These notes on the Future of Linux event, 7/14/98, are copyright 1998 by Rafael Skodlar . I have edited them lightly for grammar and format. -- KDawson Introduction of panelists - Jeremy Allison (Samba developer) Introduced himself, mentioned his work on Samba, what he would like to see in future releases of kernel and Linux to become a 64 bit OS which would give him a bigger file space. He mentioned that there are people working on SCO binary compatibility. - Larry Augustine (Linux Journal) Linux warrior, believes that Linux is technicaly mature. He showed slides from a Feb. 98 Datapro poll with users rating Linux a clear winner. - Robert Hart (Red Hat) Author of PPP HowTo, believes that Linux is technicaly comparable to other Unix operating systems. Yes, Linux is a commercial OS since he gets paid by it. Red Hat and other companies offer technical support. They are getting requests from home users for support which means that there is a growing demand for the OS in that field too. He recognizes that Linux is still not ready for everybody (his mom in particular). Major problems are lack of applications and user interface. There are some things evolving but still need a lot of work: KDE and Gnome for example. - Sunil Saxena (Intel) Customers say that Linux is comparable to other OSs. Linux is the OS of choice for ISPs. An important selling point is the open source and quick updates from developers around the world. Weaknesses are in SMP support, server management, drivers for high-end platforms, and large memory support. Intel is interested in working with developers on especialy 4-way SMP scalability. They presented their Xeon server at the back of the room with Linux runing on it. - Linus Torvalds He started with OS for one person and nothing more. He was surprized to see it go this far. A few years ago he mentioned on the net that he would like to see an improvement in certain part of the CPU and that got implemented recently. He was wondering if somebody was reading his comments. He believes that Linux is superior to some other OSes which shows in supercomputers that are the least expen- sive ones. On the other hand there are people developing a Palmtop version which shows how flexible Linux is. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Questions from the audience: Q from a sysadmin from a CAD company with 1000 Suns running CAD apps (i.e. high-end tools) wanted to know when we can see a major company port those programs (CAD) to Linux. Larry answered: Last month there was a conference in SF where engineers demanded that tools they use be ported to Linux rather than NT. The problem is a disconnect between sales and engineering people. Q from Rebecca Eisenberg (SF Examiner?): Why can't an old person or an inexperienced user use Linux? What can I do with it? Robert Hart: One problem is the docummentation to help people install and use Linux, but major problem are applications, user tools, and GUI. Jeremy added: More applications are badly needed. Q: What role does Samba play? Jeremy: It allows the removal of NT servers (laugh from the crowd). SGI officialy adopted Samba for their OS to connect to the Windows world. Samba also opens doors for Linux. He hopes that the code will be good enough to replace NT as a primary domain controller by the end of the year. Q: There are the first signs of complete solutions based on Linux: Network Computer, Cobalt box. Is there more to come? Larry: yes, thin clients and more. Q: Is free source is just a fad or is it here to stay? Larry: Microsoft's depiction of this movement as "playing a game" is no longer valid. The playing field has changed and MS will have to react to that. Robert: only 5% of the uers look into code, others hire somebody to do that for them, i.e. adjust or tune the system. That is possible only with having the source code available. Jeremy: Likes the idea af open source code. That way others check his code and do work for him :-) Q: What are the long-term effects of MS against Netscape and court actions? Linus: DOJ is too slow to do anything, the market will determine the outcome. The market is not against us. Many companies realise that if they come out with great software that MS might decide to do the same and wipe them out. If these companies release the software on a platform where MS doesn't dominate then they can survive. Monopoly fails. Q: How do we get more applications ported? Robert: We need to make application developers understand that we want them to port to Linux. Larry: According to the news on www.slashdot.org, Informix decided to port their DB to Linux. It's very important that applications run on all distributions or Linux will become fragmented like commercial Unix. A: What's with the different configuration tools between Red Hat and other distributions? Robert: There is a discussion going on between different distribution developers. They need to standardize on libraries etc. Many things are left to the user; how they want to use it. Larry: compatibility needs to be preserved, that's very important. He appealed to different developers to keep the compatibility. Q for Sunil from a student (with a comment that his mother is runing Linux): What's this non-disclosure deal between Intel and other companies regarding Merced and other chips? Sunil: Intel will suport Linux, yes there is a problem with that but they are working on it. There are discussions going on but nothing is clear yet. Crowd was a bit skeptical about that. Linus commented that the kernel is more or less getting ready for the new PC. Other OSes will have problems too so they won't be that much ahead of Linux. Q from the audience: What about common user interface? Robert: Red Hat is supporting Gnome desktop with resources in Gtk but they don't control it. KDE has some problems with Qt libraries, licencing etc. This means that people have a choice. Jeremy added: KDE is currently the most advanced desktop for Linux. Q: What about FreeBSD? What are the differences? Linus: there are differences in timing to the market; BSD sources are based on legacy which makes its progress slower than Linux, where things are written from scratch in most cases. Jeremy: Code should be able to run across the platforms and mostly does. Larry: he used to run BSD but finds Linux being developed faster and he is more excited using it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Questions from Phil Hughes (Linux Journal): Q: How much bigger do panelists see Linux in 2000? Jeremy: It will capture 25 % of Intel base. Larry: Datapro estimates it doubled in a year and the expectation is that it will follow that trend, doubling for the next year or so. By the y2000 Linux will be the biggest Unix around. Robert: Expects it doubling each year to be at close to 40 million users. Linus: It's going for the world domination. That used to be a joke. It is becoming less and less of a joke. His ego hopes that this will happen in 5 to 10 years :-) More seriously he hopes that in 10 years market won't be dominated by anybody, certainly not by one company alone. Q: what if MS starts with Open Windows99 or Explorer? Linus: if they do it then we succeed with open source code policy. But they won't. Jeremy: He would be delighted if they (MS) came out with free stuff but then they could not control it. Nothing would be hidden and we could fix some of their problems :-) Q: US postal service, NIST and some other governemnt agencies are using Linux. Is Linux taking over the US government? Linus: "I did not plan it that way, but now that you mentioned it..." :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Question from the moderator, Michael Masterson (Taos): Q: What are your opinions about Linux in 2 to 3 years? Sunil: Linux will continue to grow, ISPs will use it more, and it will be used in mission critical applications. Electronic commerce will use it, and corporations will use it for servers. A 64 bit version will be there while scalablity problems will be solved. Intel promissed more info to developers. Larry: Kernel 2.2 will be out (teasing Linus). He thanked to Intel for support but mentiond that we need to press Intel to deliver on promisses. Robert: Time goes fast, looking into the past trend, he sees Linux to increase Unix share and more porting of software on the way. Media is doing better reports on Linux than ever before. He compared today's event to French revolution but Linux is evolution, an ongoing event. He doesn't care if MS survives as Long as Linux grows. Linus: "I'm bad at predicting the future of Linux." He was asked about developing kernel for SMP environment 3 years ago and he was not interested at that time; but he's worked on it for the past year. The kernel is just a small part of the OS and other parts make it interesting and exciting to use. His primary interest is in the kernel. Server-side is good but we need applications for young and old people in order to succeed. Jeremy: He used to keep track of interesting software just a few years ago. Now it's impossible to do it singlehanded: too many things going on. Linux is going to be killer platform. Embedded systems runing Linux will emerge and one of big PC vendors will pick it up or Larry will become one of them :-) Unix software vendors will be less greedy if they want to survive and one way to do it is to port to Linux. Technicaly Linux will still be behind other commercial Unixes but will push them aside by the volume. End of QA session ------------------------------- Less formal questions followed for another 20-30 minutes. There were demo machines in the back of the room with Linux runing Gimp, animations, compiling kernel, etc. Vendors were displaying their hardware and software, some of which was not Linux specific. CISCO, Intel, SuSe, VA research, Taos, and more.