“The Interact + PC IT shows are the largest IT industry
events in Australia, regularly pulling in crowds of over 40,000. As
such, this was a prime event and an excellent opportunity for us to
demonstrate Linux to the great majority of non-Linux using PC
users. By everyone’s impression it was a wonderfully succesful
event, and a great example of what can be achieved (with a little
effort) for Linux advocacy…”
“Some things were plainly obvious from our presence at the PC IT
show. Linux, and the Linux community engender a substantial amount
of goodwill from the computer industry. By the first afternoon of
setting up, we had lost track of how many firms showed up on our
‘doorstep’ to offer free hardware, encouragement and support.
Throughout the day, we had amassed so much new hardware, that we
had to turn suppliers away, as we had run out of bench
space…”
“Also popular was the display of flashy desktops on Gnome and
KDE. StarOffice 5.1 was also very impressive, and people were
amazed at how close it could be made to look like MS-Office 97.
Both Blender and The GIMP generated numerous ‘oohhs’ and ‘aahhs’.
But perhaps the most popular ‘exhibit’ was the semi-regular
installs of Mandrake/Red Hat. People were very keen to see exactly
how easy Linux was to install.”