Raiden's Realm: Ohio Linux Fest 2009 Report

Ohio Linux Fest 2009 Report (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Sep 30, 2009 at 01:15pm
Section: Editorials
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This year was the first time ever that I've had the wonderful opportunity to visit Ohio Linux Fest, sometimes referred to as Ohio Linux Con. This year's theme was "40 Years of Unix" and there was a lot there that focused on that theme.

The event itself stretches over a 3 day period (fri-sun), and is hosted at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio. However, the first and third days are focused strictly on developers, while day two (sat) is the primary general audiences event. I arrived early (it's a 4.5 hour drive from my home in Michigan) and watched as they went about setting up.

This years big sponsors were Novell, Google, Source Forge, IBM, Zenoss, Digium (asterisk) and Oracle. Members of Source Forge and Google were there too, however, only IBM, Zenoss and Oracle had booths. The entire convention was broken down into three basic areas. The registration and Open Source Solutions stage, the vendors row, and the panel halls.

Those who got the free registration this year only got access to the event, while those with the first and second tier paid registrations got access to free lunch, special training cram sessions and test, shirts, and other special items.

The three main panel rooms were large, and I do mean large. They each could have easy sat 500 or more each. When just two of them were combined, it could easily seat the entire attendance of the convention, which was reported about about 1100+, with seats to spare.

Some of the exhibitors at the show included Linux Journal, the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Linux in the Ham Shack (a linux focused ham radio group), Barnes and Nobles (they sold Linux and FOSS books), Dayton Linux Users Group, Hurricane Labs, the KDE crew, IBM, Oracle, and a number of other vendors and corporations.

I took some time and looked over each of the booths at the show and interviewed a few of the people there. What I learned was quite interesting. The first one of the day was the EFF. The lady running the booth was just setting up when I first ran into her, but we had a fun talk and from all appearances, the EFF is doing great, and all the causes they're working hard at.

She didn't have anything specific to share that wasn't already in the news, but otherwise everything sounded positive. She was however very up front about the thing that the EFF supports and stands for, and was actually quite pleased and surprised at my stand against DRM, especially as a published author.

The Free Software Foundation was another one of the early arrivals and their conversation went much the same way. The big difference was that the FSF was pimping for new members, and doing less about actually promoting their cause like the EFF was.

Along the way I also stopped at the Oracle booth, but had a hard time getting anything out of them. They were there to sell Oracle server and pimp themselves as "the only choice" in databases. The gentleman presenting seemed a bit aloof about Linux however, even though he did promote Oracle's version of Linux and some of the benefits it offered. It did some beneficial to an enterprise user, but not so much for the Linux community.

I also tried to talk to him about the Sun deal in between his pushing of Oracle products. Eventually one of the men there was able to get him to stop for a few minutes and actually spill what he knew. According to him the deal to buy Sun isn't complete, although all the important parts are finished. Other than that, he said he wasn't allowed to speak on anything involving the deal. After that, he immediately went back to pimping Oracle products.

Next I had the pleasure of running into the guys at Hurricane Labs. They are a completely FOSS focused company who's primary job is managing network and oversight assessment. In other words, they use Linux and FOSS applications to monitor and manage large to midsized data networks.

IBM was there too promoting their services, however, instead of a bunch of marketing guys in expensive suits, IBM sent down a bunch of the guys from the local Linux Users Group (LUG) who were really able to interface well with the crowds of Linux geeks there.

They were also handing out lots of very awesome swag (hats, pens, shirts, calculators, etc) and information on IBM's support of the Linux and FOSS community. Everything they mentioned was positive, and it appears that IBM will continue to further embrace and assist the Linux community for quite some time to come.

Drupal, the makers of the famous CMS software, where there as well. I didn't get much out of them, but they did have quite a lot of information on the CMS there, plus some a couple of computers setup to demonstrate their CMS.

There was also a lan party group there as well. (Sorry, I lost their name) They're not an actual business, but more of a group of fellow Linux geeks who go around setting up Lan parties for Linux and FOSS users, playing everything from native Linux games, to proprietary offerings that run through Wine. They even had a copy of Portal running just to show off some of what they do.

Another awesome discovery was OpenStreetMap! They were there sharing with the community who they were and what they did. Essentially they're the Wikipedia of maps. It's a complete map of the world built using user contributed information about locations, parks, streets, and other things. It's also the most up to date map in the world. However, it's somewhat of a mixed bag, where some parts are not only up to date, but very detailed as well, others only have the basics and haven't received enough participation in order to fully complete certain areas.

The gentleman there at the booth mentioned that they have a huge Geo database and software tools for making maps, and will soon be adding routing and the ability to convert between formats (Garmin, TomTom, etc) in the near future. That way you'll be able to use your OpenStreetMap files on your favorite GPS.

He also mentioned that they currently have 167,000+ contributors, a number which doubles ever six months. That in itself is impressive beyond measure. He also had a complete map of one of the local landscapes printed out on a plotter for viewing at the booth as well.

OLF opened with a keynote from one of the ladies who was a primary organizer of the event. She gave a quick overview of the event, touched briefly on the 40th anniversary of Unix, and then did something that I thought was very appropriate. She called for the sharing of Linux without elitism, something I've been harping on for the past number of months.

She also gave out a call to be revolutionary, and touched slightly on the discussion about the "year of Linux" and why it really doesn't matter.

Next up was the keynote speaker of the night, Shawn Powers of Linux Journal. He discussed a number of topics, including Linux in the Economy, Investing in FOSS, and that it's easier to teach kids than adults, so we should focus not on just adults, but kids as well. Because kids that get hooked on FOSS will be less likely to fall away to other platforms later.

He also suggested getting the kids involved in FOSS, as they would then bring in other people, and thus expand the FOSS world, and inform more people. Also, teach them the concepts, and not just the specific apps, as those will carry over a lot easier in the future.

He then brought up a good point that I think should be focused on more, and that's it's ok to bash Microsoft, just DO NOT bash the users of Microsoft. Just because they're a user doesn't make them the evil spawn of Redmond. Treat them with respect, even if the software they're using is from a company that deserves none.

He also did a great bluescreen gag to finish up the section of his speech on Microsoft. He then went on to talk about things that hurt us and confuse others. Most are things we already know, but it was good to see him reinforce those.

Another recommendation he made when talking to people about FOSS is to be upfront and honest. Don't hide the shortcomings when promoting Linux or FOSS. It's better that you list them and they know about them ahead of time so there's far fewer surprises later. And if those items never appear, they'll be happier, because you will appear to have over sold it's "failings" and made it appear much worse than it is, which means they'll love it even more.

It also has the benefit of allowing them to find the cool stuff too, which will further reinforce their happiness with FOSS. And when in front of these people, don't bash MS (yes, I know he said it was ok earlier, but that was in a different context). Instead, work to make these people passionate about Linux and FOSS.

Also, don't force them. That's something I've said a lot myself. Don't force them. It's like taking a horse before water. You bring them there, and then leave it up to them to decide if they want to drink. And this is a good point. FOSS is about choice, and if we deny them that choice, even if it's to stick with the system they have, then we've gone against all that FOSS stands for.

That closed the opening keynote for the morning. After that I wandered back out to the vendors row and found a few more vendors, who were apparently late in arriving, now setup and ready to show off things. The BSD gurus were there too, which was a slight surprise, given that this was a Linux con. However, all of the Linux guys were very friendly to them, and even showed their support for the BSD guys by wearing the little flashing bsd daemon horns they were giving out in the booth.

After that, I wandered into my first panel, presented by Cat Allman of Google, which was just a simple overview on how to get started in FOSS. While most of the seasoned users more or less slept through the presentation (this was all common knowledge to the intermediate and senior users), there were a number of obvious newbies who were taking copious notes. :

The next was a panel on the Linux boot process by Daniel Washko. It covered Grub vs Lilo, the upcoming Grub2 and all of it's benefits, including booting iso images (a much requested feature. ance: ), scripting, and even graphical boot menus.

The speaker then went on to discuss LoadLin, a tool to load Linux from Windows, and isolinux, which is used to boot cdroms and pen drives. He then explained the design of the Linux kernel (currently monolithic, but moving to a more streamlined, modular design), and how the distros already use the modular kernel, which was prompted by user demand, hence the move that direction by the core developers of the kernel.

He then went on to cover initd, initramfs, which replaced initd, what init and inittab are, and that upstart will soon be replacing them.

The next panel involved why 1969 was an important year. It was presented by Peter Salus, a senior user who was around when Arpanet got its start and Unix was born. His presentation was fun and exciting, covering a lot of the incredible bits of history that occurred during the year that Unix was born.

After this, we broke for an hour for lunch. After much good eating, I slipped into the Introduction to Gnome 3.0 panel by Paul Cutler. It covered a lot of stuff about Gnome, including its history, the introduction of Gnome Mobile for MIDs and Netbooks, a new web service (tomboy notes) that will be a part of it, the major UI overhaul coming, and a live demonstration of Gnome Shell, which interestingly enough is written in Javascript (*shiver*).

He then went on to explain that the new core will do 3D via a system called "Mutter" which will replace metacity and compiz, but will have metacity at the center to fall back on should Mutter be too much for the machine. So there's still some backwards compatibility already there. Most of the rest of what was covered has already been dragged out in great detail on the web. The only thing isn't available on the web that was here, was a live demonstration of one of the most recent builds of Gnome 3.0.

The next several hours I milled about and did other things, since the other panels offered that day really held zero interest for me. I did however make a stop into the Moblin panel, and saw that it was very good. But it was really only beneficial to those who hadn't already been doing their homework on this new Linux operating system, as everything covered there has already been covered in great deal on the internet.

The closing keynote was by Douglas Mcllroy, a pioneer of Unix who was actually there when it was first born. He gave a fun and sometimes hilarious presentation on software sophistication, and how sometimes sophistication is actually detrimental to software, whereas simplicity is beneficial.

He also covered some of the overkill that has snuck into some of the apps we use today, such as the ridiculous number of options available for ssh, most of which should not be user selectable, but rather should automatically be called by ssh whenever it needs them.

After that closed, there was a brief raffle for some door prizes, after which everyone went home. Just prior to the start of the raffle, they announced that 1100+ people had signed up and attended, the most they've ever had for a convention of this type.

Well, that's it for my overview of Ohio Linux Fest. If you didn't go this year, you missed out on a lot of great stuff. So consider going next year, because I'll certainly be going, life permitting of course.

PS: I'll be posting pictures from the convention later today in the image gallery.

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