LinuxWorld 2008: Enthusiasm Up, Attendance Down

It was apparent early on that this was not going to be a sold-out LinuxWorld Conference & Expo at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Malaise in the macroeconomy and general travel difficulties were generally thought to be the culprits. Only 7,500 people registered, and perhaps half that number actually showed up. LinuxWorld has attracted up to 15,000 in past years.

This glowing blue display from Access Systems America caught everybody’s eye at the main entrance.

The largest penguin in the room belonged to Europe’s OBM.org, which makes enterprise-class e-mail and calendar software that competes with Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes.

Rackable Systems offered tours of its portable data center, ICE Cube, which can be driven to a location and simply plugged in to add supporting computing power to an existing data center or to supply a stand-alone data center for any purpose.

IT job clearinghouse Dice.com sponsored an “Escape Lounge” refreshment booth that was one of the most popular spots at the show.

This camouflage-painted paramilitary truck-

On display in the Linux Garage: “Junior,” a specially fitted Volkswagen Passat wagon that uses a pair of Linux servers as its “brains” to guide it at safe speeds on city streets. Specialized sensors get the car up to speed limits, keep the car in the middle of the lane, keep it away from other cars and bring it to a stop as needed. Videos of the Passat in action on a small-town street were displayed at the Garage. Want to come along for a ride? Or don’t you trust the “driver”?

Emerson Network Power featured a card magician at its booth who kept his audience smiling in amazement.

Much of the emphasis at the conference was on cloud computing, as evidenced by the GoGrid booth and display.

Because of the smaller number of attendees at the show, people interested in specific technologies often received tutorial-like briefings.

One of the popular annual projects at LinuxWorld is an area on the show floor where people can drop off used or unneeded computers, peripherals and software to be distributed free of charge to schools.