[Lula] Linuxworld trip report

[Dan Kegel]

So, today I zipped into San Francisco to attend
day 2 (?) of Linuxworld.  This is the second trip
since BART was extended to go to SFO airport,
and man is it convenient.   (OK, it's not really
any faster than flying into Oakland and taking
AirBart to Bart; either way, it's about 3 hours door to
door for me to Moscone.)

My main goal was to meet a few people, so I just
got the free OpenSuse Day pass.   Impressions:

- LinuxWorld is smaller than it used to be.  Oh, it's
still larger than eight years ago, but at this rate
SCALE will be bigger than LinuxWorld in a few years.

- The "installfest" run by http://www.accrc.org/
right in the exhibit hall was fascinating.  ACCRC
is a nonprofit that runs a junkyard that specializes
in computer hardware.
They can't refurbish process the of junk computers
they get as fast as they come in, so they recently
hit upon the idea of asking Linuxworld attendees to
help.  Each work-station had a monitor, keyboard,
network connection, CD-ROM disc, and simple instructions:
grab a computer from the heap and try to install
Ubuntu on it; if it worked, put the computer in the 'Good'
pile, else put a post-it note on it describing the problem,
and put it on the 'Bad' pile.  The organizer said he still
has to put finishing touches on the computers, but it
turns a 20% success rate into a 90% success rate for
him, and greatly increases the number of working
systems he can deliver to local schools.  Cool.
(I pitched in; as promised, only one of the four or five
systemsI tried installing worked.)

- I chatted briefly with Canonical and ribbed them about
a bug in Hardy that causes grief for Picasa on 64 bit systems:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ia32-libs/+bug/220377
Nice to be able to poke your distribution in person :-)

- I chatted with gOS's David Liu for a while at his booth
and again at the Linux Foundation party.  He mentioned
that it would be nice if multiple Google apps could share
EULA clickthrough, which seems like a sensible idea to me.

- I chatted with the OpenSuse people about both OCI (One Click Install)
and their Build Service.  I learned that the Build Service might
be growing an LSB target, which would be very cool.

- I walked through Rackable Systems' datacenter-in-a-container.
Very cool.  (Total power consumption when all fired up: half
a megawatt.   We really need more power-efficient CPUs...)

- I watched a panel with three hardware vendors (Dell, HP, Lenovo)
and two OS vendors (gOS, Xandros) talk about the
Linux desktop.  The first question from the audience was
from somebody (not me!) who emphasized that the big
thing Linux was missing was the ability to run Windows apps,
and asked them to comment on Wine.  (No, I did not
put him up to it.)  The hardware vendors were skeptical,
and preferred real windows.  The OS vendors and the
moderator were bullish on Wine, warts and all.
I later chatted with the gOS guy and told him he
was being too easy on Wine; we need to get rid of the warts.

- The Linux Foundation party was small but fun;
I introduced two social nexi to each other (when
does an introvert get to do that?), and the puff-pastry-with-hazelnut-filling
was delicious.

- My hotel was the Pickwick (second cheapest I could find on
short notice -- the cheapest was too scary).  I booked
the cheapest room they had, but ended up with a very,
very nice corner suite on the top floor with lovely windows,
free internet, and a living room with a real fireplace (not lit).
Sweet.

- Met with a fellow who's starting a trial deployment of
Wine to a group of 100 volunteers who need ie6, Lotus Notes 5.x,
and a database app or two.  He says it's going swimmingly.
I told him I was waiting for bug reports :-)

And now off to bed, I really need to crash now.  These events
always wind me up, even if mostly I just chatted with a couple
folks, but getting up at 4am takes its toll on a body.
- Dan