Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 22:31:39 -1200 To: lwn@lwn.net From: "Nagendra, VU2CLN" <nagendra@letterbox.com> Subject: Bang!Linux - Linux Conference Report - Day 1 Bang!inux a Linux Developers Conference being held at the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore Started off today with a Keynote Address from Michael Burghart of SuSe(Platinum Sponsor), who welcomed the delegates to the conference and hinted about having a SuSe Office/Development center in India@Bangalore. The Next program was from Vishal Khanna of Ampersand who spoke about GNU Programming Environment under Linux, but during the presentation which was attended by 500+ people, everything was fine until he a windows right-click was displayed on the gaint-Screen confirming that the Presentation was actually running a Win95 with Office 95 Power Point. At this time there was protest from the crowd.....but Vishal Khanna calmed down the protest by informing that his linux laptop was borrowed for demo on the same conference. After this incident there was a talk from PHP developer Rasmus Lerdorf and Web Application Development talk which was excellent and made up for the credibility lost for linux during the windows presentation, all was well until again another speaker from Oracle gave a very oracle-marketing orinted presentation which was more on why you should buy Oracle than what's the advantage with Oracle on Linux, again using a Windows-95 laptop @ a Linux Conference. More trouble.....after a break....speaker from Digital(Compaq) who spoke about High performance computing on Alpha Linux again with a Windows laptop + PowerPoint...till the end of the sessions even blaming that StarOffice/Applixware cant be used for presentation, this left all die-hard Linux fans in a bad mood. At the end of the day delegates & Newbie Linux Users lost all the credibility for Linux that was created in the morning......letting them think that Linux is to only preach and to personally use Windows everywhere.. :-( The least thing that SuSe/RedHat which was the main sponsor could have done is to have all the machines at conference installed with SuSe/RedHat Linux which could have saved the day....... Personally I had a embarrassing time having no words to explain to my friends(win users) whom I had convinced to attend the Linux Conference with me that why do we used windows in a Linux Conference when I had boosted Linux to be a Windows killer....... Nagendra VU2CLN URL Note : Bang!Linux is http://www.linux-conference.com/