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<title>The Fourth Annual Linux Expo LG #30</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">The Fourth Annual Linux Expo</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:dpenland@mindspring.com">David Penland</a></H4>
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<A HREF="./photos1.html">Photo Album</A>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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This year, Red Hat Software decided to hold the fourth annual Linux Expo
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at Duke University's Bryan Center in Durham, North Carolina. The event was
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scheduled over three days from April twenty-eighth to the thirtieth. In
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addition to the normal vendor displays and conference, the Linux Expo web
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site promised such diverse attractions as a quake fest and a paintball
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tournament. I arrived at the Center at seven-thirty on Thursday to find
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over one hundred people already ahead of me in line. Registration wasn't
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until eight o'clock. Apparently I was not the only Linux fanatic champing
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at the bit.
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<P>
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The doors did not actually open until a little past eight, and I did not
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get in to register until about eight forty. As a pre-registered attendee, I
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received a Linux Expo tote bag bearing the Expo logo, as well as logos of
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Expo sponsors. Inside I found a bound copy of the proceedings, a VAResearch
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tee shirt, a Red Hat cap, an issue of SysAdmin, and a Caldera flashlight, as
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well as flyers advertising specials at Expo vendor booths.
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<P>
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Prominently placed in front of the entrance was the Red Hat booth. Their
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booth featured the new Red Hat Linux 5.1, due to be released the following
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Monday. Also on the upper floor was the Caldera, Linux Hardware solutions,
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Linux International, Solid, and RHAD Labs booths, as well as the Expo store,
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and the Softpro Bookstore.
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<P>
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Because of registration delays, the tutorials and technical conference
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fell thirty minutes behind schedule, and remained out of sync with the business
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track for the rest of the day. The Extreme Linux tutorial was kicked off by
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Mad Dog Hall, who explained the name Extreme Linux, and the snow
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boarding penguin logo. Basically, Extreme Linux is Linux with an attitude
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Although Mad Dog said that the project's founders do not want to tie.
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the commodity cluster idea to a single operating system, he urged people
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to use the name Extreme Linux when referring to clusters of Linux machines.
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<P>
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After Mad Dog finished, Peter Beckman explained how Extreme Linux
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cluste rs were used at Los Alamos' Advanced Computing Labs. Several members of
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his team talked about their experiences with the system, and the problems
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they had solved. The talk featured the Linux Expo cluster, a four node cluster
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set up especially for the show. The cluster consisted of 4 dual 333
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MHz Pentium two's, each with 256 megabytes of ram and a four gigabyte disk
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drive. The cluster was tied together with a Myrinet network. After putting the cluster through its paces with modeling programs, Beckman decide
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to bring out a "practical application", the Extreme Linux monster truck.
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<P>
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Although it had been a radio shack remote control toy in a previous
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life, the monster truck had undergone an "Extreme" transformation. The body had
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been removed, and the truck's circuit board hacked. For vision, the monster
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truck had a Connectix quickcam with a custom mount to allow panning.
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Mounted on top was a Toshiba Libretto with a wireless Ethernet connection
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to the cluster. An operator sat at the console of the cluster, controlling
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the truck as it cruised across the floor observing the crowd with
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its quickcam. The operator's console was projected on a screen, and the crowd
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could see themselves from the truck's point of view thanks to the quickcam.
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Beckman assured us that the truck had a practical use, pulling network
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cables under the raised floor at Los Alamos. Without a doubt, the truck
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stole the show. For more information see http://www.Extremelinux.org/.
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<P>
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After the tutorial, I decided to make my way to the vendor area on the
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lower level. Strategically placed at the entrance to the vendor area was Cobalt
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Microserver Inc. They were showing the inexpensive Cobalt Qube microserver, a
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blue 7.25"x7.25"x7.75" cube with powerful intranet server capabilities. This
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little box will be near the top of every Linux geek's Christmas list.
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<P>
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Inside the door I found Stay online, a retailer of inexpensively priced
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computer components. The vendor area was so jammed with Linux enthusiasts
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that I had a hard time getting to every booth. Linux Mall was once again
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on hand offering great deals on everything. I picked up Red Hat Linux 5.
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1 for twenty-five dollars and Star Office Commercial for fifty dollars. Sun
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Microsystems was a very noticeable new addition to the Expo this year,
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showing off complete Ultrasparc computers as well as Ultrasparc based
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motherboards for building your own homebrew ultrapenguin machine. Alta
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Technology and Paralogic, two vendors of pre-built Extreme Linux clusters
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were also present. At another entrance, Jim Paradis of Digital Equipment
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Corporation entertained a mass of power hungry linuxers with a new smp alpha
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machine.
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<P>
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Cobalt wasn't the only company with miniature gee-whiz computers.
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CorelComputer was showing off their soon-to-be released Netwinder computers.
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These little boxes (9.5"x6"x2") have everything you could want in an
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intranet/internet client, and can be used as web servers as well. The
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Netwinder could be serious competition for the Qube, but I think many customers might choose a mixed environment of both.
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<P>
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Another major attraction was the RHAD Labs booth, which featured a
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couple of computers running gnome. The booth was staffed by members of the RHAD Labs development team, and Miguel de Icaza made occasional appearances.
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At just about any point in time, people were lined up three deep to get
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a look and gnome and ask the developers questions. One of the gnome computers
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had a camera attached to it, and some interesting pictures from the Expo
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have been posted on http://www.gnome.org/.
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<P>
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Toward the end of the second day of the Expo, I got an unexpected
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surprise which made the show immensely better than I had expected. While
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looking through the popular tee shirts offered by Xunilung, I overheard
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someone proclaiming that Linux was a misnomer, and that the correct name of the
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system was Gnu-Linux. This was a position I had heard before. I stepped
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back from the tee shirts to peek around people who had gathered around a table
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placed perpendicularly to Xunilung's. Sure enough, the gnu-linux admonishment
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was coming from Richard Stallman. For those who are not familiar with rms,
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as Stallman is often called, he is the person who started the gnu project in
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1983 to provide a free version of Unix for anyone who wanted it, unencumbered
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by proprietary licensing restrictions. Stallman is responsible for the Free
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Software foundation, and the general public license.
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<P>
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Although I do not really agree with him about the naming of Linux, I
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firmly believe Linux could not have been developed without the tools provide
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d by the FSF. Stallman has been a hero of mine since before Linus discovered
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Minix, so I was somewhat speechless when I saw him there unannounced.
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I stood back and watched for a while as young hackers got autographs and
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bought gnu tee shirts, CD-ROMs, and books. Occasionally Stallman would place
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the platter from an old disk pack on his head. With this "halo" in place, he
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became Saint Richard, patron saint of the Church of Emacs, and he would bless
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the young hacker's computers provided they did not have any proprietary
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software on them. When it was my turn to talk to Saint Richard, I thanked
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him for the work he had done, and bought two Emacs books. He signed the books
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happy hacking, and happier hacking, Richard Stallman.
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<P>
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After my encounter with rms on the second day of the Expo, I found my
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way to the auditorium where Linus would be giving the keynote speech. I
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was lucky, I found a seat about fifteen rows back from the stage. Less
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fortunate fans continued to file in for another fifteen minutes, and by the
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time Linus got on stage, people were standing and sitting in the aisles. An
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overhead projector indicated the theme of Linus' talk, titled Ramblin'
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Linus. Linus took the microphone and said "I'm Linus, and I am your god",
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at which point the crowd responded with deafening applause. Linus thanked
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various people for their work, in particular Alan Cox who has taken over
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the normally thankless job of maintaining the stable kernel for the last
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year or so. Some of the topics covered were the current state of the
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development kernel, the upcoming release of the 2.2 kernel, and future
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directions of kernel development. Linus spent about twenty minutes answering
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questions from the audience, and then everyone filed out for a southern
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style barbecue dinner in the university yard.
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<P>
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Conference talks were the main focus of the Expo for me. Unfortunately
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there were so many talks offered, I had a hard time making up my mind about
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which ones to attend. Extreme Linux is the only tutorial I made it to,
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but there were eleven more, on subjects as diverse as programming with gtk+,
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Python, hacking the Linux kernel, LinuxConf, and a demonstration of the Coda
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filesystem.
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<P>
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The conference was broken up into a business track and a technical
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track. The technical track auditorium was where I spent most of my time, but
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I did make it to several interesting business talks. Robert Hart of Red
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Hat Software gave a talk on linux certification dealing with what certification
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meant, and who should try to get it. He also encouraged the audience to
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drop off resumes at the Red Hat booth, which I did. I am still wait
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ing on your call Robert. Mad Dog gave an anecdotal talk on how Linux is
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used around the world, and Tim Bird of Caldera filled us in on the COAS
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project. COAS is a project to develop an integrated administration tool for
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Linux and possibly other unices, they are looking for volunteers, so drop
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them a line. The last talk in the business track was actually a panel which
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discussed free software licensing. The panel consisted of Eric Raymond,
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Richard Stallman, and Bruce Perens, who moderated. Raymond's and Stallman's
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views were not exactly in sync, so some very interesting discussion concerning
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the state of free or open source software licensing took place.
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<P>
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The technical track started earlier, and ran longer than the business
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track all three days. Unfortunately, registration problems, and technical
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difficulties threw the schedule off the first two days, and technical talk
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s were out of sync with business talks which made it hard to move freely
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between tracks. David Miller gave a very technical talk on optimizing the
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Cobalt Microserver. Peter Braam of Carnegie Mellon University gave two
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informative talks on the new VFS interface, and the Coda distributed files
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system. The Coda team has made a lot of progress, and the filesystem is so
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mething worth looking into. Peter also mentioned that the team is looking
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for a good system programmer who likes interesting work, but doesn't mind
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being poor.
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<P>
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Bruce Perens and Daryll Strauss both gave talks on the use of computers
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to make movies. Strauss showed us how a pile of alphas running Linux help
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ed with the making of Titanic. During a short video presentation, he pointed
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out some amazing effects that were computer generated. Bruce went over
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some basics of computer animation in Toy Story, and showed an experimental
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piece by Pixar called Gerry's Game. The auditorium was packed for both talks.
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<P>
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Miguel de Icaza discussed the gnome project to a very large crowd. Due
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to technical problems with his laptop, the talk ran over by about thirty
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minutes. Fortunately, Miguel is a very entertaining speaker, and he kept
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the audience's attention while half of the RHAD Labs team and a concerned
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member of the audience fretted over his computer. Lars Wirzenius presented
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his Linux Anecdotes, a history of the linux system from someone who was
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right there when it was created. Lars shared an office with Linus at the
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University of Helsinki, and was the first person to actually run Linux
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on his computer. Alan Cox, a fixture at Linux Expo, gave a talk about the
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trials and tribulations of porting Linux to the Apple Macintosh 68K. His
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talk was titled "I don't care if space aliens ate my mouse". The title
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comes from an old Apple document, apparently the only official document
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ever written on the apple mouse.
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<P>
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These were only a few of the talks given at the Expo, a complete list
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can be found on the Linux Expo web site: http://www.linuxexpo.org . In
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addition to vendors and talks, there were other things to keep Expo attendees
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busy. A quake fest ran all day every day on the lower level, with deathmatches
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every fifteen minutes. Prizes were awarded for the highest body count from
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each match up. Birds of a Feather sessions were offered throughout
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the three days on a variety of topics, and an "email garden" was set
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up to allow attendees to get access to the net for checking their email.
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On Thursday, the age old question of which editor, Emacs or vi, is superior
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was finally answered. Obviously, the only way to resolve the issue was
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through brute force, so the Expo hosted Editor Wars, a paintball tourname
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nt. When the CO2 propelled paint mist settled, the vi team emerged from the
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field victorious.
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<P>
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Wrapping up the show Saturday evening was the second annual Linux Bowl.
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Mad Dog was the host, and the teams consisted of conference speakers and
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audience participants. Rasterman, of RHAD Labs, and audience members were
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the judges. Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond were two of the contestants.
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Some of the questions asked were: what lilo option is used to list currently
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mapped files(answer: -q), what was the first kernel tar.gz to exceed
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ten megabytes ( to which Bruce Perens promptly replied Microsoft NT. The
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correct answer was 2.1.88), which movie featured the Red Hat Office building
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(one contestant replied Debbie does Durham, and Mad Dog felt compelled
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to award one point. The correct answer was Kiss the Girls), why was the
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Beowulf project named Beowulf( answer: it sounded cool), and a trick question,
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what was the first system to run UNIX ( answer: a pdp7).
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<P>
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The Fourth Annual Linux Expo was a tremendous success, and I think every
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one went home happy. The show organizers deserve a big round of applause
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for their efforts, and if this year's turn out is any indication of things
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to come, they had better get a bigger building next year.
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, David Penland <BR>
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Published in Issue 30 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 1998</H5></center>
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