[lug] Linux Fest 2000 Report, Day Three

[Sean Reifschneider]

Pictures at:

http://www.tummy.com/conferencereports/LinuxFest-2000/LinuxFest-20000622.html

===================================
Linux Fest 2000, Kansas City
Tuesday 2000-06-22
Sean Reifschneider, tummy.com, ltd.
===================================

Still more of the same for the show today.  It was really disorganized,
and attendance was fairly low.  On the plus side, we get a lot more time
to spend with everyone who comes by -- we've gotten another potential
new client today.

I spent much of the day trying to get network connectivity from the show
again.  Seems like Alternet was having some serious issues which caused
problems reaching my machines at home -- making uploading of the photos
from yesterday a real problem.  However, even when I could get through
(for example by going through Kevin's machine), it would tend to drop
the connection after less than a minute passing data across it.

Apparently, Evelyn had warned other folks that she was going to be
bringing back nerf guns this afternoon, so by the time we were
armed, many of the other folks were too.  So much for the element
of surprise.  There were a number of sneak attacks and ambushes
this afternoon.

The local LUGs sent out a cry for attendees, so most of the folks
attending the show today were very much hobbyists.  I'm not sure if
that was a good move or not, though.  I'm concerned about giving the
vendors the impression that the only people using Linux are the
home users.

The Keynote this evening was Dave McAllister with "LINUX - The Revolution
isn't Over".  I found that his argument was fairly self-contradictory.
For example, it's basis seems to be that Linux needs to try to take
the desktop, but then he goes on to say that Linux should find it's
niches and stay there.

He challenged anyone to install Linux on his laptop, but when people said
that it can be done, he said that his boss had to be able to install
right out of the box with no tweaking required -- just like Windows.
When it was pointed out that Windows '98 won't install right out of the
box, he responded "Yeah, but it comes with Windows".  So it's ok for
someone else to install Windows, but not Linux?

Another thing that he mentioned what that people should drop the whole
"distribution war" (an idea I agree with), and should just talk about
Linux in the generic sense.  Not 15 minutes later he went on to plug
Mandrake and joke about it being a "nice little distribution war".

Personally, I think trying to force Linux into markets that it's not
ready for is very harmful to the cause.  Linux has been successful
because people work on it because it's fun.  The result is something
that's extremely useful for certain tasks (web servers for example).
When people try to start using it in places where it really doesn't
fit (the desktop, the enterprise), it hurts the Linux community.

Chase the dream, not the competition.  I believe that is what has
produced Linux's incredible popularity, and will continue to fuel
the revolution.  It's a disservice to the people who have brought
it this far to say "It doesn't serve the desktop" and "It doesn't
serve the enterprise."

Think about it this way.  Linux as an operating system is around 9
years old.  Think about where the Microsoft operating system was in
1984 -- 9 years after Microsoft formed.  MS-DOS 3.1 was released
in 1983, the OS/2 project was announced in 1987 along with the launch
of Windows 2.0.  They were fairly dominant on the desktop at that
point (much as Linux is dominant in the server arena now), but weren't
present on servers (host machines) at all.

And they were struggling to keep the desktop -- other operating
systems were coming along actually doing fairly well at taking a
bite into their markets.  Apples were very popular, there were a
number of choices for the desktop operating system, a number of
which over the following years would take fairly significant market
share away from Microsoft.

The revolution is never over.  If Linux "wins", it will only be a
temporary state before another revolution comes along.  The destination
isn't the only thing that's important -- getting there is half the
fun.  Linux is quite a ride.

The Linux community is completely changing the way that software is
developed, from a closed development environment to an open one.
This is similar to the revolution which led to Microsoft having the
desktop in the first place.  The specifications for the hardware of
the IBM PC were open, allowing hobbyists to tinker with it, creating
the whole "clone" market.

I would say that we shouldn't be focusing on the goal, but instead
should concentrate on building the path we're walking upon.
-- 
 What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
                 -- John Lubbock
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python