Over 20,000 members of the Free Software/Open Source community attended the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York City from February 2-4, 2000. The Expo was a great testament to the ongoing growth in the community. The show was held on a large floor of the Jacob K. Javits Center and turned out to be the largest LinuxWorld show to date. There were over 180 exhibitors, from large corporations such as Compaq and IBM to some very young, growing companies. Although the simultaneously occurring Linux Expo in Paris called away a few notable dignitaries (i.e. founder of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman), the event was widely attended by people from all over the world.

Original author, and first in command of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, opened the show with a keynote that discussed the future of the Linux operating system. He eased fears that Linux would succumb to fragmentation, as the commercial UNIX-like operating systems had, by arguing that fragmentation could only benefit Linux. It is fragmentation that has ensured that Linux is a viable product for use in everything from embedded systems to supercomputers. The Open Source model of Linux, Linus argues, will prevent companies from wasting energy by redeveloping solutions that have already been done by others.

Linus also talked about the work he and many others are doing on the Linux kernel. He said that development of the 2.3 kernel was almost over and that soon he would freeze 2.3 and begin the stabilization process for the first of the pre 2.4 kernels. Linus mentioned that some of the new features to expect in 2.4 would include USB and FireWire/IEEE-1394 support, as well as the inclusion of a journaling file system once standards are resolved. At the end of his speech, Linus awarded the IDG/Linus Torvalds Linux Community Award to the XFree86 Project.

The show floor was filled to capacity with exhibitors and attendees. The booth of the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG), the Host Sponsor LUG (Linux Users Group), was situated near the entrance to the .org Pavilion, booth number 1. We had three machines provided by VA Linux on which we demonstrated Quake III and DVDs to attract passers by. We had a great amount of traffic at the booth; a continuous flow of people coming over to ask questions, learn about the group, and collect the free CD's. Over the duration of the show we must have distributed thousands of discs, which will hopefully get a lot of people started with Linux (or FreeBSD). While on his tour around the show floor, Linus Torvalds stopped by the booth to talk with us and pose for a photo.

The rest of the .org Pavilion was occupied by other important community organizations. The Free Software Foundation and Gnome project teamed up and shared the booth next to NYLUG. Debian, Stampede, Themes.org, and Brookhaven National Laboratory were just a few of the exhibitors who occupied other positions in the .org Pavilion. At the far end of the Pavilion was an e-mail garden of VA Linux machines - a very popular attraction.

Outside the Pavilion displays were larger and more commercial. Many of the larger companies rolled out their own carpets and created complex architectural structures to carry their logos high into the sky, so that they would be visible from across the floor.

The booth of the Cornerstone Sponsor of LinuxWorld, VA Linux Systems, was the first in the entrance to the exhibit floor. In addition to demonstrating many different systems, VA invited companies and other organizations (such as NVIDIA and Blender) to showcase some of their recent Linux products running on VA hardware. One major announcement came on Thursday morning that VA would be purchasing Andover.net in a stock swap deal valued at over $800 million.

Several companies came up with unique solutions to attract visitors. Andover provided beanbags to create a lounging area for Slashdot fans. Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates, Robin "Roblimo" Miller, Emmett Plant, and other Andover people spent time at the booth. The BSD?s got together in a determined attempt to attract some attention from the heavily Linux-biased Open Source crowd. They hired two "booth babes" attired as BSD Daemons in red, "tight fitting but not revealing" outfits to pose for pictures with visitors. Their booth was always busy, and it seems as if they did achieve the attention they were trying to get (if perhaps their methods were questionable...).

Our favorite bandwagon-jumper, LinuxOne, was present and doing a rather brisk business selling copies of Mandra...er, LinuxOne Lite. The head of the company was not there, probably fearing his personal safety. We talked with their people briefly, and they said that they had gotten off to a bad start and that now, things are different. They said that they have new people and are taking a different approach. The people at uClinux, in the booth opposite LinuxOne, said that the company was occasionally mocked by passers by.

Not surprisingly for a show of such size, companies large and small distributed lots of free stuff. Almost everyone gave out t-shirts. Word spread fast that Compaq was giving away high-bounce balls equipped with lights that flashed when the ball was bounced. SGI also was a good place to look for free things. They gave away special badge holders, pens, t-shirts, pins, key chain flashlights, and SGI magnetic poetry, among other things. Ecrix was giving out tape drives to those most outrageously decorated with their pins. Copyleft had a contest for a Leatherman which went to the person with the most creative answer to the question, "Why does a geek need a Leatherman?"

On Wednesday evening, LinuxCare hosted a large party on a different floor at the Javits Center. The attendance was excellent, with a crowd sufficiently filling the smaller show floor (actually, the one where The Bazaar was held in December). Under the slightly dimmed lights, arcade games, ping-pong, air hockey, and pool tables, in addition to mini basketball hoops, provided amusement for many. The atmosphere was enhanced by illuminated, dancing windsocks and projected sweeping penguins. In the main room there was seating, along with food and drink for all. On a large screen at the center, the latest popular music videos were projected. The air was dense in places with fog through which colored spotlights beamed. Linus even came with his family to play a few rounds of pool.

Dr. Larry M. Augustin, founder and CEO of VA Linux Systems, gave a keynote on the second day of the Expo. He spoke of the growth of the Linux Community. He then talked about Trillian Linux, which offers support for the upcoming 64-bit Intel Itanium processor. He demonstrated an Itanium system playing video under Linux. It is a significant accomplishment to have Linux support for the processor before its shipment has begun.

Augustin then talked about VA's SourceForge Project. He hopes that SourceForge will take advantage of the open source development model to bring users into the development process and expand the number of developers. He cites the examples of Quake and NFS (Network File System) which both experienced more development interest after appearing on SourceForge. Today SourceForge supports over 1,600 projects and nearly 10,000 developers and is still experiencing rapid growth. Augustin also announced VA?s acquisition of Andover.net.

All in all it was a very successful show, for both the exhibitors and attendees. The show affirmed the Free Software/Open Source community's strength and continued growth.

-Gregory Pennington, Aaron Grogan, David Danziger