Spring Break
Linux World conference and expo held in Boston
Dennis Mongello
Issue date: 2/25/05 Section: Sci-Tech
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The LinuxWorld Conference & Expo just passed last week in Boston. The event was full of big name companies like Sun, AMD, Intel, IBM, HP, and more. It also gave the chance to lesser known companies to show off their products to the men and women of the business sector. It was mostly geared towards professionals and people in position to make big purchases for their companies. As such, I felt a little out of place there as a student who just uses Linux casually as their desktop operating system. Still, I did find some interesting things at the Expo.
The first thing that caught me eye was Project Looking Glass, a 3D window manager currently being developed by Sun Microsystems. The project is still very early in development, but the version running at the Expo was still impressive. Standard 2D ap-plications run fine. Their windows are given a little bit of depth and can be rotated at any angle. This lets you free up a lot of desktop real estate and can also allow you to get creative with how you place windows on your desktop.
They also ran a 3D program written specifically for the 3D environment. It was a jukebox with the images of CDs spinning around. This intuitive way of selecting music is just one of the benefits that can be achieved only with a 3D environment. Since it is still early in development, it is rough around the edges and nowhere near ready for a release, according to the Sun representative. He also said that the performance hit is only 5-10%. The project is open source. The Sun rep said this was get more ideas from different people. It also didn't seem like Sun was ready to commit a lot of people and money to the project, though. That is a shame because 3D interfaces is uncharted territory, and Sun can really make a mark on the industry by being the first to perfect the 3D window environment. For more information about the Looking Glass Project, visit https://lg3d.dev.java.net/ and http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/.
At the end of the Expo for the night, Oracle had an install-fest where they were giving out copies of its database to people on their laptops and helped them install it. They also hooked up two of their own laptops to a projector and tried to show the non laptop using crowd how to do it. While I was watching them work at it, I almost felt bad for laughing at them when it failed to install since I was eating the pizza that they provided. Almost. It was a nice event though, they had the free food, and also free beer for those attendees over 21. They even asked some trivia questions and gave out free T-shirts, mouse pads and copies of their Enterprise Database.
On Wednesday, Jay Beale, a computer security expert gave a presentation about Bastille Linux. Jay is the lead developer of this software and its goal is to harden various distributions of Linux (and Apple's OS X) by showing the user various weaknesses their machine may have, and how to fix it. The program then asks the user if it should go ahead and fix this weakness. This program makes hardening your system as simple as answering some "yes or no" questions. More important then just making the computer more secure, it also makes the user more secure by educating them about each weakness. It gives information like how an attacker could use a certain attack to gain control of their system, how to stop it, and if there would be any side effects. Jay and the Bastille team get their information from any reputable source they can find on Linux security, including SANS, and various other sources. More information about the project can be found at http://www.bastille-linux.org/.
The expo also had a lot of gadgets and devices running Linux. The most exciting by far was a prototype for a media center sporting Fedora Core 3 and a 64-bit AMD processor. Named Aries, this device has all the functionality you'd expect. It looks just like a sleek DVD player, and besides playing DVD's, it also plays MP3s and acts a digital video recorder and media storage device (it has a 200 GB hard drive). In the front of the box, there are 4 USB ports, a FireWire port, and the DVD drive. In the back, there is an additional USB port, and RCA and S-Video outputs. It is a shame that is lacking DVI and component outputs, but it is still a prototype, and those might show up in the production version. The developer of Aries sounded very enthusiastic to show it off and talk about its capabilities.
While the people who really got the most from the LinuxWorld Expo were the IT professionals, there still was some interesting items for the casual Linux user and technophile alike. It was a good place for the little companies to show off their new products next to the big names as well. Also, in the spirit of open source and freedom, of course, there were tons of handouts distributed around.
Dennis Mongello is a sophomore in information systems.
The first thing that caught me eye was Project Looking Glass, a 3D window manager currently being developed by Sun Microsystems. The project is still very early in development, but the version running at the Expo was still impressive. Standard 2D ap-plications run fine. Their windows are given a little bit of depth and can be rotated at any angle. This lets you free up a lot of desktop real estate and can also allow you to get creative with how you place windows on your desktop.
They also ran a 3D program written specifically for the 3D environment. It was a jukebox with the images of CDs spinning around. This intuitive way of selecting music is just one of the benefits that can be achieved only with a 3D environment. Since it is still early in development, it is rough around the edges and nowhere near ready for a release, according to the Sun representative. He also said that the performance hit is only 5-10%. The project is open source. The Sun rep said this was get more ideas from different people. It also didn't seem like Sun was ready to commit a lot of people and money to the project, though. That is a shame because 3D interfaces is uncharted territory, and Sun can really make a mark on the industry by being the first to perfect the 3D window environment. For more information about the Looking Glass Project, visit https://lg3d.dev.java.net/ and http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/.
At the end of the Expo for the night, Oracle had an install-fest where they were giving out copies of its database to people on their laptops and helped them install it. They also hooked up two of their own laptops to a projector and tried to show the non laptop using crowd how to do it. While I was watching them work at it, I almost felt bad for laughing at them when it failed to install since I was eating the pizza that they provided. Almost. It was a nice event though, they had the free food, and also free beer for those attendees over 21. They even asked some trivia questions and gave out free T-shirts, mouse pads and copies of their Enterprise Database.
On Wednesday, Jay Beale, a computer security expert gave a presentation about Bastille Linux. Jay is the lead developer of this software and its goal is to harden various distributions of Linux (and Apple's OS X) by showing the user various weaknesses their machine may have, and how to fix it. The program then asks the user if it should go ahead and fix this weakness. This program makes hardening your system as simple as answering some "yes or no" questions. More important then just making the computer more secure, it also makes the user more secure by educating them about each weakness. It gives information like how an attacker could use a certain attack to gain control of their system, how to stop it, and if there would be any side effects. Jay and the Bastille team get their information from any reputable source they can find on Linux security, including SANS, and various other sources. More information about the project can be found at http://www.bastille-linux.org/.
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The expo also had a lot of gadgets and devices running Linux. The most exciting by far was a prototype for a media center sporting Fedora Core 3 and a 64-bit AMD processor. Named Aries, this device has all the functionality you'd expect. It looks just like a sleek DVD player, and besides playing DVD's, it also plays MP3s and acts a digital video recorder and media storage device (it has a 200 GB hard drive). In the front of the box, there are 4 USB ports, a FireWire port, and the DVD drive. In the back, there is an additional USB port, and RCA and S-Video outputs. It is a shame that is lacking DVI and component outputs, but it is still a prototype, and those might show up in the production version. The developer of Aries sounded very enthusiastic to show it off and talk about its capabilities.
While the people who really got the most from the LinuxWorld Expo were the IT professionals, there still was some interesting items for the casual Linux user and technophile alike. It was a good place for the little companies to show off their new products next to the big names as well. Also, in the spirit of open source and freedom, of course, there were tons of handouts distributed around.
Dennis Mongello is a sophomore in information systems.
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