TORONTO — The Real World Linux 2004 conference has rolled into Canada with the open source world’s players in tow and High Performance Computing among their list of advances to show and tell.
In addition to HPC clustering, other tracks during the event, which kicks off in full Wednesday, will cover government, security, desktop, networking and High Performance Computing (HPC)/ clustering. The event has 40 seminars in total and the exhibit floor will host over 70 industry exhibitors.
Linux on the desktop is expected to be the first theme before the crowds here when GNOME and Ximian co-founder and current VP research and development at Novell, Nat Friedman, delivers a keynote address Wednesday.
Friedman is planning to discuss GNOME’s recently released version 2.6 of its Linux Desktop. Friedman’s co-founder at GNOME, and current CTO at Novell’s Ximian division, Miguel de Icaza, is expected to provide some details about the Mono Project, an open source implementation of the .NET development framework.
Juergen Geck, the CTO of Ximian’s sister company in the new Novell family, SuSe Linux (which still uses GNOME’s open source competitor KDE as its default desktop), is slated to discuss a a common standard for enterprise Linux systems management.
One of the most prominent government Linux installations in Canada involves the Western Canadian City of Calgary. HP’s Director of Linux Strategy, C.J. Coppersmith, is slated to deliver a keynote address Thursday and discuss Calgary’s use of Linux as a case study. The role and use of Linux among governments is among the topics coming up in a keynote speech by Jon “maddog” Hall, executive director of Linux International. IBM Canada’s President, Ed Kilroy, will talk about open source for e-business on demand.
The event has been heavily promoted in local Toronto media with coupons for free admission to the trade show and Keynote addresses in an apparent effort to bolster attendance and put a difficult year of trade shows behind the city. “Last year’s show was right in the middle of the SARS outbreak,” said Matthew Rice, president of the Canadian Linux Users Exchange (CLUE).
Although this year’s Linux show has an enterprise class flavor, Rice said “we want to show that there are still grassroots movements in the Linux and Open Source Software areas.”
