Report from LinuxWorld 2008
The event evolves
BySome of the excitement, and much of the usual fanfare, were missing from the 2008 LinuxWorld event in San Francisco. Show-goers wondered whether they had ever seen a LinuxWorld with so little splash and flare. And yet, splash isn't everything. In the press rooms and business meetings, the industry seemed poised to launch a new era of appliances, netbooks, and virtual everything.
The first thing to notice at this year's event was the lack of big booths. Some of the usual monster booth renters weren't even at the show. Red Hat quit coming a couple years ago, and this year, Novell was missing, although openSUSE and Fedora were both present in the non-profit section known as the .org pavilion. IBM, Oracle, and Intel scaled their presence down. Cannonical/Ubuntu actually filled up one of the bigger spaces, offering training demos and a look at upcoming Ubuntu-based minis.
Conference tracks covered some of the usual favorites, such as Security, Virtualization, Desktop Linux, and Licensing. This year also included tracks for Building Mobile Linux Applications and Quick and Dirty Development.
The Buzz
IBM kicked off the first day with the tantalizing announcement of an agreement with Novell, Canonical, and Red Hat – yes, all three of them – to provide Lotus Notes and the Lotus Symphony productivity suite for desktop Linux systems. The details of the pact were unclear. Several visitors pointed out that this newfound friendship would work much better if some PC hardware vendors also agreed to go along with it, and indications pointed to big deals in the works, although no one was quite ready to announce anything on the hardware side. The annual desktop Linux panel discussion even had some awkward moments, as reps from HP, Dell, and Lenovo came up silent on questions of upcoming initiatives.
Virtualization continued to command huge amounts of brainspace. The virtualization pitch isn't even buzz anymore – it is just what everyone is doing, from embedded developers to high-performance hardware platforms. Cloud computing was the latest riff on the virtualization theme. The GoGrid cloud system won the Best of Show prize at the LinuxWorld Product Excellence awards, and all corridors echoed with pitches on the possibilities of cloud computing.
Another new development at this year's show was the arrival of the YouTube ethos, as geeks, vendors, editors, and journalists walked around with small cameras capturing moments on video vignettes. We brought our own camera crew through to chat with some promising open source projects at the .org pavilion, and we captured the thoughts of some leading Linux community managers.
Conclusion
Discussion of who wasn't at the show was peppered with some thoughts about some of the exhibitors who actually were in attendance. Along with the usual gallery of server room tools were vendors with products such as office chairs, foot inserts, and varnished wooden Mobius strips. Some of these vendors wouldn't have found a spot on the midway in the bumper years. Times are changing. Perhaps most indicative of the atmosphere was one vendor who has been around before, but was never commanded quite so much attention as now in the fading din of the lost big booths: Dice.com – the people who find new jobs for out-of-work geeks.
Netbooks are looming, desktop Linux has never looked brighter, and the world of the virtual data center brings still more importance to the admin end of the Linux industry, but the world is changing – and LinuxWorld sure is changing.
The rise of the OSCON show, which is only a few weeks before LinuxWorld, no doubt took some of the energy and geekiness away from LinuxWorld, which has has always walked the line between a business show and a community event. If they call us all together again next year – which I hope they do, though I'm not actually sure they will – I hope the planners make some changes to bring some excitement back to this important annual Linux event.
Additional .org Pavilion Videos:
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.