Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 09:42:40 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-users@uk.freebsd.org Cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: LinuxExpo report Message-ID: <20000601094240.A48761@kilt.nothing-going-on.org>
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I've just spent most of the day at LinuxExpo 2000 (in London, for the
benefit of the international readers) and I'm on the train back. Here
are a few thoughts.
It was somewhat smaller than I expected. I didn't attend last year,
but I'm reliably informed that this year's is about twice the size. Big
presences from IBM, RedHat, Suse, and SGI, but a few odd no-shows -- in
particular, no sign of VA Linux.
Most of the stands were fairly functional, with not a lot of 'wow' factor
in the design. Then again, this wasn't Comdex :-) The Tux made out of
ice on the SGI stand was a nice touch though, as was the vodka they poured
down it and in to some handily placed shot glasses.
The various Linux UK User Groups had a larger than expected presence,
sharing quite a big stand with the Debian UK group. I've spent some time
talking with them, and they're certainly up for closer ties between
themselves and the FreeBSD UK User Group, which is good. I've also spoken
to the UK Unix User Group who are also interested in more cooperation and
collaboration. In particular, they've got a couple of events coming up
that might need speakers -- more information about this when I've got home
and had the chance to rifle through all the bumpf I've collected during
the day.
I've spent most of today flying the FreeBSD flag and talking to vendors.
Of particular interest (well, to me anyway) were.
VMWare
The official line is that there is still not enough of a
market for FreeBSD as a host OS (I know we have a port, but official
support would be nice, and probably more stable).
This is clearly bollocks (can I say that?), as we know there's demand
for the product out there. Still, at least they got reminded of
the demand again, and I'm going to try and get them to alter their
web site slightly so that if you download a trial copy of the Linux
version you will be able to say that you will be running in on
FreeBSD.
Veritas
Two products I was interested in here, NetBackup, and their vxfs
RAID filesystem. Apparently there is already a NetBackup client
for FreeBSD, which was news to me. There are no plans for a server
version yet though.
vxfs is a 'might happen'. They're evaluating Linux at the moment
according to the sales guy I spoke to, and FreeBSD is also on the
list. No timescales for this though.
[ As an aside, a chap I used to go to school with was working on
the Veritas stand, which was a bit of a shock ]
APC
APC were demonstrating a port of their UPS Powerchute software to
Linux. I explained that some models (like the APC 700) are supported
on FreeBSD using things like upsmond in the ports tree, but that
there's no official support yet.
The guy I spoke to seemed a little confused, at first thinking that
I was trying to convince them to open the source code. I explained
that really all I wanted was either a Powerchute port to FreeBSD, or
for them to document the communication protocol their UPS' use to
signal low power situations -- the 700 is alright, but they had some
nice 1U rack mounted UPS systems I'd like to try.
Future Publishing
FP do a Linux magazine in the UK ("Linux Format") from memory. I
should be meeting their commissioning editor tomorrow to discuss the
possibility of getting a few FreeBSD articles in there. They also do
covermount CDs, and I've suggested they might want to consider FreeBSD as a possible, along the lines of "If you like Linux, you'll love this"
for their readers.
More news on this if anything materialises.
Perforce
Had a long chat with the Perforce guys, who seemed to be quite cool.
More than once they said that they'd open up the code, if only they
could work out a business model for it that would work. I sympathised.
Apparently, if you use Perforce for free software projects you can use
it for free, and they have a CVS repo-import tool. Sadly, they lack
the equivalent export tool. Apparently, the Perl developer core use
Perforce internally, but filter submissions through a CVS tree first
(so they never have to export to CVS). We're probably a bit too big
and distributed for this to happen though.
What I did learn is that FreeBSD is their development platform, and all
the other versions are ports from that code. They also have some big
clients (Adobe and Amazon to name a couple). There has to be some way
we can get some publicity out of this.
DNUK
By now most of you will have seen the announcement about BSDI buying
Telenet Systems (hardware manufacturer). Apparently, DNUK (dnuk.co.uk
I think) occupy a similar space in the UK (rackmount servers, high
availability stuff, 1 and 2 U high cases, that sort of thing) -- I
haven't had the opportunity to talk to them yet, but I understand
that while they were promoting their Linux compatible servers at the
show they're shortly going to be announcing some FreeBSD support as
well. I'll be speaking to them tomorrow to chew the fat, and see what
sort of issues they've had supporting FreeBSD as a platform, and whether
there's anything we can do to make their (and companys like them) live's
easier.
Misc. Hardware Manufacturers
Spoke to a couple of vendors of reasonably specialist kit, like
multi-port serial cards. The ones I spoke to seemed to be prepared
to ship cards to developers in order to get drivers written as
necessary, so I'll try and firm up on some of this tomorrow.
That's it for the time being -- mainly because I'm sat on a platform now
and my fingers are freezing. More news tomorrow.
N
--
Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95.
Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission,
hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless.
Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
-- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery
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