"This week, the world's largest Linux-oriented
conference was held in San Francisco, CA -- the LinuxWorld
Conference & Expo. Despite the current worldwide economic
downturn, the show's organizers announced earlier this summer that
pre-registrations for the show had broken all previous records, and
optimistically predicted an attendance of over 20,000.
Although the actual attendance count is not yet available as of
this writing, it is clear that attendance fell far below the
predicted number. Overall, everyone agreed that the atmosphere this
year was much more subdued than at last year's West Coast
mega-event. Consistent with the slump in the economy, the number of
exhibitors dropped off -- down to around 150, from over 200 last
year -- as did the volume of news and new product
announcements.
Despite the disappointing turnout and diminished level of
enthusiasm at the show, there was near-universal agreement that one
thing seemed to have grown stronger over the past six to twelve
months -- Embedded Linux. Although LinuxWorld does not focus on the
embedded market, a host of new products, technologies, and
strategies catering to the needs of embedded system and smart
device developers and manufacturers was unveiled and showcased.
Everywhere you turned, you ran across companies embedding Linux
inside PDAs, entertainment devices (especially TV set-top boxes),
automotive telematics systems, thin clients, etc."
