Update: (Aug 20): Correction: Removed Red
Hat and added SuSE, IBM, and LinuxCare to the list of sponsors of
the LPI project.
The mood is more solemn than previous shows that I have
attended, and the audience is certainly less educated than would be
found at the more grass-roots type shows (LinuxExpo, ALS, etc). I
spent much of my time speaking with representatives from various
vendors who have recently made announcements related to Linux.
Magic Software (Founded in Israel in the 1980’s) is embracing
Linux in a major way. Their product is a fairly unique development
environment that basically allows you to write applications in a
“non-language”, based around this “Magic Engine”. Think of the
“Magic Engine” as you would think of the perl engine. Now that they
have the Magic environment for Linux, anybody can get the Linux
Magic Engine (at no charge) and run the applications that they have
been formerly running on Solaris, Windows, DOS, etc. They told me
that there are around 3,000 “Magic Solution Partners” worldwide who
have developed applications using the Magic Engine.
Linuxcare is at it with their usual flare. They have a big van
that they are giving away (actually, they are giving away a 2 year
lease on the vehicle, or you can opt to take $10,000US in cash in
the stead of the vehicle). I registered.
They also have this nifty Linux rescue CD that fits in my wallet
next to my credit cards. (See picture).
My laptop started acting up, and just in the nick of time, who
would show up but Donald Becker! (See picture). Don wrote the first
PCMCIA code for Linux, and has provided support for an
enormous amount of network cards for Linux. The
chances are high that, if you are currently using Linux, you are
using software written by Don. Unfortunately, my laptop is fairly
new (IBM ThinkPad i Series) and Don was unable to figure out why
the PCMCIA code was core dumping 75% of the time. He also couldn’t
figure out why hibernation wasn’t working. Thanks for trying,
Don!
This week they announced their new NetFinity (see picture)
computer, the 3500 M10. It’s a box that was developed from the
ground up with the single intention of running Linux. For $1,800,
the customer gets quite a nice machine, as well as 90 day telephone
support, worldwide in 165 countries.
Additional to the hardware announcement, IBM says they have
extended their support offerings to encompass Linux. This means
that any of their customers can present a problem to the IBM
consulting group, and IBM can implement Linux in virtually any
situation you have. They are officially supporting Red Hat,
Caldera, SuSE, and TurboLinux, but they will perform “due
diligence” to support other distributions.
During all my talks with IBM, the key phrase that I continued to
hear was, “…because our customers were demanding Linux support.”
What kind of customer clamoring would be required for a company as
large as IBM to make such an enormous commitment to Linux?
IBM has released Domino R5 “Sneak Peak” for Linux, available at
www.notes.net/linux.
Tivoli has announced that the Tivoli framework and core
applications will be available for Linux by the end of this year.
The reason cited for this port, according to Tivoli, is that
“customers had Linux brought in through the back door, put into
mission-critical use, and now need a monitoring solution for these
boxes.”
IBM is working with SAP and has opened a “Linux Lab” in Germany
to do optimizations of SAP for Linux. SAP will go through the
“Server Proven” program for SAP on Linux. This is a big deal and
commitment on SAP’s part.
I talked to Oracle who informed me that the Oracle 8 release for
Linux resulted in over 50,000 downloads. Their Oracle 8i release,
in two weeks time, resulted in 20,000 downloads and 15,000 CD’s
sent out. The Oracle 8i seems like a nifty product – it’s Oracle
optimized for the Internet. They said that you can set up an entire
website through a web-based ‘wizard’ type application. They say
Linuxcare is using Oracle 8i to run their web stuff, and that
Burlington Coat Factory is making good use of Linux and Oracle (but
we already knew that, right?). 🙂
Oracle also notified me that they will be porting Oracle 8i
‘Lite’ to Linux – no release date given.
Sybase is expanding support for Linux. They’ve
seen 10,000 downloads of their Linux database products, and their
customers have been asking for a fully supported Linux version.
They’ve delivered, and they are also providing a free ‘developer’s
copy’ that includes 3 clients and development software. Their Linux
port is sold at the same price as the NT port, and is developed and
tested on Red Hat Linux.
MacMillan is doing some interesting things with Linux. They’re
distributors, not developers, so their announcements are in the
area of getting Linux more and more into the mainstream computer
stores like CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City… basically anywhere
that you can buy software, you will find MacMillan selling
Linux.
They released 9 Linux books last year, will release 48 Linux
books this year, and 16 Linux software products this year.
They also have, some time ago, halted sales of “The Complete
Linux Operating System”, which was Red Hat Linux, and have begun
shipping “The Complete Mandrake Linux Operating System”. They have
a variety of flavors, including “Complete” (basic operating
system), “Deluxe” (OS + StarOffice), “Secure Server” (Apache with
SSL+RSA), “Linux Utilities”, which is a variety of extra
applications for Linux, and the “Linux Starter Kit”, which includes
a copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Linux” book.
They say they are supporters of the Linux Demo Day, and are
sponsors of LPI (Linux Professional Institute).
Speaking of non-profit community organizations, here’s something
new: LinuxFund. It’s the first corporate sponsored Linux
developers’ fund, according to Penguin Computing’s Andy Kaufman.
It’s completely non-profit, and Mark Willey of Penguin Computing
will be allocating funds to various projects. The fund usage is not
influenced by the corporate sponsors – they are simply sponsoring
it to show their support for the Linux community.
Penguin Computing unveiled this at their booth. The most
exciting project is the Penguin credit card, under-written by MBNA
Bank, and will feature Tux the Penguin. The bank will pay a
percentage of every purchase to the fund. The first 5,000 people to
sign up get a free T-Shirt, and 2,000 have already signed up at the
LWCE show.
If you want to contribute time or money, signup at www.linuxfund.org. The founder is
also a very nice guy who just got married 3 days before the show.
🙂
Linux International held their customary board meetings in the
usual manner – 7:00am the morning following some parties that
extended late in the night. Tired and hung-over, the heads of many
Linux companies gathered in a meeting room at the Fairmont Hotel in
downtown San Jose to discuss recent issues in the Linux
community.
An organization is working on hardware certification programs
for Linux, while BRU is busy with their own tape-drive
certification project.
Dan York (of Linuxcare) stood up and spoke about LPI and the
exciting work they are doing. They have garnered the support of
several key players in the Linux community, and it is looking like
LPI is set to become the standard Linux certification organization
for the Linux community. The outlines that Dan presented are very
well thought-out and appear to be a blueprint for success. We are
happy to see SuSE, Caldera, IBM, LinuxCare, and other companies
throwing their support behind their efforts, and we wish them the
best.
I’m planning an audio interview (mp3 broadcast) this week with
Dan, in order to give him the opportunity to give his complete
message out to the entire community.
Back to the show floor…
Every sysadmin wants to hear about tape backup solutions, and
Knox Software, Ecrix, and BRU were there to fill this demand. Knox
Software is showcasing an interesting product (Arkeia), a network
backup software product. The management console is a GUI (X-Window
System based) application that is not built using any widget
library like Qt, GTK, or Motif. In other words, they’ve developed
their own toolkit just for this application, which has 200,000
lines of code. Distribution neutral, they support most any flavor
of Linux you have, and release their software in both RPM or a
tar.gz file with installation scripts.
They also support Linux on Arm, MIPS, Alpha, Intel, with SPARC
and RS/6000 support on the way.
Ecrix has a fairly unique tape backup drive that proves more
reliable and less damaging to tapes. Rather than the tape flying
back and forth during interrupts, this one simply stops and goes.
Also, instead of moving at 100+ inches per second, this one moves
at 4 inches per minute, giving less damage to the tape when it must
stop. Their analogy was “imagine slamming on the breaks in your car
going 60 miles an hour, and then imagine slamming on your breaks
when you’re going 2 miles per hour.”
I got a chance to sit down with Scott Draeker, head of Loki
Entertainment. He’s excited about Linux, and wanted to talk about
their future plans. Here goes:
There are 2 more games planned for release by the end of
this month. They are looking at a Mech-type game
for this fall. We’ve seen two games come out of them this year so
far, and we’ll have seen a total of 8 games by the end of this
year, and 16 games next year.
He’s quite a friendly fellow who’s heart is really in sync with
the Linux community. This 33 year old, ex-attorney using Yellow Dog
Linux on his G3 box.
They’ll be doing Heavy Gear II for Activision, Heretic II, and
are in talks with “most game companies” about various other
ports.
They challenge of porting to Linux is significant. They often
have to completely re-write level editors, and the co-founder of
the company, Sam Lantinga, has developed a Linux alternative to
Windows’ DirectX, called SDL, which is released under the LGPL.
Scott mentioned that it took Microsoft 200 developers to write
DirectX, while SDL was written by 1 person. Their
games aren’t distribution specific and they specifically list
system requirements by X-Window version, kernel version, C Library
version, etc.
As you would expect from a gaming company, he promises it is a
fun place to work. Their 12 employees enjoy 6
weeks of vacation per year, and they have LAN gaming
events “as often as possible, especially whenever a new Quake comes
out.” 6 of their 12 people are programmers, the rest are support,
sales, and marketing personnel. Scott tells me that the community
has given rave reviews of their support, saying that it
out-performs support found at even the largest mainstream gaming
companies.
Scott mentioned that they have “friends and family” contributing
money to the company, and are open to the possibility of investors,
but I got the impression that an IPO is not even remotely close to
being in the works. I could be wrong, but he was very tight-lipped,
even after quite a bit of coaxing and prodding.
Our friends at Linux Weekly News (who sat right behind us at the
keynote address) have put up an excellent
review of Linus’ speech, so I’ll not duplicate their effort
here.
Following Linus’ keynote address, Richard Stallman and the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) was presented with a $25,000 IDG/Linux
Torvalds community award. Richard Stallman gave a moving speech
with the acceptance of this award (even if he was competing for
attention with Linus’ two daughters (pictured) who were running up
and down the stage. Richard spoke about the origins of free
software, the origins of the FSF and the GNU Project, and he
encouraged the audience to refer to Linux as “GNU/Linux”
(pronounced “GNU Slash Linux”. The FSF then held a party at the San
Jose Children’s Museum, which was full of fun toys for grown
hacker-types to play with. A great time was had by all.
Well, along came Richard Stallman to chat with us for a few
minutes, giving my friend an opportunity to finally meet him. After
chatting for a few minutes, the conversation turned to Richard’s
decision to encourage people to say “GNU/Linux” rather than just
“Linux.” Richard’s argument is this:
It’s important that people understand that the Linux
distribution they are using is heavily reliant on GNU software in
order to make a complete distribution. The reason that this is
important is that if they understand that GNU is largely
responsible for this software, then they will pay attention when
the GNU project speaks out on isses. The problem, as Richard sees
it, is that this is not the case, and instead they are looking to
Linus Torvalds for leadership. Richard’s problem is that Linus does
not have a problem with proprietary software, while the same type
of software goes against every fiber of being that is Richard
Stallman. It was his hatred of proprietary software that originally
led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project.
As the industry looks to Linus Torvalds as a leader in the free
software community, they may pick up the ideas that proprietary
software is an acceptable notion. If the industry were to look at
Richard’s group as the leader, they might carry the notion that
proprietary software is evil. Richard wants this message sent out
loud and clear, and in order to achieve that, he must get the
industry to recognize him, and the GNU project, as leaders in the
free software community.
My friend’s argument against this was that he has chosen an
entirely wrong path to make this happen, by trying to force people
to use the terminology of “GNU/Linux”. He wondered if there might
be a better way to educate the industry on the origins of free
software.
This led to a long and bitter argument between the two that, I
am sorry to say, ended with the resolution of my friend
and Richard’s feelings hurt and upset. They both
have very valid points, and I can’t see a resolution to the issue.
I’ve seen many people have this argument with Richard, and nobody
has been able to provide a proper solution to the problem that has
presented itself to Richard.
That’s the end of my thoughts on this show. To summarize: it was
a good show with lots of interesting announcements from all the
vendors. Many friends were re-united, and a good time was had by
all. It was more business oriented, and less grass-roots than other
shows like ALS or LinuxExpo, but altogether a successful event. I’m
happy that I attended.