Episode: 449
Title: HPR0449: Fericyde and Damin talk about Ohio Linux Fest
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0449/hpr0449.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 20:48:27

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All right, ready to rock and roll?
Oh, I'm ready.
All right, so apparently we are doing an episode of Hacker Public Radio, which is, I believe, run by Klatu and a bunch of other people.
And we've been tasked with discussing Ohio Linux Fest and a little bit focusing a little bit more on the sort of geek aspects of what Ohio Linux Fest is about.
And so I think the good format to start with would be to introduce who we are and why we're here.
And then talk a little bit about the schedule for Ohio Linux Fest and what's on the plate and then talk about how that can apply to technical people that have a sort of geeky interest.
So any objections to that?
That sounds good.
Cool. Well, I've started off the same, my name is Greg Bainline. I am the person who's been using Linux since the initial release of Linux back in 1994.
And I've been played with SLS, Slackware, pretty much every distribution up the chain until it became impossible to play with all of them.
I run a company in Cleveland on how called N2Net, which is based on Linux technology and uses a lot of Linux technology to conduct what we do.
And I've been involved with Ohio Linux Fest for about ever since its beginning, actually, which is I think we're in seven years now, Paul.
We are on, I believe this will be year seven.
Seven years. So that's a little bit about me. I go by the hacker name of Damon, which comes from my old BBS days, way back in the old school days of freaking and BBSs, if you guys actually remember modems.
Is there something called modem? Yes. Modem.
Modulator, demodulator.
That's right.
When 1200 BOD was considered high speed.
Yeah, because there were smaller modems, 110 BOD all the way up to God forbid, 300 BOD, like the real death.
And I'm proud to say that my first modem was actually an acoustic coupler like in the movie War Games.
So I'm not quite that far back. I'm Paul Ferris.
And I will be making an announcement sometime possibly at Ohio Linux Fest, but probably shortly thereafter is to where my new engagement is.
And my background is mostly systems and architecture and infrastructure and deploying Linux and enterprise class environments.
I tend to be in automation, freaking nature and focus on processed people and technology and the best way to make those things work together in the culture of your company.
So my background with Linux, I started playing with it. It's a very end of 1993, early 94.
I started supporting it on internet relay chat for a really long time, probably 95 92 somewhere around 99.
And began writing basically journalistic type x2a's articles and so on and got to manage my favorite website at the time linux today.com.
Since then, that's when I really got into the enterprise stuff.
And lately have been doing a lot with IBM products, we running a top of Linux web sphere and portal and commerce and MQ and things like that.
But my passion has always been free software and Linux and just in general the way that they're transforming our business landscape and the types of solutions that you can now have for free.
You couldn't buy, you know, four or five years ago, 10 years ago. It was impossible to even, you know, get quality. This is high.
To me, it's a great time to be an IT and a great time to be a geek. Just so many things can go on that you couldn't easily do before.
I think what's particularly interesting is that there are so many opportunities as you pointed out, there are so many different tracks of interest.
You've got people that are getting highly into kernel development drivers or driver development. You've got people that are getting into application development and there's something for everyone.
You know, my father and some of his friends, he's a minister, now he's a Linux for the desktop. It's not unheard of. I used to be something people snickered at, but it's actually happening now with these netbooks.
People are actually using Linux a lot more for their desktop solution. There's embedded work that you point out. Linux is in all kinds of things that you'd never desk.
I have a Tom Tom here and I'm sitting in my car and we'll repeat this talk. It's a GPS that comes with an embedded copy of Linux. It's solving all kinds of problems about people really knowing that it's there.
I believe it was an article by Nick Petroly a long time ago who said that as Linux took over markets and stuff, people wouldn't even know because it would be like electricity or something.
You don't think about what's under the hood kind of thing. It's hidden.
I don't even think about the fact that my Sony TV runs Linux. It just works.
One of the nice things that's going into the Ohio Linux is all these different types of deep culture type people.
The people that are into Linux for the different reasons are going to be showing up and converging on Columbus Ohio.
What I really love about the event typically is just the diversity of people, the types of people you get to meet and everybody's typically pretty social.
If you say, hey, what are you doing? They'll tell you, whatever it is, whether it's systems management or kernel development or whatever, Apache.
Typically, it's very interesting and oftentimes if there's a talk going on about something you care about or birds of a feather session or whatever, if you're into Linux and your geek, there's something for you at this event.
Which is always amazing to me. It's gone from something so small. I was just getting all the user groups together initially to something that's basically probably one of the best events in America.
I would definitely agree. I think one question that I have and one thing I think we should probably discuss is what actually, what is a geek?
What constitutes a geek? Because in the historical sense, especially from the old school perspective, geeks were considered like such as people in the Revenge of the Nerds.
So what does a current geek, what's the meaning of the current word geek?
Well, I think here's a goal. It was a term of scoring. In Revenge of the Nerds is perfect. It is the quintessential, let's paint these people with social misfits.
And today, when somebody calls you a geek, they mean it's something almost a badge of honor.
I think that the misperception is that everyone who's a geek is really bad social skills or whatever. I think that that was the original thing that painted your bad on now.
I think people do understand that yeah, there is a really common trait where people love computers or technology more than they like interfacing with people.
But that doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing if you've made a really cool living or you're making a world a better place with software, which is I think how it's perceived now.
You're one of these computer artist type people and you're doing something that the average general in the populist can't do, which is actually make these things sing and do the things that everyone wishes they could do with them.
That's an important point, I think that at least when I think of the term geek, I think of somebody that I have a lot of respect for, somebody who has taken the time to learn the technology and can bend the technology and make technology do what it is that they're looking to do.
I mean, I don't at all look at it as a negative connotation anymore as it used to have. In fact, I'm kind of proud to say that I am a geek in a lot of different areas.
I might take it up.
In the episode of Dilbert, where his mom is basically, he's a flashback scene and he's talking.
The mom has taken him to the doctor and the doctor is going to, is the doctor revealed to his mother that he's going to be an engineer.
It starts out with this description that somebody who's capable of doing all these things with technology but unfortunately is unable to converse with human being, or whatever, his mom's like, well, he'd be able to lead a normal life.
He's like, no, he'll be an engineer and he's like, oh no.
I think that it's funny now, but it used to be painful.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I see that all the time with customers.
Customers, you know, they look to me to solve a lot of problems for them.
That sort of badge of geek is what, I mean, look at Geeksquad. Geeksquad has made a business out of actually taking that term to the next level.
It's not some other thing. They could have said IT professional or something crazy like that.
They expect a guy to look kind of nerdy and be driving around in a Volkswagen Beetle. It's been painted black and white like a police car.
I mean, seriously, it's definitely gone to another level of almost, you know, like a basketball team kind of thing.
Maybe not quite as much in the groupie front, but definitely on the respect front. You've got that word for sure, right?
I can't think of anyone calling me a geek in recent times and not feeling that they were trying to paint me a high compliment.
But the interesting thing is they almost inevitably follow it up with that. I don't mean this in a bad way.
Like we're not past that yet. It's still got something to say like that.
I remember all island except about four years back when it was in the convention center and there was a modeling convention going on at the same time. Do you remember this?
Yeah, the juxtaposition of really, really cute models versus the crowd at all island except was just an interesting.
It was a very interesting time.
I mean, you take two totally diametrically opposed people on the planet. Here you've got a whole bunch of guys that are wearing t-shirts and the essence of what they're saying is, I am not how I look.
I'm everything about what I can do. You know what I mean?
And on the other side, you've got the models.
They're all veneer, you know, and I think it was Mike Messy, who's the founder of the event roughly.
I mean, he's staying there and he says, I was in line for some food and this mother's daughter, you know, there's a mother and daughter, model combination.
He was looking at one of the guys, you know, from a high Linux system, your mom like, grab your pulled out of the way like, don't look over there.
Don't be like that. You'll get back.
It was perfect, but it was exactly what we're talking about in terms of being a geek and I thought it was funny as I'll get out.
Well, one of the things I think that's particularly interesting is that last night, Beth made an announcement on the Linux link tech show, which is another podcast out there.
That a pair of people showing up for one of the early penguin tracks, which is the podcasters and listeners unite a panel that's happening on Friday.
There is a group, there is two people that are going to be getting married at Linux Fest.
I heard that's geeky. That's really, that's pushing the envelope for me.
I'm congratulating this.
Why for something like that?
You know, the fact that they chose to know how Linux Fest is volumes.
It does, it does. They, at least from their perspective, they said that Ohio Linux Fest is one of the best events of the year for them and that they figured that they might as well memorialize it.
I typically get something myself called the post Ohio Linux Fest Blues, which is essentially me coming down at the event and it's got to wait another year.
Yeah, I typically call that like an extended hangover.
Oh, it's terrible. Well, because it is typically the dead end of the world.
I've had to, I've had to cut back on that Greg.
Yeah, well, you know, we're supposed to be...
We're supposed to be the older and more responsible group and the youngsters are supposed to be carrying it on the banner of that.
Oh, my God.
Linux has always had a kernel beer message, so...
Yeah, that's the Apple Party.
That's definitely worth mentioning, too.
I don't think I've ever seen Geekswrap source code before or since, you know, going to the afterparty Ohio Linux Fest.
And who's running it this year?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
Unfortunately, the guys from NaughtyCon, Froggy and Tiger, couldn't make it out because they've got a prior commitment.
So they've been running it for the past couple of years.
Now, NaughtyCon's another conference that it's based in Cleveland, Ohio and is definitely one of those things that I would call a French geeky event that gets into some definitely...
some definitely interesting perspectives.
But I believe that we've got a DJ schedule and we're going to be working with Google on the afterparty.
And there'll be some, you know, typical afterparty fare.
A little bit of food, a little bit of drinks, a little bit of dancing and some music.
And plenty of what I've heard John Todd refer to from Digiom as the hallway track, which of course is, in my opinion, some of the most interesting discussions that happen at conferences are those that happen outside of the confrines of the conference rooms and outside of the presentations.
You know, he just happened to be, oh jeez, hey, aren't you the guy that wrote Linux pipes or Unix pipes?
Yes, I've dug back all right.
You'll be there this year, which is amazing.
There isn't in no way I can think of except for VMS digital that I learned a long time ago that does not encompass the area of pipe on the command line.
And the fact that we're going to have the guy that invented the extremely exciting to me.
Absolutely.
Well, I think one of the things I wanted to kind of correct, not correct, but to just set the record straight.
Clad 2 had done a podcast earlier this week.
And he had mentioned that he wanted to get people coming on Friday because he said that the Friday stuff was going to be free and that he wasn't sure about the Saturday stuff.
But I just wanted to set the record straight that, oh, how Linux Fest has always had a mission of being accessible to the widest group of people.
So we don't have any age restrictions at all.
It would be a comfortable environment to bring kids or students.
But it all Saturdays free and Friday that you pay for, that's the thing.
There are certain classes. Well, that's the interesting thing.
Actually, in looking at the schedule this year, it looks like it's actually expanded out to be three days.
We finally broke in that barrier.
And there is a full set of activities actually happening on Friday.
There is the Ohio Linux Fest University Tutorials track, which is being put on by lobster.
There is a Linux Basics class, which is running concurrently with that, which is being handled by, I think, Freaky Columbus, which is essentially an introduction to Linux and you build your own computer.
And when you walk out of there, you have a PC to walk out.
Those are all classes that you have to sign up for in advance at the website www.ohiletics.org and choose the highest level package.
I can't remember the name off my head.
Then there is also concurrently a hackathon running from 9 to 11, which is basically various open source projects getting together to bug squash and do code development.
And, of course, they need to, projects need to register for that.
And then the early penguins track is going from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.
And there is some interesting stuff going on there, as well as Xenos, which is a network monitoring system, is sponsoring what they call a Xenos Community Day, which is no class training day for system administrators who are interested in learning about Xenos, which, actually, by the way, is essentially their introduction to Xenos class,
which I think they charge about 3 grand for at other locations.
So they are pretty much giving that away for free.
Wow.
Yeah, if you are a system administrator and you need to manage a network, that is a value.
I've actually made it a point to get that information out to a lot of people, because that's a one.
It's a heck of a product, though, and two, it's a great value to be able to show up and do that for free.
There is an Oracle install fest starting at 5 p.m.
If you are really interested in databases and want to see what Oracle on Linux looks for, essentially, it says, bring your hardware, and we'll help you get it set up in this hands-on session.
It's kind of like the old school Linux users group install fest.
And then, of course, at 8 o'clock, over at Barley's Brewing Company, we've got the kickoff party, which is being sponsored by Xenos this year again.
Xenos really came through in a big way this year, and I'm surprised, and I'm delighted that they did, but they'll be providing free beer.
And free food to those that are registered under the supporter and hire packages.
Otherwise, just come out and hang out.
But it starts showing up on Friday, or has been there for the classes.
Barley's basement is one of those little dungeons.
It's perfect for this kind of thing, and they've got great, great, great ails as well, traditional style ails.
So that's Friday.
I mean, there's a lot going on on Friday that we've traditionally made it a one-day conference, and now it's kind of expanded out to three days this year.
Amazing. Yeah, all that is actually being held at the Hyatt Regency, actually.
So Friday's activities are all happening at the Hyatt Regency with the pre-party or kickoff party happening over at Barley's.
But then on Saturday, Saturday's when the big conference day begins.
And so we've got Sean Powers.
If he's well, I just saw some stuff on Facebook that he went into the hospital because he was having what he felt like indigestion and pains.
But last night, I knew the doctor had cleared him to travel instead of just to go home, and he didn't have any heart attack or anything like that.
So Sean Powers is supposed to be keynoting in the morning from 842 to 935.
And then we break into four different tracks to talk about various all sorts of various things.
I mean, there's all sorts of great stuff on the schedule.
There's getting started in a free and open source is a talk about just what it says.
There's a decade of IBM or Linux at IBM, which is on the open source solution stage.
We've got the McKenzie Morgan is actually talking about, he's got a pocket titled, Sisadmin's Rosetta Stone.
We've got Peter Salis, who's another deaf and old schooler.
He's going to be talking about the importance of 1969.
Since the conference, the theme for the conference is 40 years of Unix, obviously.
So there's going to be a lot of focus on talking about the development of Unix and how it applies to Linux.
A whole, just a whole, I mean, there's more that you can do on Saturday than you can actually physically attend.
I mean, there's not, I don't see any of the talks that I see listed here.
I don't see anything that I would say.
I definitely, I have no interest in that.
In fact, I see the opposite problem.
There's so much going, there's so many good talks that I see a lot of talks that there's no way that I could see them all.
I'm going sensory overload.
I mean, I'll be straight.
I see the human equivalent or the real world equivalent to channel surfing sometimes.
I'll go in run room, take as much as I can take in for a minute, go into another.
Because I literally, there's two talks that I want to see going on at the same time.
And so it's difficult.
I've got to pick one and then settle down on it, you know, and eventually I do.
But it's rough.
Yeah.
We're going on.
Yeah.
We've got Patrick.
What's Sunday all about?
Well, Sunday, well, let's wrap up Saturday first.
So obviously, during the day, we've got a whole, a whole, again, the best thing to do is to go to www.ohilinics.org
and check out the actual schedule link and see what's on there.
But we're kind of closing down with our keynote for that day.
Which is being done by Douglas McHale Royer.
I think it's McHale Roy.
That's Roy.
I think I did say it.
And his keynote's starting at 7 p.m.
And that's that I am really excited to see.
He's talking 7-8-30 and then after that, the after party kicks off of Hyatt.
Of course, the after party.
The after party is always a lot of fun.
That's what everybody's pretty much consumed as much possible information.
As they can for the day.
And now it's a question of sharing it and talking to people about finding out what you missed and all that.
So that's what Saturday looks like.
Essentially, most people, I know if you're like me, you're on calf, you're on a caffeine-induced high the old day.
And by the time, by the time Saturday night rolls around, there's no possibility of sleep happening.
So Sunday is a workshop that's being handled called Diversity and Open Source.
And that's from 11 to 6 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency again.
And essentially, that was spearheaded by Beth Lynn Eiker, who is our conchair this year,
and who, once again, has basically done everything she possibly can to make the conference go on.
And it wouldn't have gone on without her.
But there's going to be a lot of discussion about attracting people into Open Source that are coming from different backgrounds.
And how to basically not really, you don't have to like the people you're working with but how to get along with them.
So it kind of says how to attract, it's kind of about how to attract diverse people to open source projects
and how to not degrade other people or let others do it and how to recognize biases so that you could better lead others in your project.
Is this gender-based stuff or is this technology-based stuff like say somebody who's really into Microsoft products?
You know, at the top, it says age, gender, sexuality, career, religion, size, race, disability, ethnicity.
So again, as far as I know, this is one of the first ones.
I think there was a small version of this that they did at scale this year that Beth was really motivated by.
And so she worked with Moose and several other people to get this taken care of.
So that's what's happening on Sunday.
And of course, there's always plenty of people hanging around the hotel after people check out and all sorts of things going on.
For this year, it's a very full schedule. I don't want to downplay that because there's a lot going on.
Yeah, I'm just coming up like a freight train and I wish I could have been more involved in the planning this year.
I have had pretty stiff career things going on for me and things where I've really got to rethink why I'm here on this planet.
So the timing is very interesting to me. I'm going to be stopping to some of these things that I've been doing and starting to something else.
It's going to be potentially bigger and it's a great time to pause and really look around.
And I can't think of a better bunch of people that would want to be hanging around doing that.
Yep, I mean, it's a fantastic opportunity to network with people too. I mean, on that front, you've got, you know, that's I think something that's really important.
A couple of things that I do want to highlight again.
We really appreciate if you register in advance for the conference, but if you can't get registered by Friday, September 18th, don't worry, come on down.
And you can still get in. You can register at the door. And if you can't buy the packages, you can only buy some of the packages online, but that's not going to stop you from being able to donate a checker or put something in the kitty.
And again, once again this year, we are actually a 501c3 organization. So anything that you donate is tax deductible.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a good thing. And again, it's free. So even if this is your first opportunity, you've never heard of it, you're thinking about it. Just come on down.
Come on down and see what it's like. It doesn't cost anything to get in the door. I'm obviously appreciated if you want to kick in something to help cover the bills.
And I think that's also important for people to understand is that you usually get these two different types of people, the people that are well.
You know, we can't have any commercial aspects. And you've got the other side that says, well, you know, we've got to have all commercial stuff.
And I think we've managed to strike a good balance where we have sponsors and we give our sponsors the opportunity to get their message out to a wide group of people, system administrators, students, IT administrators, technology.
There's a lot of hiring people that show up at UNIXFAST if you're looking for opportunities for employment.
But we give them the forum to actually be able to do that through the open source solution stage. And quite frankly, you'll see groups of people. You'll see a lot of different, talking about the suits versus geeks argument.
You'll see a lot of the suits over at the actual open source solution stage because that's where you're seeing open source companies actually talking about commercial products that they're deploying.
And then you'll see a lot of the sort of the geeky t-shirt crowd over in the conferences, you know, looking at things in depth like the Linux boot process or using Python.
So, I think we've managed to strike. There's something for everyone I think is the key to take away from that.
I mean, there's technical talks. It's the only one to be event with a suit on I could say that. But for the suits you're referring to are the kinds of people that are just, they're very, they're an IBM or HP or stun.
I've seen pretty large vendors show up at this event. And the interesting thing to me is they're particularly having every bit as much fun as the people that are, you know, very community oriented.
Right, right. And it's funny like you go to the IBM booth and the Nobel booth or you go to the Oracle booth and you talk to these guys and they've got their whole business mentality.
And I remember we've had to train some of our sponsors to say, look, you need to understand who you're talking to. I mean, we've done that over the years too.
But I think that they've gotten it finally after several years and they're starting to send the right people now and they're starting to get the right messages out to the group.
It's actually really cool to see. And we're back again from a space perspective last year we actually had it split across two floors down on one end of the convention center.
Well, we're back to where we were in 2007 and 2006, which is in front of the ballroom. So it's nice because that essentially means that, you know, in between all these conferences you get to come out onto the exhibit floor and talk to the sponsors and the exhibitors.
The exhibitors are a mixture of commercial companies that provide open-source solutions. But there's also software projects such as Fedora and other webcasters and podcasters that actually have booths there.
And we have a lot of people that will actually be broadcasting from the show floor again this year. And so it's just a pretty, it's hard to, you know, you can't really encapsulate the experience in a radio show.
No matter what you do, there's no possible way to do that. You just have to be there.
Yep, big party. The great time. Yeah, definitely come on down.
I hope to see you there.
So do we have anything, do we have anything else to talk about?
I think that's just said.
No, definitely, all is always better than said, because I can do anything you're doing said with all. And plus I can add logic.
Here's a trivia question. What was the first PC processor and memory that you installed Linux on?
It was a 4860X33 with 8 megabytes of RAM.
Ah, so you actually had a math code processor?
Yes, I did. I tried installing something like SCO, if I remember right, a friend of mine gave me a bootleg copy of SCO on a 286 and that was pain.
I never got to work the way it should.
Because SCO was very picky about hardware, whereas Linux was only slightly picky about hardware.
I remember my first installation was off of five and a quarter floppies onto a 36SX16.
Actually, it was SLS.
So I didn't even know the math code processor. The processor was running at 16 MHz and I had a whopping four megs of RAM.
I was so excited at that time.
Let's put it this way. At that point, once I got SLS up and running, eventually I was able to get X installed on the thing.
But it took almost a week to get X compiled.
Now you can compile X in probably about 20 minutes on a modern PC.
They all freaking amazing amount of code.
I love Ubuntu for everything like that. It's just to me that the ease that they have made in the polish on it.
My parents run Ubuntu and it's funny. They've done the last two upgrades in style.
They're running Intrepid Ibex and it looks just incredible amount of just smooth.
It just made how nice it looks.
You know what I heard? I heard a comment. We're not actually heard because technically it was an email.
But there was a discussion on one of the news mailing list, the Northeastern Ohio Open Source Society's mailing list about whether or not you were a producer of software or a consumer of software.
And I think one of the interesting topics that came out of that discussion is that originally when we started all this stuff back in the day, we all had to kind of produce software.
We had to actually cross compile stuff and port stuff over and figure out ways around to get stuff to compile from other systems.
But as you pointed out with Ubuntu, we've moved from the sort of producer mentality now to the user mentality.
And now we're consumers of the software and I would agree with you Ubuntu. I'm not sure I'd put anything else on a laptop or a PC if I was running a desktop.
As an example, my seven-year-old installed Ubuntu.
I actually, one of these days, I have to get her to do it again and I have to film that because I told the show no bacon that I would send them the video.
I said, this should be on YouTube. You should see exactly Ubuntu, desktop. So easy as seven-year-old can install it. I mean, try to get them to install Windows. It's not going to happen.
My dad bought a cheap piece of, it was a refurb, like $125 desktop, IBM, okay, Lenovo, whatever. It's probably about a year ago.
And he bought a brand new laser printer that's wireless and getty-a-gatta.
And we, you know, can you get this stuff working? So I came over and installed, it came with XP already.
And my mom had like one program, Windows-based, she wants to run. So I said, you know, I'll split the hard drive, I'll stick it on one half.
So, you know, split the hard drive and configured Ubuntu and added the printer and everything worked. And this was probably a half hours little work.
And so then rebooted it and went to configure the printer to work under Windows XP. And it was literally two and a half hours later before the thing was finally working.
And I had to go to websites and download drivers and all kinds of crazy stuff. And it wasn't nowhere near the scene with experience.
And it says volume, this is like an HP printer with an IBM desktop, that it took that much more effort to thing work.
What it's saying to you is that the game is pretty much over on the ease of use front. I don't feel it anybody says they're not paying attention.
But there's just, it's a certain amount of time we're going to see, there's going to come a point where people are like, why are you killing yourself with all of this complexity?
Because I don't think seven is going to be easier. And I don't think that the game is all about cramming it down people's throat.
But I think there's going to come a point where there's going to be a real serious healthy debate about why do we see this sort of product that costs so much and there's so much harder to set up.
I have a very similar experience. My brother does a lot of work for his business. And so a lot of the stuff that he does is online.
He was familiar and trained on Windows. But after like seven or eight times of installing, reinstalling Windows XP on one of his older PCs, I'm done.
I'm not doing this anymore. And this is a funny thing. He had been given a printer by somebody that you couldn't actually get the drivers for XP.
It would work because the only drivers they had available, I think, were Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 and 98 drivers. And you couldn't actually install it on XP.
And his long story short, I did. I slapped Ubuntu on that. And you know, game Firefox, which is essentially 98% of what he needed.
And a founder bird and Firefox gave him his email and his web browsing. It's all he needed to run his business.
How do we that? The printer plugged it in and it just found it. It just worked.
The drivers don't even exist for Windows XP and yet the thing. It's just like, yeah, okay.
And so, yeah, I really, you know, again, I think that it's just come. And not only that, with products like VirtualBox and Zen out there and the ability to run Windows in a virtual session if you need access to Windows software, it's just the whole argument.
I mean, you really want the most stable core operating system for whatever platform you're on. You don't want to mess with the virus protection and all that stuff.
But if you need access applications, I mean, VMware server is essentially free. And VirtualBox is free and the Zen is free. And you can get all that stuff to run.
And I mean, hey, Microsoft's even contributed Hyper-V extensions to the Linux kernel now. And I know a lot of people were contentious about that.
But I think Linus said it best. He said, they're doing exactly what open source is about. They're contributing code to a product to make it work better.
So, why should we deny that? Yeah, I mean, it's Microsoft. And a lot of people like to eat on Microsoft. But, you know, we've set the bullet up.
There are signs that they are starting to understand that this is a development model that they want to tap into. And you can bet you that it will be a matter of time. And you'll see a lot more.
I mean, there's already a few things coming out of them that are under their shared license and all that. But it's just semantics in my eyes.
I mean, I know that the license is more restrictive in some ways. But the fact that they are wanting to share their code with other people and get a collaborative spirit tells you that it's just the walls are falling. It's just a matter of how far.
Well, that's exactly, I mean, you know, it's exactly one of the things I tell clients, I say, look, open source has one of the benefits.
With Microsoft or with Cisco or with any of the closed product development models, you're going to be looking at weeks, months, maybe years for fixes to products.
Whereas with Linux, I mean, somebody is going to take a look at that. And I've seen fixes come across and open source projects such as Linux and Asterisk in hours. And minutes in cases.
Well, I've seen stuff fixed in real time. I've seen, I've actually been at AsterCon. I actually saw a bug came out in one of the releases of Asterisk. And I was actually there when the announce that was made, it came across as somebody's pager or someone's cell phone.
And immediately I saw a couple of the core developers get together and had a patch out to IRC, international really chat. They had a patch out to the channel in approximately 15 minutes or so.
And this is a big deal. I mean, this is the kind of development and open sort of transparency that really it makes the whole model just so attractive for anybody that's, you know, you want to know what's in your side.
You want to know what's running and you want to know that if company goes out of business, you can you can pick up and run with it.
So I think it's about 1130 and I don't know about you, but I've run out of beer. So I think that time to sign off.
Once again, Greg Bainline, I'm from the trustees of the Ohio Linux Fest and Paul Ferris. And we're saying good night.
Good night.
Good night.
I'll see you there. Bye.
Let's see you there.
Bye.
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