Slashdot Mirror
LWCE Wrapup
An anonymous reader writes "Extremetech.com reports that: 'Computer scientists from think tank SRI will present a novel take on distributed computing at LinuxWorld, all in a search for a little lost penguin.' For more information on Centibots, head over to the Centibots Project homepage." ReadthePaper writes "I just read a great interview with Jon "Maddog" Hall of Linux International." And finally, Hawkxor writes "Sun Microsystems VP Jonathon Schwartz demoed Sun's new desktop-oriented Linux distro 'Mad Hatter' and 3-D Desktop Environment 'Looking Glass' at LinuxWorld. Sounds pretty cool."
Oracle promoted their "Unbreakable Linux Pavilion". I considered trying to break it but figured Moscone Center security wouldn't like that, so I just sat down for a speech. As the guy was talking, one of the signs fell off the podium.
One booth (it might have been Computer Associates) needed a "grammar checker" that could remove "extraneous" quotation "marks".
Microsoft had a medium sized pavilion. Even with how crowded the place was, most people avoided it like the plague.
Novell is porting its products to Linux. This is the probably the most important development going on in the entire computer industry right now. Novell's administration tools are generally considered top-notch but nobody uses them because nobody wants to learn Novell's OS when they can use other tools available on familiar Windows or Sun. Novell is porting its client-side tools as well. They have a cross-platform Groupwise client in beta right now. For many organizations that stuck with Novell, Groupwise has been a killer app preventing desktop Linux deployment. With Novell filling the gaps of groupware and LDAP network administration, Linux becomes more suitable for the business desktop. Still, Novell has to learn to undercut Windows's price for equivalent functionality. One of the big reasons NT caught on was because it was cheaper than Novell.
Genaware is the only company I've seen so far offering GIS products for Linux. Unfortunately, the screenshots they had make their products look ugly as hell, and I can't tell if you can actually edit GIS data with them or just display it. They didn't have any leaflets, but gave me a demo disk that they had hidden under the counter.
Most of the displays were directed towards IT directors and engineers. There was very little there for desktop users. The KDE booth promoted Kolf, which kicks ass. There is a Knoppix for Kids distro which I haven't tried out yet. There is also a Knoppix DVD which includes more programs than the CD distro.
The Zynot Foundation (the Gentoo fork) was totally unprepared. They bought themselves a booth and didn't know what to do with it, so you basically had two guys sitting in the back of the booth playing with their laptops while people would intermittently come by and ask "Who are you?".
There was nothing from VA/OSDN/Sourceforge/Slashdot. I don't think CmdrTaco and crew even made it. I miss the old "relax and have fun" party-like attitude at previous conventions where Slashdot would be showing anime and you could deathmath other attendees at the Red Hat booth. A little of that stayed on in the Gentoo booth, which was showing off an RPG and the most crudely drawn anime I have ever seen (it looked like those Conan O'Brien sketches where he takes a picture of a celebrity and makes the mouth move). The booth was in an aisleway, though, so you couldn't actually sit down to watch the movie or play the game.
Copyleft did have two rest areas with their Penelope Penguin cartoons. In one of them, Penelope asks "where is Brian Aker when you need him?" Who the hell is Brian Aker, I thought. Turn the corner, see a nerdish fellow with long hair, look at his nametag: "Brian Aker / MySQL Developer". That answers that question. As far as other celebrities go, Bruce Perens was there but I didn't see anyone else whose name I was familiar with.
Now I have this big pile of propaganda on the kitchen table to go through and read.
There is a photo on http://www.gulker.com/ If you scroll halfway down.
click here