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LWN @ Comdex 2000

LWN editors Rebecca Sobol and Forrest Cook visited Comdex Fall 2000 and the co-located Linux Business Expo (LBE) in Las Vegas, Nevada from November 12 through November 15, 2000. The exhibits were open from November 13 through November 17.

This year Key3Media presented the main Comdex in the Las Vegas Convention Center and put the LBE and a section of international booths in the Sands Expo Center. There were even a few events at the MGM Grand, such as the Bill Gates keynote. The LBE seemed a bit bigger this year than last, though perhaps not as much as expected. The LBE floor lay-out was typical, with high priced booths in the front, the .org pavilion in the back and some intermediate booths surrounding an "embedded Linux" area.

Our Sunday - Monday coverage discusses the Sunday keynote address by Bill Gates and Monday's trip to the LBE where we visited many booths including: Penguin Computing, Transvirtual Technologies, LinuxWizardry, MontaVista, Helix Code and KDE. The LWN roving reporters are indebted to Red Hat's Nalin Dahyabhai for helping us solve a tricky network problem on our laptop and also to the good folks at the Free Software Foundation for providing a network connection.

On Tuesday we went back to LBE and visited more booths including the Linux Greenhouse, LPI, iRobot, and API Networks. LWN interviewed Caldera Systems CEO Ransom Love. Our Tuesday visit by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) booth prompted FSF advocate Robert J. Chassell to send us this essay on what was not seen at COMDEX. On Wednesday we traveled to the main Comdex show floor. Despite seeming incredibly busy, reports said that things had slowed down considerably since the first day. We found Kaspersky Lab, a company that sells anti-virus software for Linux.

• Sunday - Monday coverage which includes:
  • notes from the Bill Gates Keynote
  • Giant Fuzzy Animals
  • Lego plotters
  • Helix Code Gnome
  • the KDE desktop
• Tuesday - Wednesday coverage which includes:
  • the Linux Greenhouse
  • the Linux Professional Institute
  • the iRobot browser controlled robot
  • API Networks dual 833 Mhz Alpha rackmount box
  • Kaspersky Labs anti-virus software
• Ransom Love interview
• Robert Chassell essay