Ask a LinuxWorld Exhibitor

Most Slashdot readers aren't coming to the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York this week. If you're not coming, but you have a question you'd like to ask one of the exhibitors, please post it here. I promise to ask 10 of the highest-moderated exhibitor questions on your behalf, and I'll do my best to ask more than 10, time permitting. If you have a question for anyone who is holding a conference session or tutorial Thursday or Friday, please feel free to post it, too. I will try to ask speakers at least a few questions, but that's chancier than getting hold of exhibitors (who are in booths where they're easy to find), so no promises. One question per post, please. Hopefully, I'll have time to type up the answers over the weekend and post them Monday or Tuesday.

Comments

How do you sell to geeks?

[PhysicsGenius]

Geeks pride themselves on their attention to technical excellence to the exclusion of such base tricks as free junk and hot booth babes. So how do you get the attention of a typical geek wandering around LinuxWorld? Fast triangle performance projected on the ceiling? Huge LCDs showing large uptimes on your show boxii? What catches a geeks eye?

Strategies

[Oculus Habent]

For Hardware Vendors:

What basic strategies are you employing to better penetrate the server/appliance market with Linux systems?

Dear Redhat Software

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your response to the vulterant claims that your Gnome/KDE setup is breaking QT apps and causing havoc for developers who make use of QT?

To Microsoft

[gmuslera]

Considering that this is called "LinuxWorld", what product will you release next for Linux?

Re:To Microsoft

[RupW]

Considering that this is called "LinuxWorld", what product will you release next for Linux?

Wasn't their a slashdot article about MS releasing Media Player for Linux? Otherwise, probably Linux to Win interoperability or migration tools.

Ask them if they're going to revive their Unix IE and Media Player and/or target Linux as well as Solaris, etc.

Dear $exhibitor

[ackthpt]

Dear $exhibitor (assuming not Microsoft)

What is your impression of Microsoft a) at your convention and b) Microsoft's efforts to lure Unix customers into their fold, away from Linux? Do they appear successful?

To Microsoft

[Oculus Habent]

Do you plan on producing Open Source components to any of your products? This primarily refers to server components, such as HTTP, DNS, IMAP, etc. which could function externally to the base programs (Exchange, ISA, etc.) and offer simpler and more granular control over active services.

To Microsoft:

[IamTheRealMike]

What will you do if you can't convince people the price of your products is worth the additional integration?

And on a related note: if Linux on the desktop takes off, what's Plan B? Do you even know yet?

What is the best giveaway item?

[burgburgburg]

In your experience as a convention exhibitor, what is the most effective giveaway item you've ever used to draw people to your booth long enough to make a pitch? What will people wait in line for, sit through demos for, fill out long questionaires for, let you swipe their card for, jostle others to get?

Conversely, what was the lamest giveaway item you were ever saddled with? Where you had to throw it at passersby, and even then they recoiled in dismay?

Re:What is the best giveaway item?

[Tackhead]

> In your experience as a convention exhibitor, what is the most effective giveaway item you've ever used to draw people to your booth long enough to make a pitch? What will people wait in line for, sit through demos for, fill out long questionaires for, let you swipe their card for, jostle others to get?

I'm a techie, not a marketroid.

If you're in marketing, STOP READING THIS POST NOW.

I've sat through, and ignored Intel demos (because I already knew as much about Itanic^Hium as the salesdrone did) for some very cool blue-LED-illuminated pens. But at least I remembered the name of the company that gave 'em to me. Thanks, Intel!

Things with lights are popular. I have a couple of yo-yos with spring-activated switches that turn on LEDs. I also have a couple of bouncing super-balls with embedded LEDs that flash. I have some flashing LED modules on my desk, removed from various buttons and stickers. Couldn't tell you the names of the companies I got 'em from if you paid me, though.

My first-aid/emergency kit contains a few chemoluminiscent (aka glow-stick stuff ) sticker/patches from NVidia and XBox. These are great - they're about the size of the palm of your hand, stick to anything, and when activated, last for a good 4-6 hours. If there's a major disaster, they'll be able to find my body in the dark, and they'll know I was m4d g33k to the end.

My most pleasant memory was laughing throughout a sales pitch for some Linux distro vendor whose name I forgot within minutes of the presentation. He had the largest crowd I've ever seen at a trade show. The crowd was large the pitch-man was peeling off $20s and $100s and throwing them into the crowd as part of his act. (Yes, this was before the Crash, why do you ask? :-)

Other things that people will sit through demos for are stuffed penguins. One 2-foot-tall Tux can keep about 20 people glued to a chair in a stupor, eyes always on the hands of the pitch-man, for about 15 minutes in the hopes that said penguin will be thrown their way.

Like I said, I'm a techie, not a marketer. If you're a marketer, there's a lesson to be learned here, namely "Geeks like cool swag, and we hope you marketing people stopped reading this post in the first paragraph, because the cooler your swag, the more likely it is that we're only feigning interest in your product to get our hands on it."

GNU/Linix On The Desktop

[rootmon]

I know it's been the dream of GNU/Linux enthusiasts for years: to replace Windows on client PCs. Thus far, Microsoft's hold on OEMs hasn't been broken in the desktop PC market, though there are some encouraging signs like Walmart's $199 Microtel GNU/Linux PCs and LTSP spreading in schools. My question is this: do you think GNU/Linux will really succeed in spreading out from the server room to win a significant share of the desktop client market? If so, when and how do you think this will happen? (Such as HP/Compaq, Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc all pushing GNU/Linux PCs with Open Office to businesses, or thin client computing like LTSP gaining popularity, etc.)

To icculus.org

[alkini]

To icculus.org (booth #9): What is it like to be a small organization at a big convention with people like HP, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc? Do people give you any credit for what you are doing?

For the Microsoft folks:

[sterno]

Do they read Slashdot? If so, why do they think there is such a strong anti-microsoft sentiment on Slashdot? What do they think Microsoft can do to change that sentiment?

You know, a nice easy question for them to handle :)

To Linux Software Vendors

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

Is Mac OS X a big enough competitor (for want of a better word) to the Linux server/desktop market to warrent porting products over to either OS X or to Darwin?

This is with focus on the server side.

Ask Dell about forcing MS onto edu customers

[BACbKA]

The Dell's online computer purchases, in the "educational" section, only offer Windows as the O.S. [Last verified - about a month ago, when my friend from an American university whose IT dept prefers Dell computers to purchase from the scientific research grants money asked me to help him select his future computer config.]

Neither the "no-OS-gimme-refund" or a prepackaged Linux option is available. How does this coincide with the present Dell attempts to position itself as a friend of Linux?

Bowling for junk

[Ilan Volow]

What's the craziest thing a person has ever done to get schwag?

Software for Children

[north.coaster]

Are there any plans to offer software specifically targetted towards grade school age children? Seems like there may be an untapped market here.

To Macrovision Corp.

[josh crawley]

To Macrovision Corp. (booth R10)

As I understand, your main stakes are in the encoding of ntsc and pal video signals as to make them uncopyable in receiving hardware (correct me if I'm incorrect).

As that stated, why are you involved with Linux?
Are you contributing to the video section (V4L) of the Linux kernel or making user-land utilities?
In general, what are your open business plans with Linux?

Re:Yes please ask this one.

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to look it up also.

The best thing I found was from http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/reports/linux-199807 14-qa2.html:

From a business-applications perspective, what can we do to get Microsoft to do native ports of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Exchange, etc.?

• Robert Hart responded: you can already read and write the files created by those apps; as for Exchange, ``we have something called Sendmail...'' [chuckles from the admins in the audience] One of the panelists commented that if Microsoft ports their apps, ``we've won.'' [Of course, Apple didn't win...]

Red Hat, Suse, SCO, et al.

[FreeLinux]

Microsoft has adjusted their rehtoric against Linux, again, and says they will now be pushing the integration advantages of Windows over Linux. This, in my opinion, does have some merit as, management of a Microsoft network is highly integrate from groupware and databases to desktop workstations. The Linux environment however, is composed of individual projects with little or no integration which forces Linux management to be performed through kludges and custom scripts.

Indeed, the most popular and perhaps best, integrated management system for the Linux environment appears to be Webmin which, though very good, is forced to be a kludge and still falls short of a truely integrated enterprise Linux management system. While Red Hat offers RHN and SCO offers Volution Manager neither one truely integrates the overall management of a Linux shop.

Are you, the leading commercial Linux vendors targeting the enterprise market, planning on making any efforts to integrate Linux management on an enterprise level such as Microsoft and Novell already do? If so, what are these efforts and how will they be licensed?

Acceptance of Linux in the Boardroom

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

Since the visibility of a OS in the offices of the members of the board is key to its acceptance within the company, do you think that developing and promoting a desktop Linux, easy enough so that even CEO's can use it, should be a priority for the Linux community, and should getting CEO's to try a fully developed Linux desktop environment also be part of that priority?

Dear HP

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have plans in the near or distant future of releasing either hardware specifications, or open source drivers for your entire line of computer perhipherals so Linux can compete on par with Microsoft at the desktop?

Take a poll.

[EdlinUser]

"What operating system do you use on your home computer?"

IMB's new PDA design

[gregfortune]

Please try to get your hands on information regarding the new PDA reference design just mentioned on slashdot...

In particular,

• What does that "developer sled" look like?
  
• Will something like a "docking station" be available for general consumers that includes the same kinds of features (USB, PCMCIA, etc..)?
  
• How well does the voice recognition perform in the typical enviroments of a PDA with what I assume is less than ideal microphone hardware?
  
• What kind of price is expected?
  

Looks like we'll finally get some solid competition for the Sharp Zaurus :)

IBM AIX 5"L" vs. PPC Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

This is two related questions for IBM:

Why is IBM continuing to promote AIX 5"L" has being a "superset" of Linux when it is missing several things that come standard with most Linux distributions (/dev/random, Pluggable Authentication Modules, ipchains/iptables host firewalling, VFS API for file system kernel modules, etc)?

When will IBM help promote the use of Linux PPC on the RS/6000 instead (make TSM backup client available, make the programming specs for SSA drivers available, etc)?

Magic wand question

[Anonymous Coward]

Be completely honest: If you could wave a magic wand and change any one thing about Linux or the Linux community, what would it be?

I've found that if you can get people to answer honestly, you get some very interesting replies to this one from Linux hardware and software vendors.

RPM Hell

[kinnell]

When are Redhat et al going to acknowledge that rpm is an abissmal package management system, and adopt/support something better, like apt or portage for example?