LinuxWorld Gets Down to Business
by Laurie Petrycki02/13/2001
I've been fortunate to attend every LinuxWorld, and the aura at this year's New York event was unique. The first LinuxWorld conferences were gritty and full of excitement about the possibility of Linux and other open source software entering the corporate IT limelight. But, Linux hadn't come out of the closet at that point. People who were excited to tell me about their Linux experiences made me promise not to mention them and their company to anyone else. Companies were afraid of having shareholders find out that all of their key Web services were run on "shareware" or "freeware."
A year later these fears, which were due primarily to ignorance, have been replaced with euphoria: Attendees were thinking of Linux domination, and companies were proud to announce that their server rooms were overflowing with Linux boxes. This year the party mood had toned down, and LinuxWorld in New York was all business. Most prevalent were the signs of significant advancement and opportunity in Linux clustering and embedded development.
Linux in the embedded space is going to be big. I envision many embedded developers who are using proprietary systems (and dealing with the accompanying licensing fees) moving to Linux. One developer told me that moving to Linux made his life much easier. Those currently in the Linux space who hope to break into the embedded area are finding it a challenge. But they will be able to overcome their lack of general knowledge of embedded systems development. The opportunity for embedded development in Linux will attract many developers who otherwise never thought of using open source or free software. There are limitless possibilities for what can be done with Linux in an embedded device. When you come right down to it, with no standard interface required and no Office-like product needed, Linux is a perfect solution.
A sneak-peek announcement of the first public version of Mobile Linux, an embedded version of Linux, was made by Transmeta. Mobile Linux's release later this year could be significant in the embedded space if it's not too focused on Transmeta's hardware.
In a related area, the Real Time Linux Foundation was announced. It will help solidify the fragmented real-time area. I noticed that Phil Daly, the author of O'Reilly's planned book on Real-Time Linux, is president of the organization.
Clustering was everywhere. Cray made the big announcement that it will soon begin selling Alpha-based Linux clusters. As improvements in clustering technology have flourished under Linux, and as these improvements have lowered the cost of supercomputers, customers have been turning to companies such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SGI, and Compaq instead of traditional big-iron vendors.
Don Becker and several other original developers of Beowulf announced the release of the first commercial cluster code through their company, Scyld Computing. The rumor is Cray may look to Scyld for its code.
The OSCAR (Open Source Cluster Application Resources) project, a collection of clustering software, was announced by the Open Cluster Group, which includes as members, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among others.
Taking over the desktop won't be easy for Linux, but there is good news. Linux is going to continue to succeed and grow in areas where the user doesn't require Office or where the user is a system administrator or a developer.
"Regular" end users will end up using Linux without even realizing it. Enter the TiVo user, the receptionist at your dentist's office or the clerk in your clothing store who is using embedded and thin client Linux systems, and not necessarily your grandmother using email. Case in point, how many TiVo users realize they're "running" Linux. Andrew Tridgell, the creator of Samba, never fails to amaze me, especially this time around. (I'm a TiVo user and a fan.) Andrew and others have hacked the TiVo to allow video to be streamed to a computer.
Dell, Compaq, HP, and IBM are pushing enterprises services, not efforts to bring Linux to the desktop. It will be interesting to watch if the newer Linux companies follow the same path as the traditional "server" companies.
Here's a listing of other happenings I found interesting.Borland announced its Kylix software programming tools (due mid-2001) to assist developers in porting Windows programs to Linux.
Dell, with the support of Red Hat, is attempting to build a special-purpose email server based on the sendmail code. Dell's press release states the product "...offers service providers and enterprise customers a range of optimized email hosting solutions running on Dell's PowerEdge servers. The bundle also includes one-year support from the expert team of sendmail."
Red Hat is getting together with Eazel to build versions of the Nautilus file management software package into future distributions of Linux. [Red Hat's press release.]
I also had an opportunity to take a little side trip away from the Javits Center to the new CollabNet office to talk about developments with Mozilla. Development on the new Mozilla platform is going to be exciting later this year. Check out mozdev.org if you're interested in more information.
Desktop dominance by Linux is something I'd personally like to see, but I'm afraid it's definitely a goal for the future. With a nod towards reality, it's nice to see Linux evolve to be a serious contender for high-end computing, development, and Web services.
Laurie Petrycki is an executive editor at O'Reilly & Associates and is responsible for technical books on open source and XML.
O'Reilly & Associates has published many Linux-related titles, including:
For more on O'Reilly's complete Linux collection, go to linux.oreilly.com.
