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PuffinFest at ALS

Posted by justin++ on from the partying-puffins dept.

Chris Beard of The Puffin Group wrote in to say that the birds are partying again. Throughout the week, anyone at ALS will have the opportunity to hack on, or talk to someone hacking on the PA-RISC port of Linux (which is rumoured to boot sash now). The Puffins also sponsored two BOFs today - anyone have a report to give?

2 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. HR Puffin' stuff actual URL by Money__ · · Score: 3
    The original story pointed to the wrong doc. the press release is here.

    I think it's nice to see major companys throwing there name behind Linux and it's cause. HP has over 100,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998.

    In the famous words of many US congressmen, 'a billion here, a billion there, sooner or later, that's real money!'

  2. ALS: The First Day of Exhibitions by rwg · · Score: 3
    After surviving an afternoon at the show floor of the Atlanta Linux Showcase, I figured this would be as good a place as any to post a few thoughts about what I saw...

    THE GOOD

    • LinuxCare's little bootable Linux recovery CD kicks ass. No bigger than a business card, it fits in the 3" diameter groove in CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive trays and has the potential to save your butt when lilo eats itself. They also had some Linux stickers that now adorn the case of my 386... (Yes, it runs Linux.)
    • IBM had a presence. Although certainly not the largest or flashiest booth in the show, Quake 3 on a rather large plasma display attracted lots of attention. Dual PII-400 Intellistation + Voodoo 3 3000 + large plasma display. Mmmmmm. Thanks to the guys there for letting me get some game time on that mammoth thang...
    • O'Reilly also had a presence, and their trade show pricing kicks much booty. Picked up a few books for 20% off list and got a shirt to boot...
    • Mad props to VA Linux Systems for not only having a cool booth and giving away lots of stuff but for supplying the machines used for public Internet access. Their Debian boxed set is pretty cool and sports Learning Debian GNU/Linux from O'Reilly. (Yes, I was one of the people who stood around in line for ten or fifteen minutes to win this...)
    • Thanks to the Sun and Rave Systems folks for all the free stuff. Learn to play Quake 2 without cheating before next year's show... :-) (Now where's my complimentary Sparc 5?)

    THE BAD

    • None of the shirts I got fit. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. I'm 6-foot-3-inches tall and weigh 295 pounds. Show me the big-assed shirts!
    • The IBM guys told me that the Showcase had a T-1 connection to the 'Net. I couldn't verify -- the packet loss and latency was horrible on the connection. I'm hoping this is only because lots of geeks were pounding on the connection like a pack of wild monkeys...
    • Food choices were few, and lines were long. Within the Galleria, your choices were Subway, some cafe whose name I don't remember, Ruby Tuesday's, and Chick-Fil-A. If you were bold, you could go to the movie theater downstairs and buy a big tub of popcorn. The group I was with walked across the street to another mall and ate at Arby's. Yum... I think.

    THE UGLY

    • Where the hell were the Slackware people? I wanted Slackware apparel... Hmmph.
    • Linux merchandise places came out of the woodworks to hock their goods. Yay capitalism...
    • Don't eat at Shoney's. Our group waited over an hour for food before giving up and leaving.

    THE REST

    • The andover.net/freshmeat.net/slashdot.org booth was smack dab next to the linux.com booth. Taken together, it looked like one big congregation of slackers with laptops. All things considered, however, I wouldn't have minded flopping down on the couch for a rest after walking around for a few hours...
    • I will seek revenge against the guy in the Debian shirt who shot me in the arm with a Nerf dart... muahahahaha
    • The Debian folks had a Sun Ultra 5 running XaoS, Netscape, and some Tetris clone in separate windows. Just for kicks, I maximized the XaoS window. Can we say slideshow?
    • I had nothing interesting enough to trade with the lady at the VA Linux booth, so I didn't get one of those nifty enlightenment shirts. Dammit.
    • NetBSD was there. Go figure.

    Overall, it was a pretty cool show, but I wish I didn't have the 2-1/2 hour drive. It was put on very professionally and appeared to be very well organized. I was only slightly disappointed that the show wasn't any bigger... The nifty canvas bag attendees got and the included CD made up for that, though.