It was a good event. It seemed like they Texas Linux Fest doubled in size from their first year.
The local hackerspace had some really cool projects they were showing off. They built a really nice arcade cabinet (complete with the ability to take quarters) and they had a bunch of cool demos of things they had done with the Kinect (they had a live demo going using a netbook!).
Being a server room geek, I spent a lot of time ogling and fantasizing about HP's new dual layered blades. 4 quad core processors with up to 36GB per processor memory (though the demo only had 12GB per proc). The chassis had Infiniband built into it and it linked in to other chassis'. And that is all in a single blade! Ah....I would love to power my cluster with those bad boy's.
:- P ------------------
Beside the drool worthy server equipment they were also showcasing their new tablet. I wasn't just unimpressed, I was slightly repulsed. I saw nothing new in it that everyone else hasn't already done. The interface was a bit bulky for me, and when I got to play with it there was a noticeable lag with all the feature graphics they had turned on. I am hoping for their sake that it was just a prototype and that they will work out those kinks before they release....On the plus side it runs Android.
It was also interesting to see Facebook and Host Gator hiring. The girl at Facebook thought i was messing with her and refused to believe that I didn't have a Facebook account
Host gator was not only taking resumes, but one of my friends talked to them when it opened (9:30am or so) and they had called and set up a interview by noon. They were talking to any and every Linux nerd they can get regardless of experience. The lady said they were looking to fill some 500 position in the next few months and then later this summer they may be hiring up to another 1000. I haven't really double checked that number, but thats what they told us and they were certainly calling people.
The Red Hat guys were impressive as usual. Even though I loath RPM it is *REALLY* hard to argue RPM vs DEB with the guys who know so much. Especially when I am having to write down references of things I needed to go look up.
Every one of the guys I talked to had at /least/ their RHCE and one guy had a bunch more. I was just super impressed because I have been to trade shows where $VENDOR have salesmen manning the booth and when you ask them a question that isn't on their flyer, they are hopeless. These guys were sharp and could not only pitch the product but could answer any questions right away. They also did the SELinux talk which was really good (and they answered a bunch of question for the Novell guy in the OpenSuse talk....after getting permission to do so from the host...still funny though).
Debian was there and I was slightly disappointed in that they didn't really have anything going on but a showcasing of the new Squeeze installer in multiple languages. They didn't hand out shwag this year either.
Oh well, I got a nifty shirt last year and I am still obsessed with them.
Dell was there, they didn't have anything that really caught my attention but I chatted with several of them for a while. Some of them were sales guys, but there were a few engineers who knew the specs and details (which is obviously a good thing in my opinion).
Google paid for a bunch of stickers, handouts, ect but there was no one there which was interesting. It was like they forked over some cash and a box of stuff and said "Here take it. Bye!" Whatever. Still got shwag!
TI had a booth hyping some of their new embedded stuff. Not really my cup of tea, so I didn't pay too much attention.
FOSS manuals was there again. It was nice seeing them (For those who don't know I wrote a manual for them and am working on another so me seeing and talking to them probably means more to me but anyway... Good group and I encourage participation).
There were a ton of other vendors there too. Most I either didn't interact with or didn't care so much for.
So that was a quick run down. If you can make it next year, I highly encourage it.
Have a good weekend everyone!
~Stack~
fwlug_generic_flier.pdf
