Ohio LinuxFest was a blast
Yesterday was my second Ohio LinuxFest, and man was it fun. I spent the day with 1,000+ computer geeks, all of whom have heard of Linux. It seems rare when I find someone who has heard of Linux from a source other than me.
Anyway, this convention, held annually, is in Columbus, Ohio. It is an all-day event with speakers and booths devoted to Linux and open-source software in general.
The opening keynote speaker was Max Spevack, a Fedora Core project leader. He gave a great talk about the importance of open-source software.
"Open-source software is all about taking the power away from a few people and spreading it around to everyone," he said.
Later, he added, "Proprietary software doesn't get you to continue to use it because it is the best product, it gets you to continue to use it because you can't get your data out of it."
Mat Kovach gave a really interesting talk about using open-source software and several online resources to compile and process statistics for baseball.
Andrew Pitonyak, who I met at last year's LinuxFest (and was the first "online" friend I ever met "offline") did an excellent job of talking about "OpenOffice.org: Past, Present and Future." When talking about Sun Microsystem's decision to buy StarOffice in the late 1990s, he commented, "Most of their (Sun's) users had two computers, one to run Solaris and one to run Windows for Microsoft Word. After looking at the number of users, Sun decided it would be cheaper to buy a company." He also added that OpenOffice.org was spun off of StarOffice, which was started in 1984, five years before Microsoft Word came on to the scene.
Jon "maddog" Hall gave a very good speech as usual, talking about the importance of open-source software in areas are where computers are hard to come by or afford. The free software gives these people a chance at getting access to job skills, information, and communication.
"We all watched TV and the internet for minute-by-minute updates as Hurricane Felix bore down on Mexico. But there were hundreds of fishermen who died within sight of shore because they had no idea a hurricane was coming until it hit them. We need to get information to the people who need it most," Hall said.
There were several booths with information as well, from companies like Novell, Ubuntu, GNOME, Foresight, IBM, Red Hat, and many others. I got a lot of great information that I haven't had time to process yet.
It was a very fun time, and the fact that I got to hang out with so many Linux users made me feel like less of a loner for using Linux. I do know a few people who use Linux, but not that many. But the number is growing, and I find that encouraging.
I'm already looking forward to next year.












