From: Muli Ben-Yehuda (mulix_at_nonexisting.hamakor.org.il)
Date: Fri 11 Apr 2003 - 09:02:34 IDT
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 09:06:45PM +0300, Ira Abramov wrote:
> Don't have time to get into all the details of the event, I'm sure
> others (Mulix?) took more notes and listened more carefully at the
Here's my account of the event. It's mildly long and self centered, so
read at your own peril...
We left Haifa at oh-dark-hundred, and eventually, got to the Hilton,
late, only to discover that the parking lot is full. After finding
"Tel Avivian" parking space, where a bicycle could barely fit in, we
rushed inside into a host of people all milling around in the
exhibition hall, talking amongst themselves and to the vendors. Topics
of conversation ranged from the lightly geeky, to the sales pitch, to
the latest kernel. Good signs for what was about to come.
Since the talks already started, so we walked into the main ballroom,
where they were taking place. Shachar and Doron saved us a seat near
the developers desk (what makes it a developers desk? the fact that it
had electricity plugs for the laptops), so close to the stage that the
speakers could spit on us if they so desired. Several people ask me if
I lost my way to a bar mitzva
(http://www.mavor.com/linux_to_go/thumb/30-1-0.html, blame my tie
fetish).
Shachar suddenly remembers that he doesn't have the slides for my talk
on his laptop. Since we only had a regular ethernet cable, not
crossed, and no one brought a hub (could we move up from the stone age
and get wireless for next conference, please?), we settle for
a USB disk-on-key. Unfortunately, the kernel I was running at the
moment did not support USB. A quick compilation of 2.5.66 and a boot
later, I realized that it doesn't support VFAT either. Another
compilation - no go. Scratch head, take a look at the .config, and
realize that I left out USB storage. Argh! compile again, 'mount
/dev/sda /usb -t vfat' - no go. Oleg pipes in with 'I think you mean
/dev/sda1', and we have contact.
As you can see, I didn't pay much attention to the talks at the first
part of the event. Here's the list of talks that actually took place
in this first track, and my notes, or more often, what I was
impolitely doing instead of listening.
"Launch of the Israeli Linux Organization", Ilan Spigelman, Oracle
Israel - we came in late and only caught the last few minutes of this
one.
"How to Save Millions and Do More", Ami Shlezinger, Israeli Air*
Industries - Ami is a great speaker and gives good talks, but I was
too busy recompiling the kernel to actually listen. Sorry.
"Linux according to Gartner", Philip Libman, Gartner - this lecture
generated a lot of noise later in the day, with various speakers
referring to Gartner's not-entirely-to-their-liking forecasting. "Open
Office? too little, too late". "Linux on the desktop - forget about
it". Great talk, but I only caught bits and pieces of it as I took the
opportunity to scour the crowds outside, talk to people and hang by
the IBM booth.
"Linux, the new choice for Comverse products", David Avrahami,
Comverse - I didn't hear this one, don't know if it took place or
not. Maybe I was still in the exhibition area, or hacking on mush?
"Running a company using Linux", by Itai Weisberg, CIO of "Hachsharat
Hayeshuv" - I was back inside during this talk, but busy hacking on
mush (Muli's Shell - http://www.mulix.org/mush.html), which reached
version 0.01 sometime during this talk.
"Office for everyone and for free", Itzik Cohen, Ministry of Finance -
very interesting talk, Itzik kept calling on the "young fellas", and
talking directly at us at the developers table to help the ministry
of finance in various endeavors. The cynicist in me couldn't help
wondering if it's a way of getting excellent consulting for free, and
the optimist in me couldn't help thinking that it's a great
opportunity to make a difference. The truth, as always, is probably in
the middle.
"OpenOffice working in Israel", by Moti Sadowski, Sun - the long
awaited OpenOffice beta release. The most interesting point IMHO is
that StarOffice include a spell checker, but it can't be added
OpenOffice due to royalties issues. Therefore, the next version will
include hspell! Way to go, Dan and Nadav!
"Government Policy, Advanced Technology, and Mutual Influencing",
Mudi Zandberg, Minister of Science and Technology - very interesting
talk overall, although I don't have any specific highlights to point.
Next came the CEO's panel, which I skipped. I had to get some air, and
stretch my legs, meet more people (done) and get some conference swag
(not done, need more practice before OLS).
Then we had a small break, and the most interesting part of the day
began: the development lectures.
First up was Shachar Shemesh, conference organizer extraordinaire and
uber-wine-hacker. Shachar talked about the various tools you use for
developing on Linux, and I spotted more than a few people busily
taking notes. The talk is available here:
http://www.shemesh.biz/lectures/Linux development environments.pdf
Next up was your humble narrator, who talked about the Linux kernel
and what's to be expected in 2.5 and 2.6. Favorite quote from the
talk: "Um, yes, we don't have much time left. <moves to next slide>
Filesystem. There are new file system. <moves to next slide>." For
those of you who were there and want more, I'll give a two hour long
version of this lecture, in depth, at one of the upcoming Haifux
lectures. Details will be posted here when finalized. For now, the
slides are available at
http://www.mulix.org/lectures/kernel_two_five/kernel_two_five.pdf
Next up was Dov Grovgeld, who talked about fribidi, unicode and other
arcane stuff. Favorite quote from Dov's talk: "you shouldn't really
use fribidi, it's working at a very low abstraction level. Use pango
or one of the other libraries on top of it".
Then we had a lunch break, which I spent answering people's questions
about the kernel, demonstrating user-mode-linux and doing various
other things which did not involve eating lunch. Until I finally
managed to grab a bite, Gabor Szabo's "Developing Web Applications
using Perl" lecture was almost over.
The next lecture I heard was Shachar again, on "Porting windows
applications to Linux using winelib". Very interesting lecture, which
led up to the following zen-koan-like exchange:
"So, you kept saying wine is not an emulator, right?"
"Yes"
"So what is it?"
"An emulator, of course".
Next up was our very own Gilad Ben-Yossef, on "Creating Embedded
Appliances using Linux". Entertaining as usual, I hope the slides will
show up eventually at http://www.benyossef.com/talk.html. If you meet
Gilad, ask him to show you his tatoo!
Last for the development track was Sharon Dagan from IBM, talking
about Eclipse. I missed this talk and have no worthy input. So much
for corporate solidarity.
Next on the agenda were the free software developers panel, which was
amusing, but IMHO, not amusing enough. Except perhaps for shlomif, who
hijacked the microphone and refused to give it back. He didn't mention
*censored solver* or *censored SCM system*, though, so I guess we got
off lucky.
The highlight of the panel was probably the discussion of Gilad's
penguin underwear. Don't ask and we won't tell.
After the panel was a raffle, including a short trivia contest in
which none of the contestants knew any answers (that's ok, neither did
90% of the audience). Eventually, one of them managed to almost answer
the question of "what version is the latest development kernel at?"
and won the prize. Then we watched RMS, Linus Benedict Torvalds, ESR,
and the rest of the gang make history once again. All in all, a day
well spent. See you at the next event!
-- Muli Ben-Yehuda http://www.mulix.org
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