LWCE Reports Continue

Linux World continues, and reports from the floor continue to roll in; below are some more tidbits on what was on the floor or announced at today's show. Notably absent this year (besides a whole raft of companies, like formerly large exhibitors like Penguin Computing, Oracle, VA Software and subsidiaries like OSDN) were the sort of toys that crystallized dot-com risk-taking. On the other hand, companies like IBM, HP and Compaq seem as gung-ho as ever, with all sorts of info on how large customers will save (favorite trade-show words) Real Money with free software, and the dot-org booths where a lot of the show's spirit lives are happily sharing their projects' visions and toys.

wo1verin3 writes: "Trivia for geeks... and nerds. Or rather geeks vs nerds. Read about the contest of the people with oddly and randomly shaped heads here." This site also links to MoC chrisd's page of questions and answers.

abel wisman submitted news that GNU Bayonne and PreViking have merged into a single project, which will keep the name GNU Bayonne. Not familiar with either? Bayonne is a telephony application server, and PreViking is a telephony-switching daemon, both of which are open source. David Sugar of the Bayonne project also demonstrated an automated web-based callback system used to provide callbacks to form-based online queries. The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer. The Bayonne booth at LinuxWorld offered booth visitors today free calls to anywhere in the world using these technologies.

red_gnom writes: "Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo. A bid is being prepared to provide the computing power behind the US government sponsored Project Purple, which will pool a vast server farm to the three leading U.S. research labs, which is scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2004."

terrywin writes: "Apparently, the company that licensed Corel's Linux has indicated that the beta is now available. http://www.xandros.com/news.html, their home page has a link to the beta form. The last report I saw on this was back in September."

Finally, cnmill points to this story on CNET about today's announcement of version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base. Congratulations!

Comments

Re:1st time conference attendee

[clone304]

Uhh, slamb didn't seem to be bitching. Why are you reacting so strongly, when he was saying exactly what you are. Are you retarded?

Shouldn't that be...

[Pope Slackman]

Purple Helmet linux?

C-X C-S
It's linux...BLOWING JIZZ ALL OVER YOUR FACE!

Re:1st time conference attendee

[q-soe]

acting like Linux was just another platform

Yep and you know what - shock for you IT IS

Linux is another OS - its not a wonder drug, a miracle cure, a religion or a fabric softener - its an operating system for computer hardware.

Corporates are the only way for open source to survive - it might make you feel dirty but reality is like that - software costs money to develop and linux costs money to make, companies like Ximian have to employ programmers, advertise and all other costs with software, this needs money and unlike college or high school where you can code all night and mommy and daddy, the government or that part time job will cover the costs when you talk about real world solutions your talking real world money.

No corporate will ever put their trust in the hands of a few evangelists or guys who are 'artists' - these people deal with companies with proffesional images, sales plans, documentation and support (yeah and i know what im talking about - i work as an IT manager for a muli national) - they want reliability and a trusted name - its why they buy RedHat instead of using slakware, why they trust compaq and dell and not bobs linux services and why they stay with MS when it costs money.

Linux is dying slowly again - the "artists" out there are one of the reasons why there is no such thing as a simpe all in one install of linux that works fully with all apps and without resorting to console windows and make files - in short a simple easy to roll out corporate desktop.

Vision is great ! its a way to move to the future, but whos paying the bills?

And a comment on the selling IP - companies pay to develop IP and in the case of linux they even develope their own docmentation and training courses - thus the IP is theirs to sell - not everything in the world is free whether you like it or not.

Reality is harsh but thats the way it is.

PS yeah yeah im gonna get modded down - damn it i dont really know if i care or not - i have given up on free software in most ways - all my home equipment has gone back to MS software and ive stopped recommeding it to people - the fact is theres not one distro. out there that works properly out of the box - dont believe me think like a newbie and bung in Mandrake or Redhat and install it without any idea of what it means - then play an MPEG or AVI movie (NO changing compilers or libraries and NO console) You cant do it can you.

Open source is a wonderful thing but making this into a religion turns people off not on.

LINUX IS JUST ANOTHER PLATFORM - WAKE UP