[ Thanks to Erik
Hensema for this report: ]
Tuesday October 10th, I went to linux2000, a two-day conference
held in `de Reehorst’, Ede, the Netherlands. Keynote speaker was
Eric Raymond (ESR).
The conference featured an exposition floor populated by many
Linux-related companies. Among them internationally famous firms
such as Redhat, Suse, IBM and Borland, but also typically dutch
enterprises like Stone-IT or Snow. Of course, the Dutch Linux Users
Group, NLLGG, had a booth of their own. Each day five rounds of
talks were held; each round featured four speakers in parallel, so
choices had to be made on what session to attend.
Here are my impressions on the second day of linux2000:
The day was opened by Joost Helberg of Snow BV. He gave a short
introduction to Linux, its history and its future. He also pointed
out some aspects of Linux he thought could be improved.
The second speaker was the keynote speaker of the event: Eric
Raymond. He started by asking the public what they wanted to hear.
After a democratic vote, we (the audience) decided we wanted to
hear about effective advocacy tactics. I think everybody in the
audience agrees this man really has a clue about advocacy…
After a short break, the ‘smaller’ presentations began.
Personally I first attended the presentation by Borland, “Linux in
the real world”. Though it was mostly marketing-speak about their
upcoming Kylix development system and their other Linux-products,
it was still an interesting presentation.
The second presentation I attended was titled “The Linux
evolution, IA64, e-services and beyond”, by Hewlett-Packard.
Personally I found this presentation to be a disappointment, since
it was mostly about HP and their vision on the future of computing.
It remained unclear what role Linux plays in this vision.
After the lunch, we all gathered to listen to a presentation
about Linux certification given by Rudolf Tegelaar and Alan
Belinger. They explained why certification is important and what
progress has been made in this field.
Next, the smaller sessions continued. I decided I’ve heard
enough marketing-speak for the day, so I went to the more
technically-oriented presentations. So, I went to see the
presentation “Real time Java, real time Linux” by Jaap Schuttevaer
of Turnkiek. He explained the advantages of Linux over proprietary
operating systems in realtime embedded systems and the possibility
of using realtime Java in embedded systems.
From the small embedded systems, I went to the real processing
power: Armijn Hemel and Job Spijker of the UULug (UUlug Utrecht
Linux User Group) gave a presentation about the Beowulf Cluster
they’re going to build to celebrate their LUG’s first anniversary.
Appropriately, they’re assembling a 365-node cluster which will run
for two days.
The last presentation of the day was “Information Retrieval and
Open Source”, by Hans Paijmans of Tilburg University. He explained
the fundamental models of information retrieval and why Linux is
the right tool to process large amounts of text. I think he was the
only speaker of the day without a formal degree or even much
experience in computer science (he has a PhD in information
retrieval, though), so it was interesting to hear why he choose to
use Linux.
I was very impressed by the size of the Linux-movement in the
Netherlands and the professionalism of the event. I’m already
looking forward to the next big Linux event in Holland!
Note: most of the presentations were in Dutch, I’ve translated
their titles to English.