jackl’s blog

LinuxWorld 2006 review

Another LinuxWorld event at Olympia, another chance to forget the pre–issued pass and how to get to Olympia.

LinuxWorld seemed much more desperate this year than last. It had all the usual suspects and I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it but there just seemed to be an undercurrent of old–fashioned marketeering that didn’t quite suit.

.org village

The dot org village was much like last year though I especially enjoyed the siting of the (competing?) Greater London LUG and LONIX (London Linux User Group) opposite one another. Whenever I passed LONIX had the edge on banter and appeared to be the winners in the popularity contest.

MythTVtalk were very much in situ with a 42″ Samsung LCD TV almost taking over their entire booth. They always had plenty of people interested in their very rounded system.

The usual suspects Debian, Drupal, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gnome, FSF, Hula and Karoshi plied their wares along with the embedded Linux crowd and some more obvious retailers. Some ‘stalls’ appeared to be doing less ‘trade’ than others. Surprisingly amongst those I would include Oracle! Obviously not in the village but having a large area with the other tech giants whenever I looked their staff seemed to be milling about with worried (or possibly bored) looks on their faces. This brings us to…

The big boys

Giant profitable companies may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think GNU/Linux but they were certainly here. HP, IBM, NOVELL; along with the normal–sized profitable companies of Rackspace, Positive Internet Co., Foyles, O'Reilly and Qube. Qube made a big noise at the show — literally. They decided to go for the quirky angle on marketeering and hired some Maori ‘dancers’. Having been to NZ and seen a lot of Maori’s these three didn’t quite cut the mustard but at least they got an audience.

There seemed to be less lovely ladies adorning stands this time round — not that there weren’t any just that they seemed to be in the minority compared to professional magicians and hawkers.

Novell had the most interesting shows. The give–a–way ploy was much in evidence and they did have a few lovely ladies for eye–candy but the presentation was almost too Open Source!

The new desktop featured heavily as did funny graphics of programmer keyboards (only three keys ‘0’, ‘1’ and ‘Done’) and some boisterous showing–off of things like the fact that Enterprise 10 Desktop can recognise what colour your iPod is (as long as it’s not a blue one). Maybe they were going for the shock ‘we’re not a faceless corporation only interested in the bottom–line’ tactic?

Hey I got a free t–shirt so I can’t complain.

It’s not all free–bies and soft Tux’s you know

There were ‘business’ briefings (chargeable and nonchargeable) and the unmissable Great Linux Debate (GLD).

Business briefings

I must admit I didn’t attend any paid for briefings (being a pauper) and the free ones were obviously ‘free’. It wasn’t that the presenters weren’t professional but they were competing in an open area with necessarily small PAs that meant depending on your luck you could hear both briefings at the same time and hence understand neither.

The ones I sort of heard were the BBC’s Open Source efforts (probably very interesting had I been able to hear it properly) and a talk from the Free Standards Group better known for the Linux Standard Base. Both of these warned the developer of software about the pit–falls when making their applications Open Source. Probably useful but might not convert those that try to make their living from programming.

The Great Linux Debate

This had the benefit of being downstairs and so didn’t have to worry about the sound contamination of exploding Maoris.

The top table panel consisted of corporate bodies, a man representing SAMBA, Ian Pratt (Zen) and Jono (Beard) Bacon representing Ubuntu. Other than the lack of chairs (the floor was remarkably comfortable until I tried to get up) this was a reasonable debate about virtualization, patents (which the IBM man fairly successfully fielded) and where Linux was headed (the desktop). The man from HP (Canadian I think) successfully spouted gobbledygook and techie bullsh*t bingo phrases after a self confessed newbie asked a very newbie question about virtualization. At least it proves that not everyone there was a dyed–in–the–wool geek.

People

Generally the audience (us) were a mixture of business suits and free–software geeks. If I’d have been made to bet (Positive Internet Co had a gaming table on their stand) I’d have gone with a 70/30 split to the geeks.

Big name geeks included Michael Meeks (OOo/Novell), Ian Pratt (King’s College Cambridge/Zen) and Alan Cox (Red Hat) complete with bloody (sic) trilby.

There were a good few oldies, a reasonable amount of youngsters (under 30) and a few disabled people; overall a healthy balance. It was also good to see a few female techies (geekettes?) amongst the testosterone–fuelled majority. Though we have yet to have a true ‘celebrity’ female geek it can only be a matter of time.

See you next year?

“See you next year” was displayed prominently on the last page of the show guide. It was a hopeful statement not a question. They probably will see me next year as by then I’ll need another fix of at least the .org village… and it’s always a good indication of how our soft–society is going.

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