Linuxworld SF 2006

[Net Llama!]

Here's my annual trip report from Linuxworld in San Francisco.  See my 
blog for a prettier, HTML'ized version:
http://netllama.linux-sxs.org/archives/2006_08.html#000795

I went to LinuxWorld in San Francisco today. Unfortunately, Doug wasn't 
able to go with me due to last minute schedule conflicts at work.

They moved back to the Moscone Center - North this year (it was in West, 
for the first time, last year). The only significant change for the move 
was that they had more floor space, and the .Org pavillion was moved back 
onto the main show floor instead of being segregated into the hallway 
outside the main showhall.

Either I've become jaded, or LW has gotten boring. Really boring. There 
really wasn't anything notable this year. It was mostly the same big 
companies (although Redhat didn't appear for the first time ever), with 
the same booths, doing the same spiel. I guess most folks are going to say 
that this is all proof that Linux has hit the mainstream. I suppose, but 
all the same, it used to be nice when new, exciting, startups would appear 
with a new product, or at least an innovative gimmick to wow the crowds.

The only notable newcomers to the show this year was Apple and Motorola. 
Apple was hawking their X Serve product, albeit poorly. I guess they just 
didn't know how to market to a non-Apple-cult audience, because their boot 
was nothing more than two X-Serves, and a G5 lined up, with a sign beside 
them listing the pricing. Motorola has one of the largest booths there, 
and was basically hawking their cell phone line with an amiguous Linux 
tie-in that I wasn't able to figure out after wandering around for a few 
minutes.

The sad (or good, depending on your perspective) highlight of the show was 
truly the .Org pavillion where there was still that spark of excitement, 
rather than the din or marketing. I struck up a conversation with the guys 
at the Fedora booth (and got a free hat out of it, that they apparently 
had in very limited (5!?) supply), and also had a nice chat with, of all 
groups, the Open Solaris folks.

It was refreshing to actually hear about some of what is going on inside 
the OpenSolaris project. They agree that the current installer sucks, and 
they're seriously considering using anaconda. They also agreed that if 
Solaris is going to make any real inroads on the desktop, they need to 
learn from what the Linux world has been doing for the past few years. 
Namely, make *alot* more packages available (not just CDE & and Sun's 
bastardization of Gnome (JDS)), make partitioning more sane 
(autopartitioning such that 95% of the disk is handed over to /export is 
stupid for anyone not in a server/corporate environment), and generally 
make more desktop focused tools available.

I also had a quick chat with the EFF folks, and thanked them for their 
efforts (especially their case against AT&T. They were handing out 
stickers which said FAIR USE HAS A POSSE.

In the "desperate wanna-be up & coming distro that is trying to increase 
market share to survive" category was Linspire/Freespire (2 years ago it 
was Xandros, who this year had a small booth, but beyond that, nothing 
interesting going on). Linspire was giving away their new Freespire distro 
with a 300 page user's manual, and if you went to their conference room, 
they were giving away t-shirts and a boxed edition of their 'commercial' 
Linspire distro. For reasons that boggled my mind, they had no booth on 
the show floor and instead had a conference room clear on the other side 
of the convention center. I guess someone was either cheap, or failed to 
plan properly for the event.

The schwag trend this year was t-shirts. Everyone and their mother was 
giving away t-shirts as their primary marketing vehicle. My award for the 
best schwag (which also happened to be a t-shirt) was Splunk. They were 
giving away two different black t-shirts with white lettering on the 
front. One was the same one from last year which said "Remove the sh from 
IT". The new one said "Finding your faults, just like mom". Brilliant & 
catchy. So now I have both. Just about every other t-shirt giveaway was 
boring, uninspiring, logo-palooza.

I give pretty big credit to Novell for a really well put together booth. 
They were running the standard, and mostly boring, marketing presentation 
series in the front of the booth. However, towards the back they had 
several rows of IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T42 notebooks with SLED10 installed, 
and were doing technical demonstrations throughout the day where all of 
the audience could participate. I caught the XGL demo which was a great 
introduction to XGL for the unwashed masses. They also had more of the 
same T42's in the email garden, just to spread the love some more. With 
the absence of Redhat, Novell (and therefore SuSE) was truly the bigman in 
the house.

The "why did you even bother?" award is a tie between OSTG/Slashdot/sf.net 
and Amazon for their "Slashdot/sf.net lounge" and booth respectively. The 
signs for the loung, promoted it as a chance to meet with the folks who 
run sf.net & Slashdot.org, however every time I wandered by, it was 
nothing but a bunch of beanbags & a few potted plants, with nothing but 
show attendees. No representitives of slashdot or sf.net were anywhere in 
site. Amazon on the other hand had a booth, which seemed like a half 
hearted job recruiting attempt. However the two representitives were 
sitting behind the desk, looking bored out of their minds, with no visible 
literature onhand, and nothing obvious to advertise.

As for pictures, I couldn't find anything worthwhile to capture. So, I 
ended up taking a few of David as he adorned himself in the vendorware 
that I brought home.

So that was basically it. I'm not sure that I'm going to bother going next 
year (which is already scheduled for Aug 6-9, 2007). I suppose if Doug, or 
someone else wants to go, I'll come along too, but I'm pretty much done 
with the going solo stuff. Its just not worth it anymore.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org