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Linux World New York City - 2004
Date: January 22nd, 2004
Place: Jacob Javit's Center New York City
This year's Linux World field trip started early on Thursday, January 22, at
the Hamilton Train Station for the Linux Users Group in Princeton.
Many of us met at 9AM at the train station and boarded the 9:12AM train for
the city. On the way up we were joined by a couple more members at the New
Brunswick station.
On arrival we all set a meeting time for 1PM in the lobby area and took off
in separate directions. This year there was a noticeably reduced floor plan,
even smaller than last year, as many of us noted, still there was a lot of
ground to cover and we made good use of our time.
The .org pavilion was smaller than in past years...but still teaming with
activity. Still...it didn't have the "presence" as it had in other years.
The Linux Show program was interesting, but there didn't seem to be that much
of a big to do of things. Evidence of that was the make-shift "Fedora" sign
over the booth, in black permanent marker, kinda shabby.
William and I checked our mail at the "Email Garden", within the first hour.
The email garden was an amply equipped platform of PC's running Linux
Desktops, suitable for checking email, checking on your servers, or just
about any other minor networking geeks need to do. I used Mozilla to access
the Exchange server at work and check my work mail...and was able to ssh into
my machine at home to check my personal mail. Very nice Desktops and a great
convenience for conference goers. William had to remind me to clear the cache
for the web browser and delete my key from my know_hosts file under ~/.ssh
Security is a discipline I'm not too aggressive about, however I'm learning.
We spent a few minutes at the Microsoft booth....YES the Microsoft
booth. They were handing out Windows Services for Unix v3.5 disks...and
I got one. They were also handing out another brochure bound disk set
including a demo version of Windows 2003 Server (limited trial) and another
disk called "Essentials of Windows -for the Unix Administrator". Seemed
interesting enough...and the microsmurfs that were there weren't "in your
face" obnoxious, so I hung and listened to their spew for a couple of
minutes. They were OK guys.
Made the rounds to all of the booths. No one really standing out in my
opinion with the exception of maybe Novell. Novell had a lot of activity at
their booth, and with good reason. They were giving out their Novell
Nterprise Linux Services Evaluation kits left and right. This 6-DISK SET (!)
comes with 3 United Linux for Suse standard server disks, one Suse Standard
server disk and the Nterprise Service for Linux disk, as well as a Novell
products disk. This booth was jamming all day from what I could see. I met
one of my vendor friends up there and he spent a lot of time quizzing the
reps there about how to roll this out to current Novell customers and just
change the platform to Linux right underneath of them. Apparently it's quite
possible to migrate quickly with little noticeable interruption in services.
I'll believe it when I see it, still - Novell was the impressive show for the
day. Even their presentation was good...which is unusual. Better than
spending 2 minutes at the HP presentation while they demonstrated
"un-obtanium" 64-bit processor clustering to a crowd that looked like they
couldn't even check their mail successfully.
Finally it was 1:00PM, time for lunch. After a quick smoke break out in the
freezing cold NYC air, I joined the crowd at the pre-approved meeting spot
while we all mull-ed over where to go eat. I couldn't wait anymore...I was
getting queasy from hunger so I suffered through the line at the "Subway snack
cart" right in the lobby for a $4 pretzel. I smeared some mustard on it, but
it still didn't help the rubbery texture that thing had going down. How do
you screw-up a pretzel?
The crowd exited the Javits center and William led the way to a nice little
bar/restaurant named "Shutters" about 4-5 blocks away. The place was empty
and we all took a large back corner of the room on one big long table. The
waiter was excellent and was able to quickly serve us a round of drinks prior
to ordering. The food was great and there was a nice variety of very
reasonably priced selections without dropping a mint. Very un-NYC like.
We had a great lunch with good food and good conversation. The restaurant was
close by, and inviting....a good place to keep in mind for future trips
(well...not next year since it's in Boston!).
After lunch several of us headed back for a second round of touring the Expo
hall. Made a point to stop at Genaware and chat with Gina and friends about
them coming to give our group a presentation. Ed firmed up the date and now
we're expecting a good show for our March meeting.
I made sure to drop a card in Novell's fish-bowl and I'm hoping on a call....I
think it would be great to have a LUG/IP sponsored Novell night where they
demonstrate their new Linux Nterprise Services to the group and the general
public.
About 4:00ish we decided to call it quits. The balance of us remaining
decided to head back to Shutters to whet our whistles for another hour or so
whilst deciding what to do with the rest of our evening. The bar was
practically empty so we were able to have some good conversation reflecting
on this years new technology offerings and the immediate future for Linux.
After a few drinks we decided on TGI Friday's for Dinner, right next to
Madison Sqr. Garden, where we had an enjoyable meal despite the noisy crowd,
typical of what you might expect at the dinner our in NYC.
After dinner we just managed to catch the 7:40pm train back to Trenton. The
train ride was normal, unless you consider standing in the middle of the
cars abnormal, but it happened to me before so it wasn't so bad. There was a
little slow up in Elizabeth due to a truck that got stuck under the railroad
bridge, we got a close up shot of the truck from our view in the middle of
the car. We also met an interesting conductor who explained the delay and
then entertained us with stories about how fast the trains "used to go", when
regulations weren't quite as stiff as they are today. By that time we had
managed to get some seats and he kept us quietly entertained until we arrive
in Hamilton. I would seem to me that a long 30 year career on the railroad
isn't such a bad deal after all. You get to meet a lot of interesting people
and see a part of the world that the rest of us would gladly ignore.
Unfortunately, its doubtful there will be a 2005 Linux World trip, being that
they have decided to move it to Boston. My final note for this year would be
to ask that everyone who went please respond to the Linux World Survey that
was sent out last week to the email address that you registered for the show
with. The final question on the survey was whether or not you intended to
attend Linux World in Boston next year (2005)? I responded with a
"definitely not". I think its a mistake to move the show, however I do
suppose that there will be another Linux World NYC in the future, but it
looks as if next year is gonna be a "bye" for LUG/IP and probably a whole lot
of local Linux users who look forward to attending every year.
smed
Field Trip Attendee's:
Gene &friends, Russel, MikeV, ChrisL, Edward, smed, William, JohnL, MattG, SteveD
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