend of mine said to me last week "You know that weird linux thing you use, I think its getting mainstream." and I think he may be right.
and that can only be a good thing for us.
Oh yes? I can see it giving more device drivers (probably closed, as the new intake will not be as philosophically hidebound as some), but other than that, there is the risk that they use it, go "BUH?" then go back to windows/macos/typewriter saying "linux sucks, it doesn't do X". I know quite a few people who have had this reaction. Always with Redhat, because it has the greatest exposure, shows fame is a two-edged sword... (not a broadsword then :)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
There was also a BeOS/BeIA presence, as noted in this article about PC Expo. He also mentions in the article that
IBM was showing its new ThinkPad lines, including those that offer pre-loaded Caldera Linux.
Promising, isn't it?
...but I work for one of them. And even we have a couple Linux boxen sitting around that I know about (although they're just there in an evaluation capacity, not actually being used for anything).
DNA just wants to be free...
Linux does X. I know. I use it.
-BrentI mean, was it, only cool people use Linux?
Or was it more of a We Are Linux, We Will Absorb You?
This is marketing - did people hear that Linux can do everything W2K can do and better or did they hear you need to be a technogeek to use this stuff?
Will in Seattle
Sorry, I'm sure it would be easy to look up the answer to this question, but I'm in a lazy mood.
MSK
Seriously.. The battle for "recognition" of linux or BSD or whatever flavour of unix you like isnt about winning over the geeks.. we all know what its good for and when we want those functions we use it. We also use other OSes when we need their functions too. The recognition that alternative OSes to the win* family need will come when the guys that need telling what linux is and why its different start paying attention. 140 or 40, it doesnt matter. These are the guys in suits who can either block, ignore or help deployment of these other OSes in business.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Most people here either have no idea what linux is, or just don't care.
I'd guess the numbers of these people are much larger than any visit to slashdot could typically indicate.
the more important side of this, however, is that the numbers of these people are shrinking at an astounding rate. I'd guess the number of people who have even HEARD of linux has more than doubled in the past year.
and that can only be a good thing for us.
________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"
Working in a Micro$oft-only shop I have found the reason MS dominates boils down to this: the people at the top who write the big checks have heard of Micro$oft. They go with what they know. Most people can name a better web development tool than Frontpage, but it's the standard because it's a MS product. Everyone know what a liabilty Outlook has become, but it's MS so CEOs know it. Ditto for Office, IIS, IE, Access, and so on.
But...
CEOs of organizations often times are not hands-on with computers. A switchover to another OS is relatively painless for them on a personal level and has more to do with cost. How many hours will it take to switch processes to a different platform?
It's a matter of raising the awareness CEOs have of Linux that will get more enterprises to adopt it over MS. MS has made some very negative headlines in the past year and that doesn't hurt our cause either.
Yesterday and today people have been going on and on about how PC Expo is "so Windows oriented".
/. stop whining about the size of the Microsoft booth compared to that of Red Hat and how there's still people on this planet who don't use this vastly superior operating system?
Funny..a Dutch newspaper (NRC Handelsblad) today ran a fairly large article that stated the exact opposite: how PC Expo was a complete Linux/Transmeta affair. And no, the people who write for this newspaper are not Linux zealots at all...in the same article they stated that Linus Torvalds is one of the founders of Transmeta.
I guess this article shows that Linux is becoming more prominent and mainstream..there wasn't a word about the huge Microsoft presence.
How about
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
> Dell never throws anything away. (They *sell* their trash;) )
Quick! Someone let Larry Ellison know!
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Back when I was younger, I did some OS/2 Advocacy in the face of overwhelming Windows opposition. Particularly fun was one COMDEX in Atlanta which Team OS/2 descended upon. With some support from IBM (Basically they got us Exhibitor's passes so we could get in before the show) we ran about and offered to install OS/2 on all the hardware we could get it on. It was rather surprising how many hardware vendors were willing to install it -- they wanted to show off their hardware as much as possible. It was kind of fun setting up the brand new Compaq Pentium 166 (With an UNGODLY 32 MB of RAM) to display 4 video streams at the same time through the media player. The NT box next to it (Same hardware) sat there the whole time running its polygon screensaver. Ah, those were the days...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?