Note from the REDHAT Road Tour !

[Dave Cooper]

As promised: My attempt at notes from last nights event spectacular ......

5:30 pm, setup room, assist O'Rielly staff.... 5:45 room ready.
5:45 Assist NBLUG past Pres with resources..
6:00 pm, BookStore opens....  received phone call to verify delivery of 
PIZZA for 6:30 [ pretty cool,  Redhat bought food :) ]..
6:01 pm  crowd begins arriving..... ( by 6:20 its standing room only )
6:16 pm... The first Phone call...... " Hi, this is the RedHat Road Tour.. 
Houston we have a problem"....
6:30 pm PIZZA arrives, those on time are allowed to feast.
6:42 pm The second call.. " Hi again, We've made it to 101 "....
6:50 pm  Mr Tim O'Rielly Volunteered to give a talk.   I've heard Mr 
O'Rielly speak a number of times, and I enjoy it every time. He spoke about 
" Linux doesnt matter", scary topic title to give to a Linux Users 
Group.... Tim's view goes into whats next...ie: first it was the 
development of the PC ( 'IBM said there would only need to be 5 PC's, they 
were wrong, they overstated by 4.. hahahaha ) Then it was the killer app ( 
where were you the first time you saw VisiCalc ), and people bought a pc 
just to run one app, then the app was word processors. Then email, via a 
new medium, the internet, which leads us to the web browesr. Using the web 
browesr, data is no longer a local object, but can come from any where, the 
idea being that the code you produce might well use someone elses seach 
engine in a far away land to give you just one field of data for your new 
app......
  The point being now that Linux will be running on a whole bunch of server 
that will support what ever is next.
( I'm sure my notes dont do his talk justice... )
Thanks you MR O'Rielly for your support of the NBLUG. A big thanks to the 
crew @ O'Rielly for you support too !!! Keeping the bookstore open for us 
was a big plus, and VERY MUCH appreciated ! REALLY !

7:24 : The RedHat Road Tour motorhome ARRIVES !!! Cookie has been driving 
like a Mad Man ! It is the opinion of the entire R.H.R.T. staff that the 
"Bay Area" has a traffic problem......
"We are very sorry we're late, so we are going to kiss up Big Time !!!" In 
a scamper of activity ( setting up a video projector on the fly )...
Jonathan started the presentation with the obligatory " How many of you run 
Linux ?" , Then by version.. Slackware, Debian, blah blah...
How many of you have seen 8 ( about 20 hands ). projector lights up, and 
away with the show.  The new splash of blue from "BlueCurve" the new window 
manager lights up the wall ( which would then dance across the ceiling and 
other locations as they attempt to raise the picture to viewable height [ 
quite a comedy routine ] . Showing off a number of new/improved 
features...... Jeremy and Dave dive into the promo... 8 now ships with Open 
office, alot of old tools have been upgraded in look and feel ( network 
setup, personnel firewall, font installers,  [ any one want to elaborate .. 
] ] ... There is a lot more support for multimedia, a wine implementation 
that works great ( Show us WarCraft 3... ) . Many more drivers for many 
more product are now included: Ornoco, Linksys, Cisco wireless cards, 
additional printer driver support, video displays, etc.....
... In my opinion the best question of the night was regarding the upcoming 
real time release. While the answer was, "we dont know when it will be 
here", the tone was how their getting there sounds interesting.....
  Other points of note: The difference of standard vs Enterprise 
distributions ( If I get this right... ) the enterprise release is:  take 
7.2 release, lock it, tweak each module until solid, remove anything that 
doesn't need to be there, viola... The reasoning is that the standard 
releases are going so fast and furious its hard to keep up on certain 
things, and this process verifies integrity of the release ( obviously a 
smart move for a business that could be counting on uptime with no hassle 
or worry ) .
A fairly nice technical round of questions from the audience, with James 
rounding out the techie side of Q and A.....

I will ask that anyone else in attendance please add comments of  any other 
points that were made of which I've omitted, this will help document the 
event a little better....

9:45 pm. To close,  shirts started flying... I'm willing to bet that they 
gave out 50 t-shirts,  everyone got a key chain,  CD's with 8, posters. 
Then the drawing for 1 of 6 "REdHat hats"... ..
In closing there was only one more thing to do: BEER !  And true to their 
words,  we moved from the O'Rielly complex to the PwerHouse to further 
study Kernel dynamics as they apply to Amber Stout vs Strawberry Blond.....


Well.. There you have it.. notes from my view of The RedHat  Road Tour......
Meet the guys:
http://www.redhat.com/roadtour/meet/



"coop"