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Monday at LinuxWorld

August 9, San Jose

Things were relatively slow for most of the conference today - all that was really happening was tutorials. No keynotes, technical sessions, or exhibit hall until tomorrow.

That doesn't mean it was slow for us - we taught a full-day tutorial on Linux systems administration. It was a good crowd, though much smaller than last March. In general, the tutorials seem to be smaller this time around, not sure why. The word is that they are expecting a full 20,000 people at the conference this time around, much more than last March. I guess all those people aren't going to tutorials.

After that came a scary taxi ride to the Wyndham hotel, for the last stop in Caldera's OpenLinux tour. For whatever reason, Caldera had set up shop a long way from the conference itself - you had to really want to be there. As a result, there was not a huge crowd. They missed out - Caldera serves up some top-quality food and wine.

We got to talk for a while with both Ransom Love (President, Caldera Systems), and Bryan Sparks, CEO of Lineo (once known as Caldera Thin Clients). Ransom Love was full of words about Caldera's flurry of announcements that came out today, including the joint deals with Motorola, the new training initiatives, and the freeing up of the code for their (nice) installer. They think that they're on a roll, with a bright future. They are probably right.

It's too soon to see if any of the other distributions pick up Caldera's installer. Certainly some of them could use some help in the installation department. Ransom expressed hopes that the community as a whole could build something even better than what Caldera has now. But other distributions would have to swallow a little pride to adopt this code; it will be interesting to see if any go for it.

The talk with Lineo was perhaps even more interesting. Their business cards now identify them as "the embedded Linux software company." That little thing called DR-DOS, the one that actually makes their money currently, seems to have been pushed off to the side. They see DR-DOS as heading toward the end of its life; their future development work is all oriented toward Linux. Thus "embedix" - a minimal version of the OS which can run in highly constrained environments. They promised a cool demonstration on the exhibit floor tomorrow; we'll be there to give it a look.

The word is that Linux is going to be big in embedded systems. There are just too many factors arguing for its success. And Lineo hopes that, by the time the rest of the world catches on, they will have staked out the best of that territory. Their deal with Motorola, which makes all of Motorola's OEM channels available for Embedix, should help them toward that goal.

Crash time, perhaps after a stop by that Ben & Jerry's down the street. Check out the photo page for a few pictures from the day.

--jc

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