Versiunea in romana
The Good, The Odd and The Missing
(some thoughts and comments upon the LinuxWorld Expo 2003)(Since english is not my native language, and since this is my first article written in english, if you find any errors, related to grammar or style, please email me the appropriate corrections. Thank you.)
(You can see the pictures i took at the Expo here)
The LinuxWorld Expo this year was strange. I took a late start on the 6th of August in the morning and went to the Moscone Center in San Francisco without knowing exactly what to expect. Indeed, it was... interesting, and well worth the trouble. But the whole thing gave me mixed feelings, and had a message that was all but simple and straightforward. There were good things about it, there were strange things about it, while some other things were... well... missing.
Let's take it one step at a time and see how it was.
The Good
If you didn't hear about Linux recently, you were probably out there dancing with wolves. It used to be a toy, a hobbyst's operating system. It is that no more. If anything, the Linux companies booths at the Expo stood as proof for that.
Red Hat was there, with a neat black-red-white booth, full of people, giving presentations non-stop and swarming with odd fellows sporting headgear coloured towards the red end of the spectrum. And it looked professional. No "we're doing Linux just for kicks" anymore. No more geeks having fun. Instead, there was everything you would expect from a serious company, doing serious business.
SuSE was there too, and despite the fact that they were harassing the audience by throwing green plush reptiles at them, there were looking every bit as business-minded as Red Hat. There was a difference, though. While Red Hat had a self-centered feeling to them all over, SuSE seemed to be touting all sorts of alliances with big names such as IBM - you know what i mean. But hey, strange are the ways of Linux...
And there were the major Unix players there, too. HP, IBM, SGI, Sun, everyone. And they weren't shy at all. Big booths, flashing lights, lots of salespeople and engineers. The message was obvious - "the Gospel has been preached to our land, we heard the Word, and now we're believers." Whatever the pie, it was obvious that they want a piece of it. And that probably means that now we know what the next page in the Unix history will look like.
The Odd
The AMD booth was only marginally odd; i still have hesitations to put it into this category. But still - AMD is a CPU maker. So how come they were there, big booth and all? Well, as it happens, they have this new 64 bit processor, and Linux is, so far, the only operating system that is ready (sort of) to run on it. And since they're the underdog, trying hard to step on Intel's heels, of course they're doing everything they can. Including a booth at the LinuxWorld Expo, if that's going to sell more CPUs.
However, the big oddball at the Expo was not AMD. Not at all. The gravity center of the oddiness on the Expo floor was somewhere away from that, and it actually was the Microsoft booth. Yessir, Microsoft. At the LinuxWorld Expo. Now, it's not like their booth was full of people, or anything. And probably no one expected anything else. But, you see, they had to be there, no matter how odd that would look like. Because that's how business works. And if Microsoft doesn't knows business, who does?
The Missing
So all is fine and dandy, big names are falling in love with the new operating system, so Linux must be doing well in every way, right? Well, not according to what i saw there.
Where was the plethora of desktop applications and solutions? Sure, CodeWeavers was there, but they're not exactly doing Linux stuff, they're more like "we're taking some Windows genes, we're stuffing'em into the Linux chromosomes, and let's see how this mutant will be doing." Sure, Sun was there with StarOffice, but that's just one application, albeit a major one.
Where were the games? Sure, lots of neat chrome-plated PC boxes were running Quake III Arena demos, but that's how many games? One, you're saying?
And don't get me started about the embedded applications and palmtops. A few years ago, it looked like Linux was The Future in that field. But now, the Expo booths were obviously missing that kind of stuff, with few exceptions.
The notable figures
Jon "Maddog" Hall was at the Expo, doing a presentation at the IBM booth, capturing the audience with his enthusiasm. So much for the patriarch's white beard cliche; Maddog has the energy of a freshman out of college. If you remember the fact that he also has all the experience of so many years in the industry, it's obvious that when he speaks, you better listen to what he has to say.
Bruce Perens was there too, with his usual dedicated and focused look. I probably annoyed him, being repeatedly unsuccessful at taking a good picture of him. I didn't see him doing "official" stuff at the Expo, but i wasn't there but for a few hours. In any case, if Linux is where it is now, it's in part due to Bruce's efforts as a major Open Source advocate.
At the MySQL booth, there was Monty Widenius, ubergeek and MySQL technical mastermind, busy with talking to people interested in his software. He was kind enough to turn to the anonymous camera and smile.
So that was it. Overall, the Expo represented an accurate snapshot of the situation, a "state of the nation" for everything concerning Linux. Positive in all aspects? Not really. Sporting a uniform and consistent look and feel? More like the opposite, actually. Worth experiencing? Definitely.
It makes you wonder how the next edition will look like...