Linux Advocacy At PC Expo

Jacob Javits Convention Center, New York - Despite the overwhelming Windows orientation of PC Expo (Apple didn't show up at all), there have been a few signs of Linux life. Today's 11:30 a.m. keynote speech was given jointly by Mark Bolzern of LinuxMall.com and John "Maddog" Hall of Linux International. This was not a well-attended keynote. About ten minutes after it started I counted 144 seated attendees. The previous presentation (which ran close to half an hour longer than scheduled), by scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, had at least twice as large an audience, and the room could easily have held close to 1000 people -- if that many had been willing to tear themselves away from the New! Exciting! Revolutionary! Windows and Palm-oriented product display on the main exhibit floor.

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.