This is an AMD Opteron system rendering a chessboard.
These systems were running PYX's iSCSI on Red Hat. iSCSI is an Internet Protocol (IP) based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. PYX's software acts as a middle ware between the computer and the SCSI devices, generating the appropriate SCSI commands and data request and sending them along plain CAT 5 cabling. No additional hardware is necessary. iSCSI encapsulates data and, if necessary, encryption procedures. The protocol is bi-directional and can also return data requests.
This was in the AMD booth. The screen shot tells everything.
Microsoft had a couple of these large posters advertising Windows Services for UNIX. Somehow I don't think many of the attendees of LinuxWorld will be looking at this real seriously.
At the Red Hat booth there was a beta of the next generation Red Hat OS, possibly to be named 10 (when I asked why it would not be 9.1 the exhibitor explained that Red Hat was getting away from fractional releases for the desktop software). Some of the new features in the next generation Red Hat OS will be support for multi-monitor setup both with dual head video cards and with multiple video cards in one system. The graphical utility for configuring multiple monitors looked quite good but was not finished yet. The RPM package manager is also in for an update. Some of the things that will be improved are more control over the installation, upgrading, and removal of software. The graphical utility will support downgrading to previous versions as well. Using the RPM configuration program to upgrade or install programs will be more flexible because there will be the ability to have multiple servers to download updates from, rather than from a single source.
Free software has come full circle. At this show it was Sun that was giving away lots of software such as Solaris 9, and Star Office. I didn't find nearly the number of freebies at Red Hat or SuSE's booths. But, if one sat through their entire presentation, SuSE was giving away a stuffed beanbag toy resembling an iguana, (their mascot). Perhaps Sun thought they could emulate the success of the Linux distros in popularizing their software by giving it away. Sun gave out raffle tickets to get a copy of their new Linux desktop software code-named "Mad Hatter" when it comes out. The expected release date for Mad Hatter is by the end of 2003.
Dell had an unexciting presence at the expo. I inquired as to whether there would be a desktop release of Dells running Linux any time soon. Their first response was that there was not sufficient demand to warrant selling Linux boxes for the desktop. Their second response was that Microsoft was putting sufficient licensing pressure on Dell to make it less economical to sell Linux boxes than to just bundle Windows.
SuSE gave a presentation in which they displayed their latest OS running plenty of applications that are usually found on a Windows PC. Some of the applications being emulated on SuSE were Microsoft Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Apple QuickTime, and Quicken. Internet Explorer was shown playing a QuickTime movie preview in a browser window.
In addition to all the software vendors at the show, there were loads of vendors showing off their new servers and mainframes. IBM had a Z series 990 mainframe on the show floor. Appros, HP, Dell, IBM, and Rackable systems all had servers on the show floor.
After spending hours on the show floor and talking to lots of exhibitors and attendees alike, it looks to me as though Linux has a very rosy future. During an IBM keynote speech, the speaker gave a figure of 28% compound growth rate in servers. The hardware support is out there and more and more tier one vendors are shipping Linux on their servers and workstations. There is plenty of exciting new software programs for Linux relating to server management, database, programming, and the core OS itself. Linux has proven itself a stable, secure, and high availability OS to the people that make the major buying decisions. I look forward to next year's LinuxWorld Expo.
Olin Wread is a student at Humboldt State University
studying Computer Information Systems. He has been a
Linux user since 1998. In his spare time he enjoys
single track mountain biking.
- "LinuxWorld 2003, Page 1"
- "LinuxWorld 2003, Page 2"
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