[SGVLUG] Desktop Linux Summit--second day.

[Dustin Laurence]

I guess I'll offer a bit more onthe DLS mostly (but not entirely) from
the second day.  I must not be busy enough today.

There was a guy from Neuros who gave a *very* interesting talk that,
unfortunately, I only caught the last part of.  They are building
linux-based home multimedia gear that amounts to small embedded
computers (the title was "The $100 Media Center Device", but the thing
that interested me is that they seemed determined to be entirely open
(it's not clear if they are at the moment, but he repeatedly said that
their goal was to do the equivalent of open source for hardware) and
even encourage hacking.  I talked to him quite a bit afterwards, and I
must say that I think they "get it" completely.  The only problem is
that their model, being ethical, is squarely in the crosshairs of the
RIAA and their goons (and I said as much).  I liked them enough that I'm
going to give an unsolicited plug via a link to their website:

http://www.neurostechnology.com/

I don't know if I'd care to buy their gear for audio purposes or not,
but I think I'd like to buy them, install a "normal" Linux, and use them
for network appliances.  Cool stuff.  In any case, we need that business
model (not based on closed systems, secrets, and DRM) to succeed.

Ian Murdock's LSB talk was interesting.  Overall I think it's the right
direction for "mainstream" Linux.  Trying to bring greater commonality
between KDE and Gnome is certainly a good idea.  However, my impression
that the LSB is in some sense underfunded and understaffed for their job
didn't change that much.  We'll see, I guess.

I also went to a Novell Linux Desktop demo.  I normally don't go to
demos, but it was moved to the time of a different talk.  I'm glad I
went, though--I think Novell's increased focus on the desktop is
beginning to really show.  I may have to take another look at it as a
possible recommendation for new users (I'm sure Tom will approve).  It
was fun to see Xgl tricks, too.

More controversially (for me) was a talk (this is from Monday I think)
on gaming on Linux.  The presenter's company sells a game engine which
is not Free, though it's fairly inexpensive for small developers as such
things go ($100).  It looked pretty good, and was cross-platform enough
to develop on Linux and release on Microsoft Windows (maybe even on OS
X, I forget), but thus the problem: if I were developing a game, do I
want to fall into the "good enough" trap?  Or do I think that games
aren't critical enough to worry about, and that open-source development
isn't a good fit for games anyway?

That said, it looked like a pretty good product.

A few things seen in the vendor room:

REALBasic cross-platform development tool.  Now, this one is a bit odd:
Unix is up to it's armpits in good scripting languages--we're already
the most scripting friendly place around, some would say.  Why this?  I
guess the answer is that it's friendly to Visual Basic programmers, who
probably feel lost on Linux, and it's cross-platform, so if they use it
for Microsoft Windows development they can release on Linux too with no
additional work.

That said, I'd kind of hope they'd learn a "real" language instead, and
in any case I would never use non-Free development tools even where I
might use a non-Free application.  That cuts too close to home.  But
we're not going to be moving to REALBasic, so perhaps it does no harm to
just give a tool to poor benighted Microsoft Windows developers.  The're
used to proprietary lock-in anyway.

There was an active KDE booth, but the Gnome booth was empty every time
I saw it.  Gnome a no-show?  Doesn't look good, guys.

I must have blinked, because last time I looked Red Hat was still saying
that the desktop wasn't ready yet.  Now they're apparently promoting an
enterprise desktop, I guess to counter Novell's.  I think of desktop
Like the waves beating on the dike, and Microsoft like the little Dutch
boy.  The "year of the Linux desktop" has been predicted every 1-3 years
for a long time.  It's never true, but each time the wave reaches higher
and the Little Dutch Boy has a harder time getting enough fingers in the
dike to hold it back.  With deep pockets actually trying to sell them,
this is the highest wave yet.  I suppose the context is that the Vista
debacle is an opportunity that doesn't come every day (just every
Microsoft Windows release, a cynic might say, but the insane hardware
requirements and really amazing delays seem to make this one unusual),
and everyone seems to have decided that this is the best chance to
breach the dike.

Afterwards:

Afterwards I spent some time with some Linspire people.  I've been
highly critical of Linspire in the past, so I was a bit bemused to find
I liked them quite a bit.  Ah, well, Linspire may be making better
choices than they did back in the days when they were running everyone
as root.  I sure hope so, at any rate.

The most fun was hanging out with their techies.  They managed to get me
interested in a little technical aspect of Linspire for the first time
ever, and that takes some doing.  I get the sense that Linspire wants to
cast its net wider than the I-can't-understand-computers crowd, and do
know they have a credibility problem to overcome.

Swag:

What's a conference without Swag?  I got:

A digital alarm clock that looks like a miniature laptop

Five Fedora Core 5 and Five Ubuntu 5.10 CDs for the Box O' Linux.

A stuffed Novell penguin for Eric.

Red hat baseball cap.

Red Hat t-shirt.

Plus the conference shirt.

Dustin
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