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?

Re:How do you sell to geeks?

[Tackhead]

> Geeks pride themselves on their attention to technical excellence to the exclusion of such base tricks as free junk and hot booth babes.

You are either:
a) Trolling,
b) Have never been to LinuxWorld,
c) And if I'm wrong on that, you've certainly never been within 50 feet of the FreeBSD booth at LinuxWorld.

I mean, getting card-swiped in exchange for a keychain/neckchain photo of themselves, wearing pointy-red-horns with LEDs in 'em, surrounded by pointy-red-horned, red-pantsuited and/or red-latexed FreeBSD succubi with the big FreeBSD daemon in the background? Could there be anything more quintessentially geeky?

(And do I still have mine from LinuxWorld 1999? You bet your ass I do! I also have pictures of myself standing between a life-sized incarnation of Tux the Penguin, and UserFriendly's Dust Puppy. What any of this means about geek sexuality is a mystery left for future forensic anthropologists to determine.)

Re:How do you sell to geeks?

[Uruk]

Your question is a good one, and I hope it gets a good answer.

But....I have been to the Expo for the last 3 years. I'm not going this year due to time and budgeting. :) I can definately tell you though that there aren't many geeks left at this one. Three years ago the number of geeks was much higher, while as time has progressed, the number of suited business types, managers, and people who are on junkets trying to purchase or evaluate some technology for their business is much greater.

These trade shows are about commerce and industry, not about "geeks", passion for technology, or even the newest, latest, hottest stuff. That's not to say though that there's nothing out there for geeks - there's still quite a few interesting things, particularly the "community" type stuff (slashdot booth, dot org pavilion, and all of the smaller booths representing distros, LUGs, and so on) The bigger booths are usually ASPs, ISPs, and huge software vendors whose products are for the most part already very well known.

So watching the progression of the trade show, it's been depressing and hopeful. On one hand, the shift in attendance clearly signifies to me that GNU/Linux is being accepted and used out there. On the other hand, this really isn't a "geek" tradeshow, and hasn't been for quite some time.

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?

Re:Dear Redhat Software

[RobotRunAmok]

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?

And, if you have time, a Follow Up Question, please:

What does "vulterant" mean?

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?

Re:Dear $exhibitor

[mdxi]

Wasn't $exhibitor in GWAR?

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?

[GoRK]

People will stand in line at your booth to enter most any contest that has a prize worth about $150 or more. An entire set of golf clubs generally works well with crowds older than about 30. A laptop or high-end palm pilot works well with younger crowds.

At tech shows (comdex, cebit, etc.) that kind of stuff usually doesnt work as well (though the golf club thing is still very popular.) If it's a show with an audience of mostly men, some good looking females in the booth will do a lot for you.

The gimmies are usually pretty tricky. The most effective ones are the ones that people have never seen before. We gave away cell phone chairs one time, which was pretty stupid, but they worked really well because nobody at the oil and gas show had ever seen them before -- even though there were tens of booths giving them away at the tech shows for a couple years, it was still effective. The CD cases we gave away, by contrast, cost nearly four times as much and were not effective.

The new gimmie we're going to use is silly putty we bought in bulk from Crazy Aaron (www.puttyworld.com) ... haven't seen anyone giving it away yet, but someone's probably done it. Anyway, we sliced it up into small chunks, put it in some inexpensive tins... It's actually very very close to the least expensive thing we've ever given away and it will likely be the most effective thing we have ever used. Just in case, though, we have some sticky notes and a drawing for a set of golf clubs too :)

~GoRK

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."

Why does the Linux World Expo webserver....

[Wntrmute]

...run Windows 2000? :-)

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 the KDE team

[secondsun]

Which will come first, Duke Nukem Forever or KDE 3.1?

Ask a Linux Administrator? Is this, TheOnion?

[FreshGroundPepper]

Dear Linux Administrator,

I'm a divorced mother of seven trying to put my life put back together after the death of my fourth husband. My kids still blame me for his death (it wasn't my fault, honest!), and I'm having a tough time meeting new people. What should I do?

--Sleepless in Sarasota

Re:Ask a Linux Administrator? Is this, TheOnion?

[vaxer]

Dear Linux Administrator,

I'm a divorced mother of seven trying to put my life put back together after the death of my fourth husband. My kids still blame me for his death (it wasn't my fault, honest!), and I'm having a tough time meeting new people. What should I do?

-Sleepless in Sarasota

Dear Sleepless in Sarasota,

Since uugetty is part of getty_ps you'll first have to install getty_ps. If you don't have it, get the latest version from metalab.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/serial. In particular, if you want to use high speeds (57600 and 115200 bps), you must get version 2.0.7j or later. You must also have libc 5.x or greater.

By default, getty_ps will be configured to be Linux FSSTND (File System Standard) compliant, which means that the binaries will be in /sbin, and the config files will be named /etc/conf.{uu}getty.ttySN. This is not apparent from the documentation! It will also expect lock files to go in /var/lock. Make sure you have the /var/lock directory.

If you don't want FSSTND compliance, binaries will go in /etc, config files will go in /etc/default/{uu}getty.ttySN, and lock files will go in /usr/spool/uucp. I recommend doing things this way if you are using UUCP, because UUCP will have problems if you move the lock files to where it isn't looking for them.

getty_ps can also use syslogd to log messages. See the man pages for syslogd(1) and syslog.conf(5) for setting up syslogd, if you don't have it running already. Messages are logged with priority LOG_AUTH, errors use LOG_ERR, and debugging uses LOG_DEBUG. If you don't want to use syslogd you can edit tune.h in the getty_ps source files to use a log file for messages instead, namely /var/adm/getty.log by default.

Decide on if you want FSSTND compliance and syslog capability. You can also choose a combination of the two. Edit the Makefile, tune.h and config.h to reflect your decisions. Then compile and install according to the instructions included with the package.

You knew it was coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Vi or Emacs?

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.

Re:social?

[awx]

(people on irc / you have never met do NOT count) Hey, fuck you!!

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?

Re:Bowling for junk

[zsmooth]

I got shot with a taser at CES this month to get a t-shirt. That's right, 50k volts. Hurt like hell. Was it worth a t-shirt? No. Was it worth saying I got shot with a taser? Definitely.

Re:Bowling for junk

[pbur]

The craziest thing I ever did for something was to look at the list of winners and as the conference was closing down, I quickly went and registered a name tag with one of the peoples name's who had won yet had not claimed their prize and claim the gear in their place. I got a free Palm III ( new at the time ) that way. :-)

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.

IBM and client linux?

[cdc179]

To IBM:

Currently there are lots of IBM commercials regarding Linux. At home all I use is Linux and am far more productive, yet at work(IBM) am forced to use winblows. When are you going to start embracing using technologies that your costomers and workers can use. Instead of having web broadcase in Windows median, switch to another format. This goes to all of the documents and programs being used. Why have a coorprate license for Office XP when we can use OpenOffice.org?

Currently this aspect is forcing your customers to use windows. With this attitude you will never gain any ground in the Desktop world. There is plenty to gain and somebody in bigblue needs to wake up.

Re:IBM and client linux?

[cdc179]

This isn't my biggest complaint about work and yes I do have a pretty good job and can't complain about too much. When I say my "biggest complaint" I was refering to people should start using open standards. This could only help everybody out in the long run. Think this is about enough on this issue so will leave it at that.

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?

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?

Let's have some fun with this

[fobbman]

Okay, we've got Rob promising to ask the ten highest-moderated questions. Why don't we have him look for booth babes and ask if he can get the source to their hearts or maybe even walk up to various vendors and ask if his butt would look good in pleather?

"show me your tits"

[j1mmy]

be sure to take a camera.

I just want to know the answer to this one.

[lobsterGun]

Just look that marketer in the eye, give them a little wink and ask, "So, do you want to go back to my room and get a litle...frisky?" (Try to roll the 'r' in frisky when you say it.) Ideally you would ask this question to several marketers under different conditions: wearing nice clothes, looking kind of dumpy, wearing cologne, wearing overpowering cologne, etc.

Try to get a good sample of linux marketers.

Kudos will be awarded for propositioning Linus.

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)?

Can I have a t-shirt?

[stecker]

No, I don't want the crappy "relaxing ball". I want the t-shirts that i KNOW you have under the counter. No, I don't want to have a discussion with you about my enterprise needs. I just need a t-shirt. Don't make me come back there and get it.

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.

To Redhat: Financials?

[NineNine]

To Redhat: I noticed that last quarter you pulled in an income for the first time ever. A whopping $214,000. Does this mean that everybody in the company gets, say, a $10 gift certificate for McDonald's? If not, then how do you guys expect to spend these massive earnings? Maybe on the staggering interest payments on the $16 million in debt, the $14 million in payables, or any of your other long term debt? Hopefully, are you planning to spend it better than you did on the incredibly productive "Red Hat over Redmond" mountain climb, on which, I'm sure, much "synergy" was created?

Oh yeah, and thanks for the free software. Good luck on that whole "profit" thing!

Q for the Redhat Linux software corp. of America

[mao che minh]

Do you plan on making software that will help kids who can't read good and want to learn to do other things well?

Go over to the Intel booth

[defile]

And ask them what they think about this?

#!/bin/sh

##
## haX0red Intel C/C++ Compiler
##
## This simple shell script will h4x0r the icc compiler so that
## it skips the check for a valid license file. I was inspired
## to do this because of the asshole Intel engineer at
## LinuxWorld 2002 who did everything he could to dodge
## my questions about Intel's compiler and other general rudeness.
##
## I developed this hack against this version:
##
## Intel(R) C++ Compiler for 32-bit applications, Version 5.0.1 Build 010730D0
## Copyright (C) 1985-2001 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
##
##
## Usage:
## Install the Intel C compiler. Don't download a license!
##
## Make sure to import all of the variables that the compiler
## needs to function (it won't work with vanilla include/libraries)
##
## Enjoy!
##

echo 'break *0x8056451' > /tmp/icc.hack.
echo "run $*" >> /tmp/icc.hack.
echo 'jump *0x80567d0' >> /tmp/icc.hack.

gdb -batch -x /tmp/icc.hack. icc
rm /tmp/icc.hack.

Don't Forget the FreeBSD Devil....

[NetJunkie]

Don't forget this guy....

Common Criteria Certification!

[hallkbrd]

When will the various Linux distributers (RH, SuSE, Oracle?, etc) pitch in to get it Common Criteria certified, so I can use it in the DOD? I am sick of having to get waivers and justify non Windows software within the DOD. On requirements that require 64-bit computing such as Oracle, I can justify Sun systems, but for smaller needs I am fighting a hard battle due to no (granted lab environment) CC ratings on Linux.

Thanks

Pen Driver Support on HP's Legacy Free (XP) Tablet

[IQ]

This is a driver/support question.

I want to buy HP's new Legacy Free Tablet and run linux on it for an industrial application.

This tablet uses a digitizer that is similar to one that has a linux driver however the interface to the digitizer (http://www.linuxslate.org) ie active pen. Now this driver requires a Serial interface. But on Legacy Free PCs there is no traditional serial interface.

Does HP have any interest in supporting Linux on this device? Why not?

I am currently using Fujitsu LT-P600s running Gentoo.

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?