[LWN Logo]

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/