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GNU is Not Unix Software Linux

Linuxfest Northwest 2004 Wrap-up 81

Posted by timothy from the that-was-then-this-is-the-new-then dept.
prostoalex writes "Linuxfest Northwest 2004 took place in Bellingham, WA this past Saturday, as announced on Slashdot before. Check out the ever-expanding photo album and what people are saying in their blogs. I also have an extensive and highly subjective write-up on my site, but I can only vouch for the events I've been to myself. Compare that to Linuxfest 2000 coverage to see how things have changed."
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Linuxfest Northwest 2004 Wrap-up More

Linuxfest Northwest 2004 Wrap-up

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  • What... ? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Any pics of Linus in a speedo?
  • Pretty amazing that one guy from Finland started the whole Linux movement. It's testament to the open source concept. It keeps getting better. Soon it'll overtake MS and maybe (distant future) even Apple.

    Keep chugging, guys!
    • Soon it'll overtake MS and maybe (distant future) even Apple.

      I feel like I've stepped into a time machine, and I'm reading a 1998 comment from Slashdot.
  • Dear Slashdot,

    I never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me. Yes indeed, the captions on the photo albums mentioned in the article are editable by anyone. Just changed the caption of one of the photos myself.

    Have fun. Be good!

  • Entertaining Open-Source Documentation? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by osewa77 ( 603622 ) <naijasms@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Monday April 19, 2004 @07:37PM (#8910863) Homepage
    Wouldn't it be nice if the full text of the lectures at such meetings were available to reporters and technical writers? A lot of authoritative Open-Source knowledge is presented at events like this and never becomes available to Joe public... at least with transcripts available we can get writers to _re-organize_ the information later on.
    just a nigerian personal web publisher [afriguru.com]

  • Most exciting.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Magickcat ( 768797 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @07:37PM (#8910865)
    I noticed on the 2004 site that you can vote for "Most exciting part of Linuxfest?"

    Well, where's the "Linux Klingon Debate" box then??

  • It rocked. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sure the event could have been held in a larger town and been another (yawn) commercial flop @200 a head to hear some schmuck talk about how he worked for Pixar (cough).
    But grassroots and small town kept this thing fun and educational. There were some big names including Amazon, Sun, and the man Rasmus Lerdorf.
    Suprisingly there were a lot of families there, and even children scurring about chewing on network cables and doing...kid things.
    The event gets better each year while keeping it noncommericial a
  • Ah, yes: "ghardak!

    (Overheard at the convention. Actually, hundreds of times.)

  • It was great! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pulchellissima ( 473136 ) * on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:32PM (#8911480)
    I had a great time at the Fest, as usual.

    I do have some nitpicks about the original Slashdot poster's article. The original poster doesn't seem to have noticed (about Jakob Perry's talk in particular) that there was a newbie track of talks. Perry's talk was in that track. I do agree that tracks should be better marked, although the talk is clearly listed under 'newbie track' on the presentation schedule handout.

    I presented two talks (one impromptu when the first one had standing room only) in the newbie track. Last year I presented a hands on tutorial on Glade. My talks this year and last year were very well attended. The new classrooms at BTC worked marvelously for the presentations I saw. I found the projector system to be really well integrated, and it worked with my 5 year old laptop (running Linux), without a problem.

    As a presenter, I am working on getting my slides up on the 'net. However, I don't like to just put the slides up, I like to create a bit more content, as the slides for me are just aids for my presentation. I assume other presenters feel the same, and are working on getting their lectures online. So give us some time, if you will.

    Getting presenters to post a lecture before it happens will be difficult as well, especially if they are creating new content for the event. As we are not professional speakers, it is a bit unrealistic to expect us to have something ready for publication before we give the lecture.

    I think BLUG does a great job putting this event on year after year, and I'm proud to help support it. I've always had a blast when I've attended, and am already planning on attending next year. This is a real grassroots event, without corporate sponsorship and suits, without even an entry fee.

    Kudos to BLUG, TACLUG, GSLUG, KPLUG, and all the other Lugs and linux afficionados that make this event so educational, entertaining and fun.

    • Yes, Kudos the local LUG's.

      This was my first year at LFNW, and it actually exceeded my expectations for an event in a small town like Bellingham (~70K). It was great... continue to keep it small, grassroots and free to all and I'm sure LFNW will be a success for years to come.

      (I picked up a nice Debian shirt, too...)

  • Pacific Northwest National Labs HPC Linux Cluster (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Maxwell309 ( 639989 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @10:55PM (#8912775) Homepage
    I thought LFNW was awesome. I especially enjoyed the Pacific Northwest National Labs High Performance Linux Cluster talk given by Timothy A Witteveen of PNL. It is one hell of a machine. It is one hell of a machine. 9.4 teraflops and a 53 terrabyte SAN running NWLinux [pnl.gov]. It placed 5th on the last Top 500 List [top500.org].

    That 53 terrabyte SAN is one contiguous filesystem using lustre [clusterfs.com]. The use of QSNet2/Elan4 [quadrics.com] interconnects make the use of terbyte data sets with lots of internode communication more efficient than past machines. These interconnects provide a peak bandwidth of 340 MB/sec in each direction. But even more impresive than the bandwidth is the latency, between 2 us and 5 us. Compare that with ethernet latency measured in tens or even hundreds of ms.

    During the presentation Tim went over two examples of simulations performed on their cluster that could not be accomplished on other machines. These examples were outside of my domain of knowledge, but one involved simulating the behavior of water molecules and the other was an extremely detailed protein folding simulation.

    One last bit that was interesting was their methodology for updating the machines. They have over a thousand and took some time to determine an efficient means to keep the machines up to date. It was determined that reimaging the maches was faster than applying patches. They utilize a multicast approach in which allows them, theoretically, to reimage all of the machines in 28 minutes. They do not always reach this theoretical maximum, but they reimage a thousand machines PDQ.

    The meet & greet in the commons was fun. Pogo Linux [pogolinux.com] had a free drawing for a loaded AMD64 system. There was plenty of swag to be had from all sorts of folks. It was cool to stop and chat with one of the Helix [helixcommunity.org] developers. All in all there was a really good group of folks gathered.

    I know Slashdot is full of trolls, but I must say I am a little suprised at how many crappy comments LFNW is getting. All I have to say to those filled with negativity is screw you. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have some cool stuff going on. Whether it is the 3 new lugs in Seattle, OSDL in Portland, the Linux Cluster at PNL, SeattleWireless, PersonalTelco or LFNW there are exciting things happening up here. I think a couple people on this site need to take their heads out of their arses and take a look around. Folks up here are using linux, and getting stuff done.

  • One of the perks of LFNW this year was a swank after party thrown by the local Class A Data Center, FiberCloud [fibercloud.com]. The party was a great opportunity to meet a diverse array of folks.

    I got to go on a tour of the data center, and I was really impressed. They currently have two bandwidth providers(AT&T and a Canadian Provider). The fiber running north doesn't touch any electronics beforing reaching Canada. They will be adding Sprint and MCI through a connection with their Everet data center later this year

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