Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

This years Atlanta Linux Showcase was the 4th
annual and was obviously more mature. Linux has
come a long way in the business world and the ALS
this year was certainly business focused.

I have been to the past 3 ALS shows and this was
the biggest by far. More serious players were on
hand and the event in general was quite a bit
larger. There were the big guns such as VA,
RedHat, SuSE, IBM and Sun, and there were many
middle tier and smaller vendors also.

The perennial exhibit floor favorites are the
Linux General Store (whom does a great deal of
work for the show, and it was evident, great job
on the display of "Linux at Work" in which various
machines were setup in a hands on format doing
about every task imaginable), LinuxMall and the
others that were giving away stuff or selling
stuff cheap.

Several things caught my eye this year. Again, I
was late in making it to the show and did not
attend any of the parties or conferences (because
I suck and used work as an excuse, lame) but I
did attend the exhibits and there was some neat
stuff. Along with the gadgets, t-shirts, freebies
and the way cool 1U rack mount VA boxes, there was
a much improved flavor of IBM ViaVoice for Linux
(for 59 bucks), a great display and price for a
Linux powered iPaq from PocketLinux (impressive
setup) and much much more. It was a very cool
show and everybody (including me) needs to show
even more support next year.

Thanks again to ALE, USENIX and SAGE and all of
the other sponsors for the show. All you Linux
geeks need to join SAGE and USENIX, great
organizations and the magazines (;login:) and
website information are outstanding (check out
sage.org or usenix.org for details.)

here are some quick pics from the show

the nerf gun game

the ibm booth

the sun booth

the suse booth

the
pocketlinux booth!
  Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts