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Miscellaneous LinuxWorld Tidbits
The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words. We already mentioned that Mandrake and HP are working on Linux on the desktop (warning, manager-speak). The Open Source Development Lab is expanding its focus through the creation of a working group on "carrier grade Linux" for the telecommunications market. CNET has several LinuxWorld stories up. And let's throw in one more, only tangentially related: IBM has settled with San Francisco for spray-painting their sidewalks.
Mandrake and HP are doing something involving Linux on the desktop
So what happened to Bruce Peren's involvement with HP and their Linux efforts? Why no Debian on their desktops? Perhaps a tacit admission that Debian might be a little...inappropriate for their regular desktop customers but Mandrake isn't?
Damn... i didn't know about this... i wish they did this right in front of my house... you can be damn sure about me guarding it against city cleaners with my bare hands.....
To think of it that this is coming from a respectable company as IBM.. Thumbs up all the way for them...
IBM broke the law ... and guess what? We're talking about IBM
OK, let's think about the target audience with this campaign. In my opinion IBM comes away with two victories here: not only did they paint cool little adverts all over the city, they also got in trouble with the law in an insignificant (to IBM $110k is nothing) way which in turn will up their status with the people who are likely to buy linux servers.
Of course that could be just the way I see things, but my liking of IBM has gone up 2 points because of that. I like the ads, I think they're funny, and they're not hurting anything. I also like the fact that they got in trouble for doing it, it makes the company as a whole seem like the same kind of carefree jokesters that my freinds and I tend to be. Anyway, that's my $0.02
~ now you know
Announced at Linux World HP has inked a deal with Dreamworks to replace their remaining SGI Irix machines with Linux.
Dreamworks has also announced Shrek 2, maybe there will be a penguin in it
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Anyone nabbed a spray-painted piece of history? Talk about your conversation piece? It would be cool to have a chunk of concrete in the computer room. I haven't seen anything on e-bay but give it time...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
So, WRT the OSDN "Carrier Grade Linux" thread, I work for one of those companies that has 'Other' in there. Here are the some of the main things that general-purpose OS's tend to lack:
1. Redundant processors -- there are always two processors running. When one fails, control switches to the other processor. Meanwhile, the failed processor (actually, the entire board) can be replaced and brought back to life. Without affecting any application running on the system, heck typically without their even being aware.
2. Ability to add and remove peripheral cards in a running system -- so, you have a system that has a card with 8 T1 lines going into it, and you want to add another card -- just stick it in, configure it, and away you go.
3. Redundant links -- things like "If one lan interface drops, I'll switch to the other one and keep any connections up." (this requires support from your network), etc....
4. Seamless software upgrade -- if you have two processors, you run the current software on one, get the new software running on the other one, sync them up and then the new software takes control and doesn't lose track of what was going on.
5. Related to #4, above -- "Cutover". If you're running on system 'A' that's obsolete, you need to be able to switch over to using newer system 'B' and not lose anything that's going on. This isn't necessarily an OS thing.
All these requirements come from age-old regulatory requirements that said that ma bell could set her rates based on the quality of service that it provides, and which forced the bell companies to keep extensive records of outages and downtimes. So, not only were there the above software requirements, but there are also a bunch of hardware requirements (boards have to be hot-swappable, for example), and power requirements as well -- telephony companies have multiple connections to the power grid with battery backup and generators, and so on...
With all that in place, it's amazing that they still bury the redundant cable right next to the primary cable so some yutz on a backhoe can come along and take out the phone system.
I swear, it was like driving south on I-95, reading the "South of the Border" billboards every 50, 20, 10 and finally every 5 miles!
"Only ten days left to the show! Register now!"
Look, if I wanted to go, I'd have registered by now. Take your show, and your SPAM... And shove it, mmmkay?
OTOH, i'm pretty sure IBM wasn't sitting around smoking big cigars and saying:
"Hahahaha! We will paint their sidewalks with our mark, and when they complain, buy them off with our pocket-change!" (all raise glasses of cognac in the air) "Gentlemen, a toast. To evil!"
None the less, I hope that if any other company tries this stunt, they get fined more than 100k.
> The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply
> cannot be expressed in words.
Looks like the things that were introduced last year and passed off as extremely boring took a while to sink in. Telecommuniations, business mergers, storage software, and women in taylored tweed was all extremely boring last year but after a year of heavy economic reality, consumers have finally dropped their obsession with e-commerce and softened to the next big thing. Maybe this means stocks will go up again.
If your mom is learning computers, what the hell is the difference if she learns Linux or winshit? The learning curve for an enduser on an already setup machine is actually lower on Linux than on any window$ box. Get a grip.
Oh shit, I went and replyed to a troll. Now I guess the orc's are gonna get me. . .
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
My girlfriend (a high school senior) is running
debian+ximian on her desktop.
She knows nothing about 'puting (she is an artist.)
and doesn't mind it at all.
Infact, she doesn't even recognize it as a different
OS, she thinks it is all the same.
Maybe she's not ready yet... more accurately, maybe Linux isn't ready for her yet. But my god, look how far things have come in a few years.
:)
When I first downloaded Linux, there were no CD-Recordable drives; I had to go out and buy 50 floppies and crash a university computer lab (no DSL or cable-modems, either) to download Slackware. I was thrilled to get it working, and decided that olvwm was king.
Now Red Hat is huge, IBM is running Linux on mainframes, and KDE/GNOME have made the desktop much friendlier. Seems like most distributions have graphical installers that autodetect and configure most of the popular hardware. I remember the labor-intensive process of configuring my X server for Slackware about 7 years ago. Times have changed.
So I hate to hear people bad-mouth Linux because it's not good enough for grandma yet. Because in a few years, I think it will be there. And that's what Microsoft is afraid of.
Am I anti-Microsoft? Maybe a little. I'm cool with the "use what works for the application" argument, but I also think that Microsoft as a business is sleazy and evil. Sure, they're job is to make money, but what happened to dealing fairly with consumers and, well, ethics? And the Linux community feels much more like that: a community. There must be countless Linux developers working for free, for the cause, for the fun of it, whatever. I'd rather align with them.
So hopefully in a few years, Linux WILL be ready for Joe Sixpack. And if you can't get your mom to double-click, maybe you should get her an iMac in the interim.
"This alliance is a testament to HP's strong commitment in Linux market," says Eric Rueda, Software Marketing Manager, HP Business Desktops division.
"We are told not to disclose any information about the proprietary protocol we use to operate our scanners" says the HP scanner support staff.
About a month ago, I wanted to buy a decent HP scanner, which of course had to work with GNU/Linux, that is, with SANE. I went to the next dealer and asked about the possibitily of returning it in case it doesn't work with GNU/Linux and SANE. Of course I could return it within two weeks no matter of the reason, I've been told.
I got a HP ScanJet 2200C USB and took it home. New kernel, recent SANE distribution. After RTFMing a bit, I read that a special SANE plugin would be needed for the scanner to operate, and it would barely get anything but 100dpi b/w out of it.
All I got was one poor scan with the image barely to be recognizable. What is more, the USB host driver in 2.4.17 is unstable. Scan once, boot once. "usb-uhci.o" would get a kernel oops immediately, and "uhci.o" at least stands one scan. Wisefully I'm running a dedicated USB box which can be rebooted within two minutes without anything else to be disturbed.
After fiddling with the kernel, SANE and the special plugin I decided to return the scanner and get a different one. No problem, and a HP ScanJet 4470C was available which is supposed to run better.
Back at home with the 4470C. It didn't run at all. Nothing. Niente. After RTFMing a bit deeper, what I found was not a description about how to make it work, but some Web page (sorry don't remember the link any more) telling that HP reorganized its scanner development lab and refuses to disclose any information about the proprietary protocol, so HP scanners won't any longer work with non-MS operating systems.
So fsck the scanner, I returned it and got my money back, as the targetted Epson 1240U hasn't been available.
Some weeks later at the company I work for, my colleague had to write a driver for a newer HP SCSI scanner to work with HP-UX, so he would need some documentation about the protocol. It took him about three days on the telephone, with everyone telling him that the management forbids any disclosure of proprietary protocols regarding HP scanners, no matter if it should run with HP-UX or anything else. It took our boss several days to kick HP's ass long enough for them to agree releasing the documentation under a strict NDA. I wonder what can be such a valuable secret on a scanner protocol.
And exactly the same company would have a "strong commitment in [the] Linux market" being so hostile to GNU/Linux (even their own Unix variant) in a different division? Exactly the same company which tries to ensure their scanners won't ever work with GNU/Linux tries to get GNU/Linux onto the desktop?
I hope Bruce Perens or someone else of HP can comment on this before I'll have bought an Epson scanner which is known to work with SANE.
I was there yesterday... very disappointing. It was about half the size of last year's expo, and no really 'cool' stuff there. Last year, Slashdot had a booth, ThinkGeek was there selling there wares, and UserFriendly had a really cool 'find the puzzle pieces' game. Sure, I went to find out all the lastest news, gadgets, and information, but hell, I want to have some fun too! About the only thing that I enjoyed spending some time talking about was the PS2 to Linux box conversion for $199. Oh, the IBM mainframe was pretty neat too, especially being able to hold the processor *drool*.
wolfman
MOD this yahoo up. Here here.
I worked for Broadwing, and though we had some Linux for internal work, we ran Solaris for the machines in the POPs. Also, if HP were going to switch they would use their own HPUX.
It was a blast. So many nerds in so small a space.
The irrefutible corporate might was a bit staggering at first. HP, Compaq, IBM, Sun, Intel, AMD, etc. all had huge booths extolling how much each of them loves the Linux community. General impressions:
Sun had TV-style ads running constantly in between presentations on Sun/Linux-happy technology. The iPlanet guys gave a really unnerving speech about how they were serious and want to be taken seriously and that they were "Sun's Children" or something. They were creeping me (and everyone else) out.
The guy pimping Intel's ultra-reet compiler was pretty excited about it. Showing a demo of the new SIMD optimizations versus without. Yay, 8x performance increase in a cpu-intensive demo. He wasn't much interested in discussing how this worked with me though--it took him 10 minutes, gladly accepting interruptions, to just say that it was using SIMD stuff to optimize loops.
Compaq was truly everywhere in that show. They had a lot of fun stuff available, including a play area (complete with bean bag couches and video games). I believe Compaq also provided all of the public terminals for checking email/ssh'ing to boxes, etc. If you were there, you also rolled your eyes when you walked past their gameshow/advertisement setup though (hosted by "Dave LinuxMan").
IBM was there, but didn't do much to catch your eye. If you were looking for them, you found them and hung out with them. Otherwise they were all kind of chill and laid back. Same goes for HP really.
The suits were thoroughly awestruck at the Ximian booth (complete with Jungle motif). Good for them.
I'm not sure what Computer Associates thought it was doing there.
AMD had some engineers there--I wasn't nearly competent enough with CPU architecture to have a good talk with them. AMD was definitely trying hard to get over the myth that their processors were incompatible/unreliable, and had a lot of partners there with them to show confidence in AMD. I wish them the best of luck, they were all very cool.
Red Hat's booth was pretty standard. They were showing an interest in embedded and high-end servers. Plenty of competent people there ready to walk the talk.
Despite the sheer eyecandy factor/booth size of the corporate forces at LinuxWorld, the real heart of the show was actually all of the booths lining the edges run by hacker groups, independent projects, charities, etc. That's mostly where the quality conversation happened.
The Window Maker guys put on an asskicking booth despite no significant corporate backing or flashy handouts. They must've had 8 or 9 boxes/laptops running a wide range of UNIXen all sporting wmaker. Their little ibook was even blasting 80s-cheese metal the entire show. They had a friendly rivalry with the GNOME crowd going.
Some NetBSD dudes were there sporting NetBSD on all kinds of hardware. No FreeBSD/OpenBSD people (er, except for BSDMall?). It was nice to see the FSF and EFF there receiving donations.
Only Covalent was giving out T-shirts this year, and you had to sit through a presentation on Apache 2.0 (put on by ryan@covalent, who did a great job), fill out a form, and swipe your card before they give it to you. At least it's comfy.
The Linux on Playstation 2 booth put on by Sony was gnarly. Some Sony rep even interviewed me and I babbled something about how I was insulted that the dev kit cost $200, but then I was less insulted when I realized the dev kit came with a hard disk and ethernet card and other goodies.
Apple who? Didn't see them anywhere.
Fun show. Highly recommended. I'm going to miss all those guys.
My girlfriend is as computer illiterate as they can come. I think the only advanced feature she groks is that there are file/folder hierarchies of some kind.
Not only can she effectively use any desktop I switch to--ranging from Ximian GNOME, KDE, Blackbox, vtwm, etc (once I've configured some of the simpler ones)--but I even had her do a Red Hat 7.1 install for fun. She got by flawlessly just reading the instructions, with me acting as the system administrator whenever the instructions told her to contact me about network settings.
Once she finished the install, she was able to log in and use it as normally.
Installing Windows on the other hand was way outside of her capabilities. She got frustrated and gave up. I'm so proud of her. :D
The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words.
So instead, Michael will be expressing it in mime.
"But why Dorking?"
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
MS breaks the law in a way that hurts me. I wish them dismembered and cast to the four winds (unless they are willing to make just recompense ... fat chance of that!).
IBM breaks the law in a way that is annoying. I hope that they got a fine that would more than cover the cleanup. But it harmed me less than the billboards that the bought on the sides of the buses (I had to look at those).
I don't see any hypocricy. I'd really like the people who post on billboards to have to pay for disfiguring the environment, and it would cost a lot more than cleaning up some graffiti would. And I'l like all monopolists to be dinged for the full costs of their degradation of the rights of the individuals in the civilization. Full. That would put nearly all of them out of business, I admit, but perhaps the costs could be staggered over a decade or so. That would allow reasonable competition to grow up in the area that they had shaded.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I remember the old computerworld shows. The small companies were where it was at. Some of the best (and worst, of course) products came out of them. They were the most innovative, the most...
As more big companies came, they were more and more squeezed out. Prices went up. etc.
I remember the first MacWorlds. There was a lot of life in the small booths. Apple dominated, of course, but the small booths was where the innovation was. The last time I went to one, several years ago, I couldn't find many small companies, and the show felt dead.
Now LinuxWorld is starting to be dominated by large companies. Take warning. There needs to be some location that the small companies can gather and show, or the (commercial) innovation dies.
I understand why LinuxWorld is happy for the large companies to show up. They are more profitable. As long as the show remains lively, and keeps attracting "customers". But if care isn't taken, this show, too, can die from "environmental degradation". With proper care it can probably remain the kind of show that a maker of, say, computer controlled knitting machines (for home use) can exhibit at. But it will take a lot of care.
If not, perhaps one of the other shows will start to attract the small companies? One can only hope.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Flamesuit on.
Fine, maybe I'm a cynical corporate guy, but I'm pretty UNIMPRESSED with linux world as a whole. Linux on the mainframe = z/OS and nothing more. And that's all we're hearing! All day everyday, linux on the mainframe. Huge sections of the floor are curtained off, most of the sessions are half full. I'm sorry, but I'm more depressed than when I came here.
Except for the golden penguin, which was truly a nerd's delight, this doesn't bode well. It's all basically OEMs (where are the ISVs?!?) moving from HPUX/AIX/etc to Linux... which means forking and proprietary code soon enough.
That's one of the tough concepts for new admins to understand. We're not only juicy targets because of our claims of security; but we're a lot more useful once we're owned.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
If the show is actually smaller this year than last, Linux may be saturating its existing markets.
;-)
Computer hobbyists who love a platform where everything is open for experimentation are a small (and fun) market that has mostly been reached already.
Entrepreneurs who are starting out with more brains than cash have found Linux (and *BSD) to be a wonderful platform -- if their business model puts a lot of weight on server-side computing.
Those businesses were once growing like weeds, but after too many years searching in vain for profits, they are now vanishing like the morning frost.
Those two markets are nearly saturated now, though they'll continue to grow over time, especially in less-developed economies.
For Linux shows to continue to grow, Linux will need to become extremely attractive to much larger markets that get attention from end users. Embedded markets can be huge, but the Linux part would be invisible and wouldn't be of much interest to the end user.
Otherwise, these shows will end up sharing venues with Science Fiction conventions.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
. . . . And it needs better commercial support (I have a plan). Bruce
So Bruce, what is your plan for Debian support? Enquiring minds want to know . . .