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The
4th Annual Desktop Linux
Summit was
wrapped up in San Diego last
week and it was the biggest yet. This year was host to 800 attendees,
30 exhibitors and sponsors,
and three packed speaker tracks with close to 40 sessions. Here's my
view from the floor:
1) A
virtual attendance record -
Thanks to
DLS sponsor Nine
Systems, all 13 keynote sessions from this year's show
were broadcast live over streaming video for those who couldn't make it
to the show. More than 1,000 people signed up to watch all or part of
these speeches, including Marcel Gagné's
opening speech on Barriers to
Mass Adoption
and
Geoff Moore's headline
keynote on market
potential
for desktop Linux. Check out the videos yourself here.
2)
Distrowatch - Novell, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Mandriva,
Linspire,
and KDE
were all represented on the show floor this year - a first for
the Desktop Linux Summit. (Xandros
was there in spirit as bag sponsor
for
the show.) It was great to see all these "competing"
distros together on the show floor - and many attendees commented that
this was one of the rare shows that put all these
desktop-focused
products together
in such close quarters.
3)
Linspire's big bang - Kevin Carmony
dropped
the bomb early in the show by announcing the Freespire project, a
free version of Linspire open to community contributions, with
a completely open source version and a version that includes
proprietary software. Linspire plans to release the first Freespire
beta in August, but you can join the community now at www.freespire.org,
and watch Kevin's announcement here.
4) Eye Candy from Novell -
Nat Friedman from Novell wowed the
crowd with the SUSE
10.1 beta desktop, which
makes use of XGL 3D graphics technology.
The flexibility of Linux is
starting to show - and there is indeed something out there for everyone
when it comes to choosing a Linux desktop - including
those who are looking for bleeding-edge special effects
and eye candy.
5)
Linux for Suits - This
year's show marked a sea-change for
DLS. More and more speakers were talking about the business of open
source, including Dave Rosenberg, OSDL's
principal analyst, Dave
Uhlman, the CEO of Uversa,
and Greg Mancusi-Ungaro of Novell.
Not to
mention Geoff Moore as keynote, who gave a talk on Dealing With Darwin
- Evolving Linux and spoke about how Linux should differentiate itself
from Microsoft to survive. Watch his keynote here.
6) Tux
Squad - Another new event at the Desktop
Linux Summit was the inclusion of the Tux Squad Linux
Install Fest.
Volunteers from around Southern California and Mexico came to help
people install Linux on their computer. Open
Country was on hand to
demonstrate their technology which allows you to "provision" a hard
drive -- that is to install an operating system on it right over the
network! More than 40 people stopped by to get Linux installed on their
system including many Microsoft Windows users who were switching to
Linux for the first time.
7)
Printing with Linux - HP once again
showed its
leading support for desktop Linux, as the printer division was there
in full force at DLS this year. This
type of consistency from industry leaders is this kind of support
desktop Linux needs to keep moving into the mainstream.
8)
Fun and cutting
edge - SageTV showed off
their Linux based
PVR - who needs all the hassles of dealing with Windows Media Center! NComputing
demoed their PCExpanion product which is a realistic way
today to make $100 PCs a reality for schools and emerging countries. Neuros
Technology showed off their MPEG-4 recorder designed with a
unique open source R&D approach.
-
Michael The Michael's Minute Meter
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