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• LinuxWorld Conference 2004 Report

  by Clint Tinsley

LinuxWorld Conference 2004 was held at the Moscone Center in downtown San Franscisco, August 2nd to 6th.  There are a lot of exciting things going on right now with Linux and I really wanted to go.  I had mentioned this at our Linux Group meeting to see if there was anyone else who might be interested and thanks to a fellow IPCUG member, who offered me housing and affordable transportation to San Francisco, I was able to attend.  The last time I attended LinuxWorld was in 1998 and I still have fond memories of that conference.  This year’s Conference proved to be very rewarding. I am glad I was able to go and report back here.

The Tutorial Sessions

The first of the Conference, a Monday, is a Tutorial Session only day, the Expo exhibit floor will not open until 10 AM on Tuesday.  A number of 3 hour Tutorial sessions were offered but you had could only attend two, at cost of $425 for two sessions.  Each session had its own handout in the form of a manual.

I started off the day with Linux System Administration tutorial, thinking it sounds like something I could benefit from. It turned out to be some very basic stuff, what I would term “Remedial Linux.”  Not even sure that it was a 101 level class.

Monday afternoon, I attended the Linux Terminal Server Project – LTSP session.  Since the IPCUG Linux Group uses the K12 LTSP distribution as our standard distribution, I thought it would be useful to attend this session and I was not wrong.  It was very informative. The presenter start out by giving us a history lesson as the  Project grew out of a need to provide AS400 and Unix connectivity services on 35 terminals at a low cost.  The presentation included installing LTSP 4.1 on Fedora Core 2!  The installation uses a pretty well scripted install program: lpspadmin  He also mentioned that there is a school system in South Africa, 17,000 workstations on multiple servers.  A lot of technology is embodied in the LTSP server system which includes running remote x-window sessions on client while application runs on the terminal server.  The standard LTSP server runs four basic services to implement LTSP:  DHCP, TFTP, NFS, and X Server.  

Other Tutorial sessions offered:

Migration of NT4 to Samba
Network System Administration
Implementing Open LDAP
Securing Linux/Unix System – Two Parts: Core & Applications/Network Daemons.


Also some Hands-on sessions were offered:

Managing a Mixed Linux and Windows Environment
Up And Running on Apache 2.0 on Linux
Logical Volume Management (LVM) Installation, Configuration, and Management.

Press Conferences

I attended LinuxWorld as a Media representative and sat in on a few of the press or media events.

Xandros Press Conference

The Xandros press conference was one of great excitement as they exemplified that they are  “Not your typical Linux Company”  Xandros grew out of Corel Linux initiative – one of the principles worked for Corel.  They are Business Focused with Business Edition OS 2.5 Now Shipping At the conference, they presented their Product Release Timeline as follows:

Desktop Edition (Current)
Free Community Edition & Thin Client – 6/2004
Desktop Management Server (xDMS) – 10/2004
Advanced Enterprise Server (SME) Mail, etc. 1st qtr. 2005.
Workstation/Desktop management – Golden PC model for implantation/deployment and maintenance.

More information can be found on their website at http://www.xandros.com

Novell Press Conference

Novell’s Linux Initiative was very much in evidence at LinuxWorld.  They did present a media event where they had several of their partners including IBM and HP in discussing The Novell Linux service offerings, current status, and Linux futures.  Since I sort of bleed Novell red, being a CNE, and get a lot of e-mail from Novell, I was pretty much on the same page as the presenters.  In the hyperbole department, there is quite a bit of chatter going on about the possibility of Sun or IBM buying Novell but like reports of other chatter in the universe, no specific evidence exists.

Bruce Peren's State of Open Software Address

Linux notable and Open Source proponent/author Bruce Peren’s media event was a commentary of the State of Open Software, his 3rd year in presenting this hour long address.  He opened by mentioning that his Open Source Series Books at Prentice Hall are Freely Copiable!!!  Never really thought about it but that is a strong endorsement of open source.  Another topic he touched on was his participation in the UserLinux project. An open source project and an Enterprise Linux offering with no perceived fees!  Debian Based.  LSB Compliant.  The UserLinux project does have a Boise connection with Brock Frazier who lives and works here and is a major player in this project.  Bruce also presented discussions on the Patent Threats on Linux Kernel – 280+ potential threats.  Microsoft & European Patent Initiative.  Lawyer perspective: they’ll go after the little guy (Microsoft/ISV’s) to try to kill open source and Linux.  OSRM (Open Source Risk Management) is the counter to this as a legal defense fund and probono lawyers available.

The Exhibit Floor

The exhibit floor was very impressive and I wish I could mention all the vendors that were there but is not possible in this space.  The largest exhibitors there were Novell, Sun, and HP.

Novell put on a tour de force on the floor in their space.  All aspects of the Linux initiative were present including training and Novell’s Certified Linux Engineer program.  A number of CD’s packs were available in their space including the Linux Technical Resource kit (3 DVD’s of content), Linux Enterprise Server 9 evaluation kit, 3 CD SDK which include the Eclipse IDE and in the Nsure/exteNd area, they gave out a DVD based Server 9 “Live” installation which showed off not only the Enterprise Sever 9 component but included all the documentation and multimedia presentations, all from the “Live CD.”  Novell also brought a very large contingent of their staff to the floor at LinuxWorld.

At the Sun booth, you could pick up a live CD copy of Release 2, Sun Java Desktop System as well as evaluation copy of StarOffice7 and the Sun Solutions CD.  Plenty of folks on hand to answer your questions.

HP showed off their server solutions.  

RedHat was there promoting their enterprise and certification programs.  Intel was featuring their development tools (compilers).

As some evidence of the corporate acceptance Linux in the Data Center was the number of backup software vendors on the floor:  Arkeia, Veritas, Yosemite TapeWare, and Storix among them.  Also, in the same vein was the corporate level Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam vendors such as Sophos and Central Command “Vexira.”   Hummingbird, a provider of corporate connectivity solutions, was showing “Exceed onDemand 4.5” among their other product offerings. Finally, InstallShield had a booth there with their cross platform installation software which now supports Linux and they offered a full 3 CD Evaluation kit to those who took the time to visit with them and had a serious interest in their product.

At the Oracle booth, one could obtain a 2 DVD Evaluation copy of Oracle Database 10g Release 1 featuring VMware Workstation 4.5.2 (eval), SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 SP3 and 10g.  Never mind that you need a fairly powerful system with 1 GB of memory to run all this but still quite an offering to get their product looked at.

A number of smaller booths filled the floor.  One is used to seeing a few pretty ladies at these events but at LinuxWorld, every booth was well staff by attractive young women, calling out to you to come to their desks where T-Shirts and other goodies were available, just for a swipe of the your card and visiting the booth.  One exhibitor told this was exactly what they were there to do (the young ladies) in getting people to spend time and promote the vendor’s name at the show.  I came away with a 3 CD trial version of Solaris Express to play with as a result of being invited in as I passed by the booth.  Among the smaller booths could be found Pogo Linux, Oreilly, Penguin, CodeWeavers/CrossOver Office, Lycoris, other software vendors and a preponderance of hardware vendors.   There was also a small area called .org where you could find Apache, BSD, Gentoo Linux, Mozilla, LTSP, PostgreSQL, other open source groups, and Bay Area user groups.  Finally was the Rookery, where the start-ups could be found.  Missing from the floor was the many Linux distribution builders.

Admission Costs

The cost of attending the LinuxWorld Conference can be from free to $1195.  Like Comdex and other “expo” type events, there were two components to LinuxWorld.  The conference portion featured many “sessions” and keynote addresses.  The other portion was the “Expo” or Exhibitor floor.  A pass to the Expo is usually free for preregistering but at the door, it would cost you $30.  Access to the conference sessions and benefits ranged from 395 up to $1195 for access to everything there including the LPIC certification exams.  Of course you have to get there and have a place to rest one’s weary head and feet from the challenges and journey through LinuxWorld.

Futures

LinuxWorld is alive and well.  There was a lot of information there for whatever your interest from the Expo exhibit floor to the keynotes, the some 60 sessions presented over 3 days in 8 interest focused tracks plus the Monday tutorials.  I hope I am able to go next year as I found it very interesting and rewarding.

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