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LinuxWorld Preview
jlttb writes "LinuxWorld gets under way this week in New York City, and CRN has some extensive preview coverage this morning, including a look at Raptor, IBM's first Linux mainframe, and other IBM and Compaq Linux servers to be announced at the show. A second feature takes a look at the growth of the Linux services channel, from industry heavyweights like IBM, Compaq, Red Hat and Caldera, to smaller 'mom and pop' Microsoft and Novell shops that are re-focusing on Linux. Finally, the magazine looks at how Microsoft and Sun are each fighting back against the gains made by Linux in corporate America." I still haven't packed yet, but I'm looking forward
to the show.
Linux World? That's a little ambitious, isn't it?
LinuxCity is more realistic. Or maybe they could stretch it to LinuxState at the max...
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I wonder what could be done to encroach more on theMS market, given the recent stumbles by MS in the market (perpetual license rental, etc.)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
There were at least 4 unique commercials with this theme, the best one was when the team "management" paid a consultant 5 million and all he ended up doing was explaining what a triangle was, it reminds me of a friend I have who works at Accenture..
I spent a good 30 mins last night searching around for where I could download these commercials, but I had no success. Does anyone know where to find these? I know IBM had the codernaut commericials available for download.
10 years? Yeah, right. Can we say "Me too! Me too!" Compaq would have a hard time finding a clue if it were superglued to its collective face. Any company that would buy the alpha just to watch it die does not deserve any respect.
morons.
~Sean
Wired has a preview too. Check it out here
2. The all-too-familiar reports about how "corporate" the show has become.
3. The all-too-familiar reports about attendence being lower, but still impressive.
4. Lots of evidence that Linux is continuuing to do well in the embedded space, as well as servers (see #1 above).
5. Not so much as a hint that Linux is making any real inroads into the desktop market. This will not change, thanks to the utter indifference to that segment shown by IBM, RH, and some (but not all) other major players.
Well, I'm already in Florence(read: bumfuck egypt), New Jersey staying with friends. I'm taking the train up to the city tomorrow morning, check into my hotel, grab my boxen, get to my booth, set it up, and hook up my machines tomorrow. I wonder if they'll actually have network access early this year. Last year january, they didn't have network live (in the .org pavillion) till wednesday.
.org pavillion after hours. That just pissed me off. They cut the power at like EXACTLY 6pm. I was hosting one of my websites off of it, and lost everything when I lost the partition my MySQL databases were on. .ORG pavillion exhibitors, be warned, they might do this again. This year I'm using ext3, so hopefully if they pull the power, my shit won't be lost.
:)
I'm also hoping they don't go weasel again like they did in SFO last august and turn off the power to the
Also, if you're exhibiting, don't leave your laptops, or anything else that can be easily stolen, in your booth. My and hadess's laptops got stolen. The depressing thing is that the last picture of his laptop (an ibook, you know, the toilet seat-looking ones) was taken by myself after the IBM party. I feel really bad that the laptop got stolen too. I almost feel as though it's my fault. The thing is, is that they rummaged THROUGH the booth and took it. My laptop was in the little cabinet thing inside the booth, so they must have been there a while. I just can't believe that security was so lax that they'd let someone like that just walk in and out with them. It's quite depressing.
This year I'm taking no chances though. I'm bringing locks for everything, I'm going to be taking my computers back to my hotel with me every night, and I'm definitely NOT going to be leaving ANYTHING in my booth. I guess I just had too much trust in their staff.
BTW, I am going to be setting up a wireless access point in my booth. If you need wireless networking, set your ESSID to "tux0r". I'll happily share my bw with anyone who wants it.
I can't think of anything else to really say, other than stop by my booth (BOFH International, booth #7, way in the back, right side, by mandrakesoft) and say hi.
-- John
I went to the first NYC LinuxWorld two years ago, and had a great time. There were tons of great people there, tons of interesting and respectable companies. I had a ton of fun just hanging out with people that had previously only been an email address - truly an affecting experience.
But last year was very different. The focus wasn't people, the focus was on startups. "Linux" companies that had little to no clue, just trying to cash in on year-old hype. The big guns used it as an excuse to glam up their trade booths and loose their down-to-earth technical aspects. SGI's XFS team were the only people willing to have a serious technical discussion with me. Wading through so much marketing bullshit really blew. Wandering over to the "dot org pavillion" showed a tremendous downsizing of support for important community projects. While they previously recieved a good chunk of floor space in which to present things, they'd been reduced to vacant and tiny cubes.
LinuxWorld seems to have become little more than commercial interests trying to pry money out of the community, without remembering *why* they have a product to expo.
A sales channel is the method by which a product goes from manufacturer to end-user. There are many varieties, some of the more important ones are listed below:
There are endless variations on these, but you get the gist, I hope.
Does this answer your question?
Babies are cute because they have to be.
I suppose it's nice to be optomistic, but really!
Linux won't make much inroads on the desktop until KWord, or AbiWord, or StarOffice is a reasonably complete and friendly word processor. (StarOffice 6 is reportedly getting there, but I'm hoping for KWord.)
Word/Text processing is the next big block, and it seems almost ready to fall.
Spreadsheets are already pretty good, and appear to be getting better fast, but I'm not much of a spreadsheet user, so I can't judge.
Given those two, presentation software is next. I understand that it is also approaching dew point, but again I can't judge.
Group coordination software would be a big plus. Don't know what we've got.
Once those are all in place, new enterprises will start switching to Linux rather rapidly. The old ones will tend to stay with what they've got, and buy new systems designed to fit into their old network. Phasing this out will be quite slow, but it doesn't represent that many new sales, either.
The monkey wrench in the machinery is WinXP, which is both a plus and a minus. If MS can push a large enough segment of people into using it, they won't be able to give it up without sacrificing their data. Ouch! OTOH, the licensing is so vile that many people are quite angry. Unfortunately, many of the people who make the decisions don't read the licenses (or don't believe that they can be enforced), and won't hear opinions to the contrary. What can one do, but quote 'liza Doolittle "You'll be sorry, but your fears will be too late!", and that's not very productive.
So the market will segment, with many of the older firms stuck with MS, and unable to extract themselves, so they make the best of it. (Others will either not upgrade, or bite the bullet and cut it off before the infection spreads.) And the rest going with one alternative or another. Probably a lot of them will choose Linux, if you can demonstrate that the applications are there.
But don't expect this to be a quick process. It's underway in the early stages, but it will be a decade before anything close to parity is reached. Right now the best choice is to experiment with Linux for applications that aren't too naive-user oriented, and to let the power users think that you may be planning on reserving it for the technical services group. (Then when they really beg you, give a grudging permission, if they can prove that they can use it.) But even this requires a smooth integration into your file/print servers. So get that set up first.
And be sure to have plenty of extra backups during the startup phase. (Mirrors aren't good enough. I new user can do more damage that is reasonable. [Even an experienced user can. The other day I got myself into a situation where I had to either spend a long time on file-by-file permission mods, or to set all of my files executable. --- I intend to go back and sanitize that entire folder later, but first I need to write and debug the script, so it isn't done yet.] Well, I did something stupid, and it was on a machine that's largely a test-bed, but still.. I felt quite stupid after I realized what I had done. I'd been trying to change the permissions for other, but set my own, as well.)
Perhaps there needs to be a distribution of Linux that comes with training wheels. (e.g., the default file spec of 640, or even 600.) Gnome and KDE can let the user change those on a file by file basis without much danger.
Or a default mode where chmod, e.g., tells you what the effect of the command will be, and then asks you to confirm. (e.g. "This will let you read and write, but not execute the files, and not open the folders. It will also let other members of your group read the files. Other people won't even be able to see them, unless they are superusers.")
-- I think that each script would be fairly easy to write, but there sure would be a lot of them. And it would definitely make the commands larger(not much, but still...) and slower. So it would need to be a special distribution (or at least installation option).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes, Office users probably range from 5%-20% of Office's functionality. Unfortunately, outside of the 5% common stuff, the other portions that people use are different.
If you are throwing together high school papers, you don't need word. However, for a corporate environment, they are powerful.
Look, if you don't need Office, you don't buy Office. MS Works exists, and it is similar in capability to Apple's AppleWorks and most of the "Free" office suites.
The problem is the people that push these apps. Take Excel. If you just did some graphing in high school chem, you may be satisfied with Gnumetric. Have you ever seen a real finance guru with Excel? They churn out really complex items. What does this mean for the rest of the corporation? If I want to view their spreadsheets, I need Excel. Therefore, anyone in the Enterprise that needs to work with these spreadsheets needs excel.
Now it doesn't matter that 90% of the Enterprise doesn't need Excel's features for their work, another 20% may work with the finance people that are cranking out excel.
Now we have Access. Access is a silly app, but it is damned convenient for basic databases. Sure, I can crank out an impressive web GUI and build a real database on PostgreSQL, but if a small department wants something without clearing it by IT, Access gets them up and running quickly.
Powerpoint?
Powerpoint sucks, everyone who uses it knows that it sucks.
Name a competitor that sucks less. (Please, I've been looking for a better product, I can't find one). However, if you need a quick presentation, it gets the job done. It's easy to use, and everyone either HAS Powerpoint (from Office) or can get the free viewer (which you can send them). It is a quick way to send ideas including graphical explanations.
Word is extremely flexible. Most people in the organization don't need it. However, a handful likely push Word to its limits. They build the templates and otherwise utilize its features. Now, if the rest of the company is using Word, they can leverage these creations. No Word? No luck.
Sure, VBA isn't useful for most users. If your IT department found a use for it, then they'll crank stuff out. I've been at clients that really use VBA, and many that never use it.
If you guys spent 10% of the time in various IT rooms at real companies instead of listening to other Linux-heads on Slashdot you'd understand Linux's deficiencies on the desktop.
For a home computer, Linux is adequate. For a corporate environment, most need more.
Ya know, for all Outlook's security problems, the group scheduling and other features when combined with Exchange are REALLY powerful.
Alex