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More on LinuxWorld

by | Aug 16, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, Uncategorized

Interesting post on LinuxWorld that I found on Slashdot.

Bernard Golden made two really telling comments in his column:

Firstly how the show attendee has changed over the last two years:

The crowd at LinuxWorld looked liked mainstream corporate IT workers, in comparison to previous LinuxWorlds, where nose rings and “interesting” hair dominated. A large proportion of the attendees dressed like corporate IT workers. From what I heard, most went to the show to get practical open source information. The conservatively-dressed folks in the commercial vendor booths provided just that.

This is very true. I was at LinuxWorld in August 2003 when Novell announced the acquisition of Ximian – decidedly 75% hacker/geek audience. This year way below 40%.

Second – on the ‘banishment of the .org community’:

The .org pavilion was banished to an upstairs mezzanine. This caused many attendees to miss it. I felt that it sent a message that the .orgs are unimportant. I think the .org pavilion should have been in the middle of the main show floor; but the producers put a large kiosk of PCs there instead.

I think the show producers had a lot of commentary on this during the pre-show and early show hours. Read my earlier post on the swing to recognise small community projects as best of show.

Final note:

I saw a fellow wearing a shirt with a familiar IT vendor logo. He was actually an actor, hired to stand in the booth and introduce the promotional video. The actor looked like a middle-tier product marketing manager: average height, wire frame glasses, reserved manner…a real faux-techie.

I’m sure I know which vendor this was – and it’s not Novell.

LinuxWorld & Expo San Francisco

by | Aug 15, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, Uncategorized, ZENworks

Well – it was a busy week (hence no blogging).

ZENworks 7 Linux Management was nominated for a ‘Best of Show’ award – this year it looks like all of the judges awarded to small, non-commercial projects. ‘Best of Show’ for Systems Management went to the OpenNMS project – a small, recently revived monitoring project. It looks pretty good.

Kudos still goes to the extended ZENworks team for building a strong and vibrant product. There was a lot of interest from the attendees at the show.

LinuxWorld again

by | Aug 7, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, Uncategorized, ZENworks

It’s time for LinuxWorld again.

ZENworks Linux Management has done well in the last year or so – winning a Product Excellence Award for systems management at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, August 2004 and again in Boston, February 2005

Linux World 2004

The challenge is how ZENworks 7 Linux Management fares this time – we are again shortlisted for an award.

ZENworks 7 Linux Management is a really innovative product – it will be good to see reaction from potential customers at the show.

The Novell engineering teams in Provo, Cambridge and Bangalore really made this a groundbreaking product – adding OS deployment, policy management, inventory and remote control to the already strong software and patch distribution capabilities.

Techapalooza 2005

by | Aug 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

Deja vu.

Techapalooza 2005

Old-style SE training comes round again. Most of the Category Specialists from North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific are here in Provo this week for training. (EMEA were trained a few weeks ago).

I’ve been in ZENworks training all week – competitive, roadmap, new product – and now ZENworks 7 Linux Management training run by my good friend Doc Hodges.

Linux – better plug and play soon?

by | Jul 29, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

A great post from Greg K-H about the Linux Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) work that’s going on:

It was basically a presentation from Kay Sievers showing udev and HAL working in real-time handing a very nasty chain of USB devices containing a bunch of usb-storage and card reader devices on a USB hub. The speed at which all of the devices were discovered, recognized by the kernel, and then properly named in a persistent way was amazing. The card reader also handled removal and insertion of media from it, destroying and creating the proper device nodes properly (thanks to HAL which creates a thread for every removable device, just like other operating systems do to handle devices that can’t detect media changes.)

This will be the next step in Linux gaining acceptance – especially on the desktop and laptop.

I look at my use of Windows and Linux on laptops – I plug in all variety of USB and Firewire devices; Windows tends to do well – recognising old and new iPods, CD/DVD writers, thumb drives, camera memory sticks etc etc. Generally everything works well – only the occasional ‘clunk – please reinsert device’. NLD 9 tends to be a manual hunt for the device, mount, umount and hopefully things work well. It’s a pain and totally unacceptable for the ‘novice’.

ZENworks Linux Management – customer success

by | Jul 29, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Linux, Uncategorized, ZENworks

Great customer quote about ZENworks Linux Management:

Chisholm said with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 OPSM can apply security-related upgrades from a central point, with full control and reporting.

“Within this more secure and up-to-date environment we can better ensure the integrity of our business information and transactions,” he said. “Due to our large number of store locations we also needed a system that could be centrally managed and monitored. Novell’s Zenworks Linux Management offers greater control as it will enable us to update our operating systems and applications from one central point with fewer interruptions to users. We’ll also be able to support an increasing number of stores without increasing our IT staff numbers.”

Full post at the Australian LinuxWorld site